Investigation into the management of educators’ performance

Abstract

The Department of Education has invested huge sums of money in trying to improve the quality of education. In order to improve the quality of education, the department realised the need to develop educators. This was done through the introduction of the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS). The Integrated Quality Manegement System came as results of the combination of the Whole School Evaluation (WSE) and Developmental Appraisal System (DAS). The Department of Education realised the importance of managing the performance of educators. This study was influenced by the need to investigate how the performance of educators is being managed at schools in Bahlaloga Circuit. This study focussed on the following research questions: How is the integrated quality management system being implemented at schools? What have been the major challenges and or successes with regard to the implementation of the integrated quality management system? Is it relevant or appropriate to link the performance of the school with the performance of educators? Is it necessary to link promotion of educators with performance? Is it necessary to link financial reward with the performance of educators? Study managed to find out that the implementation of the Integrated Quality Management System is not taking place as outlined in the policy. The support from the Developmental Support Group is very minimal and in some cases not taking place. Schools have all the necessary documents and stuctures in place to be able to implement the policy but they are unable to do so. At the same time there are number of reasons that were found to be the main reasons why schools are unable to implement the system as prescribed by the policy. Some of the challenges include the following: Shortage of Heads of Departments for some of the subjects who can help during and after the actual evaluation has taken place, movement of both principals and head of department from one school to the other is another challenge that affects the continuous implementation of IQMS; there is no prescribed good teaching practice for all the subjects and therefore what is good teaching practice to one educator may not be the case to the DSG, this situation normally causes confusion among xiv educators.Some educators are being evaluated by Head of Department who does not have the knowledge of the subject and as a results he does not get the necessary support from the DSG, the support from the Department of Education has been lacking, poor working conditions, line of reporting is too complex, that is the Head of Department has his own expectations from educators, principals expect something different, circuit managers have their own plan around the performance of educators while curriculum advisors advises educators to approach the subject differently. All these have an impact on the performance of educators. Lack of team work in schools is one other challenge in the sense that when teachers are not working together as a team, they are less likely to support one another. Some educators are offering more subjects and some of which they are not even qualified to teach. Other Heads of Departments do not have the necessary knowledge of other subjects and therefore they find it difficult to support educators. Some teachers find themselves teaching subject that they are not qualified to teach. The other findings from both the principals and educators are that the promotion and financial rewards must be linked with the performance of the educators. Educators must work for them. On the other hand, the performance of the schools must be linked with the performance of the individual educators. These findings also provide another challenge to the researcher to find out better ways the performance of educators could best be managed taking into account the complexity of the schools’ fuctioning and staffing.