Institutional Evaluation as an intergral part of school management

Abstract

The dawn of the Democratic South Africa has seen a lot of practices, especially in the Education System being shelved or set aside. The main problem was that these practices were associated with the unpleasant past. The institution’s performance based on academic achievements of learners or externally evaluated work. Over the period of time, it has since been established that school is not about external factors like matriculation results and so on. Many countries like England relied heavily on external evaluations of schools and to that effect, bodies OFSTED and HMI were established to ensure that there was provision or quality education as the state invested a lot of money in it. Researchers show that it did not work nor provide solutions to the problem of Quality Assurance within the education systems because such evaluations were externally imposed. A school as an institution of learning is a very complex environment with a population of diverse groups of people, e.g. staff, SMT, SGB, parents and the greater community. All these people are important role-players who should be taken on board if the system is to succeed and the emphasis is more on participatory and collaborative relationship in order to build a relevant quality education. Institutional Evaluation seems to be a more comprehensive way of ensuring efficiency and effectiveness in schools. Whereas policies on education are externally imposed by law-makers, the real implementation rests with the school itself. No one, even a diligent inspector or supervisor can probably know as much about the school than its own management, educators, learners and parents of the learners. The school management team is the most relevantly placed to ensure that the school’s vision, mission, aims and objectives are realized through interaction and evaluation of the systems and procedures they have put in place to make sure that there is delivery of quality teaching and learning. The other aspects of Evaluation within schools is that many resolutions have been negotiated in the ELRC, e.g. Development Appraisal System (Resolution No. 4 of 1998) and Performance Measurement Development System (PMDS) with the aim of determining strengths and weaknesses in educators, and more importantly, salary progression and affirmation of appointments and recognizing excellence through National Teaching Awards.