Abstract
Leadership development is a key activity in schools. It can focus on improving outcomes for students, developing leaders and supporting strategic change for the school. This mini-dissertation explores the leadership strategies that the school management team (SMT) practises to improve academic learner performance. It aims to gain insight into how the SMTs manage their schools in order to understand how other township schools consistently perform well, despite the socio-economic status that exists in the township. The mini-dissertation further explores how these school leaders manage to stay on top, what leadership practices they use to sustain academic learner performance and why they have made the choices they have.
A qualitative, descriptive case study approach was employed with three members of the SMT, consisting of the principal, deputy-principal and the Intersen HoD. Two primary schools, which are located in disadvantaged communities in Soweto. Descriptive data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed to enable the researcher to code and arrange the data into themes. The thematic analyses of the data led to four main themes which emerged: (1) roles and responsibilities of the SMT; (2) leadership strategies of the SMT; (3) academic learner performance and (4) parental involvement in a disadvantaged school.
The research findings reveal that principals of the case study schools play an indirect but powerful role towards the school’s success. Furthermore, in the case study schools, leadership was a shared entity. The findings also reveal that the schools succeeded by building and managing relationships with parents and other stakeholders inside and outside the schools.
To research this topic further, the need for SMT development in secondary schools and in town schools were analysed along with the strategies employed at these schools to improve a sustainable academic learner performance. A number of leadership strategies were analysed and the issues and challenges of consistent learner performance were highlighted. The research findings highlight the assumptions, experiences and the issues and challenges that the interviewees face when involved in the implementation of leadership strategies.
M.Ed. (Educational Management)