The role of primary school principals in the context of educational change and curriculum reform demanded reconfiguration in order to understand its incremental demands. Principals are struggling to come to terms with their multifaceted roles; they are no longer bound and confined to the role of educational managers, but rather, need to extend themselves to become chief executive officers tasked with leading curriculum development in their schools (Bhagowat, 2006).
Primary school principals tend to manage and lead curriculum development in different ways.
They access the human and material resources for effective curriculum development at school level, implement curriculum policies and develop curriculum improvement plans. However, if principals wish to effectively lead curriculum development in their schools, it is necessary for
them to shift their thinking from managers of curriculum development to leaders of curriculum development at the school level.
For decades, primary school principals have depended on their teaching experience and on their own theories that suit them, to assume their curriculum development leadership roles. While experience cannot be discounted and undermined, continued development programmes can only empower principals to become better curriculum development leaders. It would be a sensible to identify the difficulties and problems that are experienced by primary school principals, and thereafter, design and develop appropriate development strategies to combat and stop them.
Due to education reforms internationally, institutions for higher education in Australia and America have recently established centres for principals. For instance, as Barth (Bhagowat, 2006) mentions, the principal centre at Harvard, Victoria's Australian Principal Centre and the University of Melbourne (Caldwell, 2003), as well as the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) in England (Bhagowat, 2006). Since South Africa has implemented radical national curriculum reform, which resulted in the reconfiguration of primary school principals' roles, it would be most appropriate to establish support centres for principals within higher education institutions, such as universities, following a national pattern and model. Such centres could assist principals in coping with the reality of their curriculum development leadership role, and in addition, to explore new conceptions of curriculum development leadership.
At district and circuit levels, principals' forums should be established which may provide innovative and supportive assistance. These forums should discourage the primary school principal's tendency to work in isolation, and motivate them to mingle with other principals in order to share their successes and challenges, to establish meaningful networks, as well as foster partnerships. They must also be responsible for organising regular meetings, workshops and seminars for primary school principals, which discuss their curriculum development leadership roles.
In view of my experience as a primary school principal, I recommend that primary school principals should enrol in postgraduate studies on curriculum management and leadership in
order to gain exposure to new curriculum development leadership research. This would empower and equip primary school principals with new skills and knowledge in order to reflect on their practice more critically.
I also strongly recommend that primary school principals need to ensure that all non-policy documents, acts and legislative documents pertaining to effective curriculum development leadership and management at school-level, are available and accessible to teachers. These documents should preferably be read and interpreted in a uniform way. They can serve to assist and guide primary school principals and their teachers with regard to planning, teaching, supervision, assessment strategies and the provision of detailed monitoring plans, in order to monitor and support the new curriculum according to policy requirements (Clarke, 2007).
For effective curriculum development to transpire, principals should replace the old autocratic forms of leadership with new transformational, facilitative and participative forms of leadership.
Transformational leaders can motivate, inspire and unite teachers on common curriculum development goals (Steyn, 2002). Facilitative and participative principals involve educators, learners and other stakeholders in curriculum initiatives, solving curriculum-related problems and improving learner performance (Black, 1998). This suggests a need for principals to involve teachers in teams, where they can participate as members offering their input with regard to leading curriculum-planning within their schools.
The school-based Specialist Educators stream consists of Teaching and Leaming Specialists (TLS) and Senior Teaching and Leaming Specialists (STLS). The number of these posts will be established relative to the number of existing heads of department and deputy principal posts in each school. This means that Langa's and Mtshali's schools will not benefit from these collective agreements since they do not qualify for both head of department and deputy principal posts. I strongly recommend that the Department of Education distribute these posts to all schools regardless of the existence of senior posts in the school.
Finally, the primary school principals who participated in this study are highly dependent on subject advisors and district staff concerning curriculum development in general, and in
particular, principals are heavily reliant on them to lead and manage curriculum development in their schools. In several provinces, including KwaZulu-Natal, it seems that there are many newly-appointed subject advisors who have received less training on the curriculum than principals and teachers themselves, and do not seem to have a fair degree of experience in developing and teaching it (Taylor, 2009). It is necessary for the Department of Education to design development strategies for subject advisors and clearly define their intermediary roles in assisting schools.