School managers as catalysts of innovative culture and academic performance: A case of selected schools in the Cofimvaba District in the Eastern Cape Province
- Authors: Langa, Vuyani Goodman
- Date: 2020-02
- Subjects: School management and organization , Organizational change , Management
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/20318 , vital:45650
- Description: School managers have always been on the forefront of the administration of education system since they are the active agents who lead their schools towards wider goals of improving access and quality of education. The contemporary world has had a great deal of surmounting pressure from globalisation and other forces of a universalised society. These influences have become more and more pronounced with the inevitable influences of digitalisation and in the fourth industrial revolution. Information and Communication Technologies have transformed how things are done even within the settings of schools. Attempting to ignore this bold revolution for the so-called ‘tried and tested’ conventional methods of school management, assessment, learning, teaching and monitoring does not only leave a school or education system behind but inhibits leaners and stakeholders from enjoying the many benefits of innovation, creativity and flexibility. This study explores the role of school managers in creating and maintaining an innovative culture and academic performance in selected public schools of the Cofimvaba Education District which has become synonymous with declining pass rates post-1994. A qualitative research approach was used where existing literature collected, collated and thematically analysed. The findings of the study indicated that the school principals are not empowered or willing enough to catalyse the creation and sustaining of innovative cultures in schools. There was also a political willingness of the leaders of the education sector in the Cofimvaba Education District is deficient, the absence of sanctions for failure to innovate is a challenge to innovation. Other findings include evidence policy gaps on what is innovation and who must do what in schools which affects the efficacy of school managers. The study also established that the bureaucratisation of the education sector has done nothing by crippled school managers’ ability to innovate by school managers. The study recommends strategies on how school managers can become that active catalyst that they should be, to drive innovation include in-service training and setting minimum benchmarks for school managers eligibility. Also, policy interventions such as 4th industrial revolution aligned innovation regulations, exchange of ideas with countries which successful school innovation formulating a sanction model of non-performers, towards improving access and quality of education in the Cofimvaba Education District. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Management and Commerce, 2020
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- Date Issued: 2020-02
An analysis of schooling outcomes in the Eastern Cape, using production function approach
- Authors: Ncanywa, Thobeka
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Education -- Economic aspects , Production functions (Economic theory) , School management and organization
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/26570 , vital:65656
- Description: This study analysed the schooling outcomes of the Eastern Cape Department of Basic Education in the period heading into the second decade of democracy. The main objective of the thesis is to discover what constitutes the education production function of the Eastern Cape schooling system. In an attempt to reach this objective, the study adopted an education production function approach to answer the questions of what constitute the Eastern Cape education production function, what the effects are of the Dinaledi policy interventions on learner performance and the effects of district size on schooling outcomes. The main focus of the constituents of the production function is on the level of the former Bantustan penalty and Department of Education and Training (DET) penalty in relation to former White schools; as well as the quality of educators in the province. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and quantile regressions were used to analyse the data and the Annual National Assessment (ANA) represented schooling outcomes and was estimated against school, educator and community characteristics. The results indicated a strong relationship between schooling outcomes and the school inputs that were used in the study. The effects of the Dinaledi intervention programme were analysed using the grade 12 panel data for the period from 2008 to 2013, where event dropout rates represented schooling outcomes. The findings that emerged from this study indicated that this programme provides a model that can improve the Eastern Cape schooling outcomes. The effects of district size on schooling outcomes were analysed with the regression discontinuity design technique and this revealed that district sizes have an impact on schooling outcomes. Overall, the results suggested that White schools perform better than their counterparts; that placing schools in quintiles is a good policy intervention; and that educator quality is associated with schooling outcomes. The key findings from this research were the continuing existence of the apartheid legacy in Black schools; poor educator quality; an inappropriate language of instruction; gender inequalities in performance and an uneven distribution of schools in districts. The recommendations for this research are to pay more attention to the improvement of educator quality in terms of educator qualifications, training and remuneration; implement a programme like the Dinaledi programme to all schools, as it provides resources to schools; and enforce the district size as informed by the district act so as to improve the support that district officials give to schools. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Management and Commerce, 2015
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- Date Issued: 2015