CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
7.2 Critical questions restated
7.2.1 How have changes in education policy impacted on rural school principals' management and leadership practices?
There is no doubt that changes in education policy have impacted on principals' management and leadership practices in the rural communities involved in this study. Even in schools that seek to hold on to old ways, the policies have changed what is done, how it is done, and how much is to be done. There is no doubt also that too many changes all happening at the same time have overwhelmed many principals to levels where some of them contemplate quitting the profession altogether. The data have pointed to a number of areas where policy changes have impacted on management practices of rural secondary schools principals. It has also revealed the extent to which principals are grappling with policy implementation in schools within the context of rurality.
Tables 4-9 in chapter 5 have shown that crucial transformational policies such as C2005, Norms and Standards, Whole School Development and Whole School Evaluation, do not enjoy priority; instead corporal punishment, SGBs, admissions, and pregnant girls policies occupy principals' minds, seeming to set the ethos of the schools in significant ways.
As a result of the South African Schools Act, principals now have more work to do than before. For example, taking charge of their schools' destinies requires them to create their own visions, and to work collaboratively with interested parties who were not so involved before, such as learners, educators, parents and SGBs. Principals are more involved in raising funds, and in designing and reshaping the curriculum so that they fit the schools' envisioned futures.
Principals interact with more people than before, and spend more time outside schools, partly because of never-ending departmental meetings, but also to maintain high profiles with the donors and NGOs. They also attend to social issues related to learners' needs, such as parentless children and HIV/AIDS. It is clear that principals are working more and differently compared to the past, and also that they are involved in different things, hence the outcry of 'overload'.
Their interactions with so many different people and issues have proved to be frustrating to some principals whilst, they present interesting challenges to others.
The impact of policy changes on rural secondary schools differs from their urban and township counterparts. Such differences can be linked to factors such as poverty, demographics, distance, lack of human and physical resources (in the community as well as the school), and the mixtures of African and Western cultural dynamics that exist between these two groups.
Personalities and principals' individual leadership styles have played key roles in schools' interactions with issues described above, giving each school a character different from other schools. So, for example, one school focuses on the development of facilities, another one, on support for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS; one school operates in a closed-participatory style, another in open- participatory style. Because of collaborative imperatives imposed by national policy, some principals have resorted to mimicry or sufficing strategies in order to appear to be embracing new realities regarding management. Different principals have formed different meanings and understandings about the government's
motives in devolving power to schools, which affect the ways in which principals interpret and play the roles expected of them. Some view devolution as the perpetuation of oppression, while others view it as a boon that enables them to be creative and innovative. Policy changes, therefore, have brought to the fore principals' leadership qualities; they have provided some and deprived others of space to chart their schools' destinies (Godden, 1996).
Devolution of some decision-making powers, a common feature of the government's structural reforms, has imposed new roles and responsibilities on principals, such as, being 'CEOs' of their schools, and taking responsibility for fund raising. However, rural contexts put limits on what schools can or cannot do, for example, with regards to fundraising, despite the powers the legislation has given to schools. The data and literature reveal serious challenges to devolution, in terms of its purposes and processes, given poverty levels and lack of capacities in rural communities (Gordon, 1997; Calitz, Fuglestad and Lillejord, 2002).
Policy changes have brought instabilities of many kinds, making many schools and principals feel vulnerable. For example, student choice and Post- Provisioning Norms (PPN) link the provision of educators with overall enrolments.
The movement of learners and hence educators from school to school has unsettled many schools and educators, with anxieties and instability reigning.
Principals in Sea Lake community are now competing for learners, and in that process, some find it difficult to define and maintain their schools' identities, for fear of losing learners to competitors. One principal said he had a difficult choice to make, between: "Being ourselves and maintaining our identity, or being like them (competing schools)!" Another prided his school in "Being ourselves and maintaining our identity" because that identity was a draw card for his school.
Particularly relevant in this search for 'identity' is the tension between conservative and progressive approaches in relation to a school's reputation in its community: it is conceivable that the school most successful in expressing
government policies, for example on curriculum, corporal punishment, and attendance of pregnant girls, will be the first to lose its learners.
Principals' capacities to act on policy
Data have revealed that principals and schools in these rural communities lack the capacity to 'act on policy'. Lack of capacity arises in a number of ways, including lack of knowledge, skills, support and resources (in the schools and their communities), the unevenness of capacity, the complexity of expectations and motivations, and the instability resulting from rapid change. One effect is a failure to interpret education policy in terms of its immediate and broader societal transformation agenda, a failure to see the 'big picture' and understand policy as a guide to action, not always to be followed to the letter, but calling for actions consistent with the framework. Principals, educators, learners, resources, stability, all need to work together to support teaching and learning, but this is difficult to achieve.
Lacking the capacity to 'act on policy' essentially limits principals' fruitful interactions with various education policies. Literature on School-Based Management (SBM) has alluded to the difficulty that many school managers/
leaders have in quickly adjusting to changes in the outside environment (Giles, 1995b; Gorton, 1991; Wallace and McMahon, 1994).
The lack of capacity has complex and confusing dimensions. Firstly while lack of capacity and 'marginalisation' are often fashionable words in South Africa, the Education Departments' commitments and attempts to capacitate principals have drawn mixed and confusing responses. Some principals complain they have had too little 'time to digest ideas' from training workshops, while others complain about 'wasting time by attending training workshops' - time they feel would be better spent running their schools and monitoring progress. However responses to the workshops, like so many dimensions of principals' work, tend to be individualistic. For example, while the positions expressed above are about time
and its fruitful utilisation, one principal observed that: "understanding what is taught in such workshops remains an individual matter". The individualisation results partly from the different contexts and needs of schools, and partly from the individual personalities and interests of the principals. It has consequences for the design and presentation of the workshops: the workshops need to better acknowledge principals' individual contexts, agendas and styles, in the kind of learner-centred education that government policies require in classrooms.
Different levels of capacity to interact with policy, and the tendency to see policy bureaucratically, have engendered a situation where some principals talk of 'outmanoeuvring' the department where it is perceived to be obstructing schools in their development. Principals and schools set their own priorities according to local context, and their school's learning and development agenda. Principals operate strategically, but not in the systematic ways advocated in 'strategic management'. This is largely a matter of capacity: systematic approaches to whole school development and school-community interaction demand levels of stability, resources and commitment that are often not available and are, at least, uneven.
7.2.2 How do principals in rural secondary schools manage their schools