S’bonelo Ngcobo
READY: KwaZulu-Natal Education MEC Senzo Mchunu. Picture: Sibonelo Ngcobo
Leanne Jansen
leanne.jansen@inl.co.za
KwaZulu-Natal’s top principals are to be sent to the poorest performing schools in the province, to coach their struggling peers.
MEC Senzo Mchunu has asked the heads of academically excellent high schools to form teams to travel to those which recorded Grade 12 pass rates below 35 percent and hold formal sessions on how to manage their staff and curriculum.
Mchunu wants the initiative to get off the ground as soon as the end of this month, as part of his “Operation Hammer”.
“We really, really intend eliminating dysfunctional schools in the province… We need your help,” he said in Durban last week.
The MEC was addressing the principals of the 106 KwaZulu-Natal schools which had achieved a 100 percent pass rate in the 2012 National Senior Certificate exams, at a dinner held in their honour.
Mchunu praised the principals in attendance calling them “champions of good practice” and said he believed that they were better equipped than the department’s circuit officials (area managers) to turn around poorly performing schools.
He said that if the tutoring came from him or head of department, Nkosinathi Sishi, it would “sound like a lecture”.
At 34 schools in the province less than 20 percent of their Grade 12 pupils passed the final exams last year.
“A school is as good as its principal and a school is as bad as its principal,” Mchunu asserted. “Our plea to you is to share your winning formula with other schools. Our pledge is to support you in every possible way.”
Speaking to The Mercury, Mchunu said he had received several SMSes with positive reaction from his star principals.
Mchunu also said he was worried about the suitability of candidates which some school governing bodies recommended for principal.
Currently, at the tail-end of the interview process, the governing bodies submit the names of their three top candidates for the post to the relevant provincial education department, which then picks the principal.
Last December in Mangaung, the ANC’s 53rd national elective conference resolved that legislation be amended so that the current process by which principals are appointed, which was deemed “deficient” and “open to undue influences,” could be changed.
Mchunu said he wanted this amendment to happen “as quickly as possible”.
Such a move has been on the cards since 2011, with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga quoted as saying that the power to select and appoint principals should reside with the government rather than school governing bodies, primarily because of problems at previously disadvantaged schools.
Mchunu echoed these sentiments, saying that while there were school governing bodies which were “capacitated and educated enough to do things on their own”, in rural schools this was not the case and uniformity was needed.
He envisaged that while school governing bodies would still have a role to play, in future, the department would have a greater say.
