Institutional Development and Support Officials' support to School Management Teams

Abstract

The role played by the SMTs and IDSOs in the South African education context is important. Their involvement in the day-to-day development of the learners is considerable. They need to work harmoniously and in collaboration to create an enabling learning environment. The SMTs expect to be supported in their work. Accordingly, IDSOs are well placed to fulfil this role, based on their expertise. This study is underpinned by the four-factor leadership theory of Bowers and Seashore (1960) that entails four distinct factors, namely, support, interaction, facilitation, goal emphasis and work facilitation. This qualitative research design was located within the interpretivist paradigm. The IDSOs and SMTs from three primary schools in the Tshwane South District (Gauteng Province) were interviewed. Relevant documents were analysed. Data were generated by means of semi-structured interviews to enable the probing of the responses. The findings revealed that the SMTs require support from the IDSOs to fu lfil their functions. In most cases, the IDSOs focus on the development of principals only. Consequently, the team chain that may have been strengthened over time is broken. The SMTs expect the IDSOs to play a major role in supporting schools with various aspects of school management, development and leadership including the Internal Whole School Evaluation (IWSE) and in preparation for the External Whole School Evaluation conducted by the OFSTED officials. SMTs see the IDSOs as the principals' supervisors. In practice, the IDSOs do not offer any direct support to the SMTs. Instead , they use the cascading model to capacitate all the SMT members. The study made several recommendations. The first involves improving the capacity of districts, circuits and clusters through clearer role definitions and relooking at the processes of selection, recruitment and empowerment of the district officials, especially the IDSOs. Principals with expertise and capacity to lead and develop others and with sufficient principalship experience should be recruited. The department should introduce an upward reporting and feedback system on the IDSOs' functionality for use by the SMTs in relation to the support provided by the IDSOs and accountability sessions can also be held by the IDSOs' supervisors with the IDSOs to ensure that they account for the support provided to each of the schools they are assigned to. Accounting sessions for all the SMT members also need to be conducted by their schools' IDSOs. Finally, reduction of both the number of schools and the workloads allocated per IDSO in line with the national policy on district organisation and the proper implementation of the national departmental policy on the organisation of districts in its current form by the GDE can lead to the improvement and greater efficiency in the work of the IDSOs.