An exercise to measure the link between matric results in KwaZulu-Natal and the introduction of school management programmes in the province shows up a strong correlation between the efficiency of school management and pass rates.

Principals Management Development Programme (PMDP) project manager Barbara Njapha says the training institute has been measuring the effect of the PMDP rapid skills training programme for school principals and the resultant matric success rates at a number of KwaZulu-Natal schools over the past three years.

The PMDP runs over six months and consists of practical learning and mentorship as well as hands-on tasks to implement systems in the management of the school.

The KwaZulu-Natal body has extended this management skills programme to over 1 200 schools over three years from mid-2010. “We are pleased that, over the three years of delivering the PMDP, from 2009 to 2011, we can demonstrate a yearly average improvement of 7.4%, which is well above the provincial average,” Njapha notes.
She adds that the most significant effect and pass rate increase are seen within the first year that a school has been through the programme and, while it tends to stabilise for years two and three after the PMDP, these schools maintain an improvement in excess of provincial and national performance levels.

The original pilot schools that undertook the PMDP in 2009 have improved by an average of 17.9% to date, compared with an improvement of 10.5% in KwaZulu-Natal and 7.7% nationally over the same period.
For participating schools in 2010, the average improvement is 12.4% over the two-year period, against the KwaZulu-Natal average of 4.4%. In 2011, there was a 5.9% improvement over the previous year, compared with KwaZulu-Natal levels, which dropped by 2.6%, and the national average, which only improved by 2.4%.
The PMDP acknowledges that, while the schooling system is quite complex, statistical research undertaken has confirmed that there are key management practices that correlate directly with improved results and these are currently being implemented through the PMDP and its participants.

These key practices include management and tracking of the curriculum, getting an effective school plan in place, timekeeping and attendance as well as regular consultations at senior management team level.
Based on corporate sector development training of basic management competences, the PMDP rapid skills development course was custom-designed to the requirements of the South African education system to ‘upskill’ those in positions of governance and decision-making in the school environment. It is aimed at the main role-players in both primary and secondary schools, focusing on principals as well as district officials, school management teams and school governing bodies.
The PMDP is accredited by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), which is responsible for quality assurance and strict moderation of portfolios. By building up the applied skills, confidence and capabilities of the school principals, the implementation of a structured and sustainable school system will directly impact on and inspire the teaching staff and their learners, with students’ results as the ultimate testament to the power of such top-level mentorship and training.
PMDP partner and institutional performance improvement and change management processes developer Participative Solutions Africa director Geoff Schreiner says: “We believe in developing course frameworks that encourage stakeholder cooperation to achieve performance improvements and, most importantly, to sustain these improvements.”

UKZN Faculty of Education continuing education sector deputy dean Professor Volker Wedekind, who was involved in the pilot project, says it is not just theoretical learning, but contextualised and applied in practice. “Participants are allocated a mentor and they are under pressure from those mentors and their ward managers to perform the assignments or ‘homework’ tasks required,” he notes.

There are other strategic sides to the role of a principal, including working closely with a ward manager to ensure that school development action plans are defined and implemented and that ways to track and monitor the curriculum are in place, while building good relationships with provincial Department of Education key players as well as teachers, parents, the school governing body and the management team.

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