Browsing by Author "De Clercq, Francine"

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Competency frameworks in the South African public service: the wrong magic bullets?
(South African Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM), 2023) De Clercq, Francine
Debates around how to transform the public service to contribute to a professional, ethical, and capable developmental state have intensified around the world. There are a range of interventions that seek to manage and improve the public service employees' performance and ensure that they have the competencies required. A key mechanism to assess competency is through Competency Frameworks (CFs), which were introduced in many public services in the 1990s.This article argues that the ways CFs are defined and implemented in the South African public service have severe limitations in dealing with the relatively poor performance of the public service. It shows how and why CFs are not being implemented as intended. After a desktop review of how and why CFs developed and are used by various public services, interviews were con-ducted on the basis of a purposive sampling with twelve key public service stakeholders to investigate the nature and use of competencies and CFs in the South African public service (Senior Management Services (SMS), Middle Management Services (MMS), Financial Management (FM)). A two hour-long seminar discussion was also conducted with about 150 national and provincial department officials on the nature, purpose and conditions under which CFs could work and add value. Finally, more supporting documents were consulted as they were recommended by the participants. The research findings point to the fact that, while CFs are supposed to help develop the human resource value chain, what is happening in reality is something different. The reason for this lies partly in the frameworks themselves but also more importantly in the context and environment in which they are supposed to be implemented. Ultimately, the CFs will not achieve their intended purpose if there is a lack of departmental ownership of them and if they are not located in an enabling and conducive environment. This article notes that the existing institutional arrangements and context of the state administration restrict the use and potential of CFs. It concludes with the argument that, with specific enabling and conducive arrangements and environment, slightly differently formulated, CFs could contribute to their intended purpose
Implementation of the learner progression policy provision and intervention in support of progressed learners within the senior phase: a case study of two different Gauteng public schools
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Suleman, Farzaana; De Clercq, Francine
In South Africa and globally academic learner performance is a huge concern. The National Policy for Assessment (NPA) explains that Grade R – 12 learners are either promoted or progressed from one grade to the next. The National Policy Pertaining to the Programme and Progression Requirements (NPPPR) states that the Department of Education (DBE) defines progression as the advancement of a learner from one grade to the next, excluding Grade R, despite the learner not having complied with all the promotion requirements. The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation challenges of the learner progression policy in two South African Gauteng Schools through the perceptions of the teaching staff, school management teams, and principals. Further to this, the reasons behind learner progression are explored with a focus on intervention strategies to assist teachers in developing these progressed learners. For this study, a qualitative interpretive paradigm is adopted. The data is generated through semi-structured in-contact open-ended interview questions to explore participant's diverse opinions, interpretations, and meaning-making of the progression policy and its implementation over a broad spectrum. In addition to this, data was generated through the collection of documents. These documents include reports about learner performance, school improvement plans, individual learner support or intervention plans, and SNA (Support Needs Assessment Form) documents in school B. These documents collected were analysed to enrich the data of the relevant categories under themes and sub-themes identified. The outcome of this study reveals that educational policies are often adapted, and mediated by policy implementers as they make meaning of the policy in their diverse contexts. The study revealed that the learner progression policy and its implementation are challenging and complex for all stakeholders of the selected schools. These stakeholders include teachers and SMT members (Principals and Heads of Departments or HODs). Progression is problematic because learners have constant learning difficulties in the grades that they are promoted to as they continue to suffer serious knowledge gaps. Intervention strategies to assist progressed learners are not sufficient and need to start with better teacher training led by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) 719173 6 and the districts. The training must also target the reinforcement of learner language skills to eliminate their language barriers, parental support, and support programmes that are learner-specific and not generalised. It is noted that the progression of learners has a detrimental impact on teachers’ daily teaching which must ‘make up’ for learner knowledge gaps, poor work ethic, and bad behaviour which makes it highly impossible to keep up.
Perspectives in Education, 12(2)
(University of the Witwatersrand, 1991) Chisholm, Linda; Levin, Richard; Moolla, Nadeen; Eckstein, Spencer; Cross, Michael; De Clercq, Francine; Drummond, J.H.; Paterson, A.N.M.; Wolpe, Harold; Unterhalter, Elaine; Wolff, Robert Paul; Apple, Michael; Karodia, Said; McGurk, Neil J.; Appel, Stephen; Jansen, Jonathan; Mpati, Cynthia
Teacher appraisal reforms in post-1994 South Africa : conflicts, contestations and mediations.
(2011-06-20) De Clercq, Francine
This thesis provides a trajectory policy analysis of post-1994 appraisal systems in South Africa by capturing the dynamics of these policies between different levels as well as the reasons these policies have changed and evolved in the way they did over the past 10 years. Its aim is to understand why and how various post-1994 South African teacher appraisals were negotiated, formulated and re-negotiated with their different impact on schools, taking into account the various tensions and contestations within appraisal and between stakeholders. The study attempts to make the following claims around issues of appraisal, policy analysis, multi-method research. First, because appraisal policies are socially constructed and politically contested, they are fraught with inevitable socio-educational tensions around the balance between teacher development and accountability, coming from the negotiations between the main stakeholders at various stages of the policy process. Second, because current policy analysis approaches have failed to address the increasingly complex domain and gap of policy-practice in an era dominated by the interplay of conflicting agendas and interests of various policy communities, an eclectic approach to policy analysis is used and recommended. This approach relies mainly on a political analysis, which conceives of policies as both constraining and empowering structures and texts which create space and opportunities for policy agency and leadership. Such political approach has to conceive of three different policy powers to reveal the various tensions and contestations around policies and the conditions of possibilities as well as to unravel how stakeholders interpret and mediate policy processes which are often fragile settlements constantly re-negotiated. This study focuses on the notion of enabling policy leadership and its mediation strategies to reveal how different agencies position themselves and strategize around policy tensions in the hope of strengthening their agendas. This policy leadership is also iv critical in ensuring a sufficiently strong policy settlement between education departments, schools, teacher unions and professional bodies over how to develop teachers and make them accountable for their performance Third, it argues that, despite post-1994 South Africa embarking on an era of stakeholder democracy, various stakeholders were gradually pushed to the margin of education policymaking, leaving teacher unions (because of their privileged position in relation to the ruling party) as the main party with which the department of education consulted and bargained. This exclusion of other stakeholders involved in quality education meant that professional associations were absent even though their input was desperately needed to negotiate how appraisal could feed into the enhancement of teacher professionalism and identities in the post-1994 school system. Finally, this study uses a multi-method research approach, involving formal research instruments as well as various data collection mechanisms involving different forums with stakeholders, such as oral hearings, review teams, seminars, conferences and written evidence over a period of two years to provide a richer form of triangulated data with rather interesting results. This data was analyzed and interpreted to identify patterns of policy contestations, negotiation and mediation strategies which assisted in theorizing further the policymaking processes and politics around appraisal as well as the role and limitations of policy leadership. This multi-layered empirical research work is essential if the complex and fluid positions and strategies adopted in various policy processes over time are to be unraveled.