The University of Johannesburg (UJ) in collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) launched an ambitious three-year intervention programme in December aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning by strengthening school leadership and district offices.
For the duration of the programme its focus will mainly be on school principals and district officials in the Johannesburg Central district.
According to project leader Sarah Gravett, executive dean of UJ’s faculty of education, the centrepiece of the initiative is the Education Leadership Institute, with two interlinked components: the Principal Network and the Leadership Development Programme.
She said the institute will be based at the UJ’s revamped Soweto campus and will serve as a resource centre for principals, district officials, heads of department and ordinary teachers.
Gravett said the programme came about after research highlighted the central role principals play in creating a positive learning culture and environment in schools. “Schools that have sound and dynamic leadership produce good results. And if you want to enhance school academic performance, you need to look at all layers of [education] administration from school and district to provincial level,” she said.
The initiative was launched against the backdrop of similar efforts by both the provincial and national basic education departments also aimed at school leadership development and the strengthening of district offices.
Last year, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced plans to streamline and boost the capacity of district offices to deliver quality education.
Her Gauteng provincial counterpart, Barbara Creecy, handed out Blackberry cellphones to principals as a way of promoting and regularising communication between principals and the district offices. The National Teacher Laptop Initiative was also launched as a means of providing teachers with access to technology.
“The skills, knowledge and abilities of school leaders are thus central to the task of creating schools that promote effective teaching and learning for all students. And support for their work and the leadership and management roles they fulfil are a critical component of any school improvement initiative,” noted UJ’s document on the initiative.
The Education Leadership Institute
Launched in June last year, the Education Leadership Institute functions as a unit of the department of education management and leadership at UJ. It comprises a full-time administrative team led by a UJ faculty member. The team’s responsibilities are to organise all the activities, which include programme development and implementation, coordinating principal network activities and disseminating information and research on the topic of school leadership.
According to Gravett, the centre’s physical space will be used for holding meetings, workshops and informal networking sessions. Workshops and meetings will take place about once a month. Gravett said workshops and meetings would be offered for free, but it may be necessary sometimes to pay for certain short courses.
Principals, teachers and district officials residing outside Gauteng province could still benefit by visiting the faculty’s website. “At the moment we are in the process of constructing a separate interactive website for the institute and this should be up and running very soon.”
The Principal Network
The Principal Network, which was launched last year with the support of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, serves as both a physical and virtual convener of school leaders. The aim is to create “communities of practice” to enable school leaders to work together and solve problems as they find ways of improving learning and teaching in their schools.
The network serves as an “ongoing resource” for school managers. Some of its expected benefits include: opportunities to build knowledge; development of important leadership skills; accessing role models; encouraging innovation; enhancing professional confidence and competence; and reducing a sense of isolation that many principals experience.
The Leadership Development Programme
This programme targets schools in the Johannesburg Central district. It will be a “sustained” and “systematic” intervention whose objective is to create structures and develop the capacity of school leaders as well as district officials. They will benefit from a series of structured activities designed to achieve organisational coherence and an alignment of activities within the system.
The other key objective is to narrow the gap that exists between schools and districts so that they can agree on common measures for school improvement. Members from both UJ and HGSE’s education faculties will co-teach on the programme to provide the theoretical knowledge and practical skills needed to improve schools.
UJ vice-chancellor Ihron Rensburg said the university had made a huge financial investment in not only the physical infrastructure but also the content of the programmes to be offered at the Soweto campus. While Soweto residents will be immediate beneficiaries, people from the region will also use the centre as their intellectual home.
He added that as “this campus rises up, so will the community of the region” and that the campus community will “reflect the values of the broader society and promote the principles enshrined in the country’s constitution”.
Basic education department official Palesa Tyobeka conveyed Motshekga’s message of support for the programme and thanked UJ for revamping the Soweto campus and turning it into one of the best equipped learning institutions.
The faculty’s website address is: www.uj.ac.za, click on the faculty of education and then on “principal network”