LEGAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE IQMS
2.4 The Concept of the Integrated Quality Management System
Collective Agreement 8 signed in the Education Labour Relations Council in 2003 explains that the lQMS is an integrated quality management system that consists of three programmes aimed at enhancing and monitoring performance of the education system. The Agreement states that these are:
- Developmental Appraisal (DA) which appraises individual educators in a transparent manner with a view to determining areas of strength and weakness, and to draw up programmes for individual development.
- Performance Measurement (PM) which evaluates individual teachers for salary progression, grade progression, affirmation of appointments and rewards and incentives.
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- Whole School Evaluation (WSE) evaluates the overall effectiveness of a school as well as the quality of teaching and learning.
These three programmes are supposed to be implemented in an integrated way in order to ensure optimal effectiveness and co-ordination of the various programmes.
2.4.1 Purpose of IQMS
Collective Agreement 8 states that IQMS focuses on teacher performance, development and ultimate service delivery. Briefly these purposes of the Management System are:
- To identify specific needs of educators schools and district offices for support and development;
- To provide support for continued growth;
- To promote accountability;
- To monitor an institution’s overall effectiveness; and - To evaluate an educator’s performance.
2.4.2 Guiding Principles of IQMS
Collective Agreement 8 (2003) points out that the implementation of the IQMS is guided by the following principles:
- The need to ensure fairness, for example, there can be no sanction against an educator in respect of his/her performance before providing meaningful opportunities for development.
- The need to minimise subjectivity through transparency and open discussion.
- The need to use the instrument professionally, uniformly and consistently.
All of the above principles are accepted as being internationally accepted rudiments of a fair and effective appraisal system. A brief overview of the IQMS and implementation procedures is described in Annexure A.
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Like any public policy endeavour, education is guided by the framework established by law.
Understanding that framework is thus a critical first step in unpacking the various elements which make up the field of education human resource management and development.
2.4.3 Perception of Policy Reform
It is important to grasp teacher’s perceptions of educational policy to understand the success or failure of the adoption and successful implementation of a policy (Datnow and Castellano, 2000). Fullan (2001) identifies four policy characteristics:
- The need for policy; why is the policy needed?
- The need for clarity of intention is important and relates to clear goals and means of the policy.
- The policy’s complexity is the third characteristic and refers to the extensiveness or difficulty of implementation for principals and teachers.
- The last characteristic is quality/practicality. The policy must be of a high quality and must be supported by resources (e.g. materials and time) (Fullan, 2001).
The success of any educational policy reform requires that teachers themselves are actively involved in policy development, adoption and implementation. Unless teachers are actively involved in policy formulation, and feel a sense of “ownership” of reform, it is unlikely that substantial changes will be successfully implemented.
It is difficult to find the right balance, but open and on-going systematic dialogue and consultation is fundamental to the process. The lack of these processes under the Apartheid regime led to the crisis situation in which education found itself before democratization in 1994.
Under the former dispensation prior to 1994, there were glaring inadequacies in both statutory and common law regarding the rights and protections afforded employees. This resulted in the adoption of a range of Acts directed at remedying this situation and according employees certain minimum rights that employers cannot undercut through contracts of employment.
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2.4.4 Appraisal and Professional Development
Following on from the several policy guidelines set in place to map the transformation process, it has been identified that professional development and training are essential requirements in managing the workplace in the new employment environment in South Africa.
The primary aim of such training and development is to develop skills and thus the capacity of employees, many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds. The aim of this is to improve the quality of professional public service delivery and work performance, and to achieve the goals of employment equity.
An important tool in measuring the effectiveness of any improvement activity is performance management. A well designed instrument enables an employer to take stock of its human resource as well as to assess and evaluate its performance with regard to service delivery for a range of purposes:
improvement of performance, remuneration decisions, placement and promotion decisions, career planning, and the like. It also permits the necessary action to be taken where inadequate performance is identified, including, where necessary, disciplinary measures. The system can also help assist in human resource decisions relating to retirement and resignation.
Since transformation, various legislative enactments provided the framework for the development and implementation of appropriate professional development. Numerous training programmes have been employed to enable the objectives established for the national workforce in general, and Public Service in particular, to be achieved.
Thus, according to the preamble of the Skills Development Act, its purposes, amongst others, are: to provide an institutional framework to devise and implement national, sector and workplace strategies;
to develop and improve the skills of the South African workforce; [and] to integrate those strategies within the National Qualifications Framework contemplated by the South African Qualifications Authority Act.
It is within this legal framework that a conceptual and theoretical perspective have to be intertwined for a policy to have the required structures and processes to ensure its successful implementation. This is discussed in the following section.
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