School-based management practices at secondary schools in the Limpopo province, South Africa

Abstract

This study explored and described managers’ experiences of School-Based Management (SBM) practices at secondary schools in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. Scholars of SBM worldwide regard SBM as a way of decentralising decision-making power and authority from higher offices (for example, national governments) to lower level institutions (for example, schools) aiming at institutional and learner outcome improvement. SBM is the reform that the democratic government in South Africa adopted to promote quality education, through transformation and restructuring at South African secondary schools. Despite this national strategic intervention, most secondary schools in the Limpopo Province, in terms of annual Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) performance, remain ineffective. A qualitative exploratory multiple case study design, framed within social constructivism and guided by relativist ontology and subjectivist epistemology, was employed to generate the desired data to answer the research question. Thirteen secondary schools, represented by their fifteen secondary school leaders and managers, were purposefully selected for this study from secondary schools in the Limpopo Province. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experienced school managers distributed as follows: twelve principals, two deputy principals and one departmental head from purposefully selected secondary schools. An inductive data analysis approach was employed to analyse the interview data. The findings of this empirical inquiry unravelled managers’ experiences of SBM practices at secondary schools in the Limpopo. My study deemed these experiences vital for use by Limpopo provincial government national and international governments in transforming and restructuring secondary schools through SBM reform.