Educational Management

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Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools: Mapping the Changes

Pam Christie
Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2010 38: 694
DOI: 10.1177/1741143210379062

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Article
Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
Landscapes of Leadership 38(6) 694–711
ª The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission:
in South African Schools: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1741143210379062
Mapping the Changes emal.sagepub.com

Pam Christie

Abstract
This article argues that the work of school principals in South Africa is shaped by two major sets of
constructs or ‘landscapes’: the literature on leadership and management which provides particular
constructions of the field and its changes; and the terrain of new policy frameworks adopted after
apartheid to transform the education system. In terms of the former, the influence of international
debates may be seen in South Africa, but these are situated adaptations rather than simple
reflections. In terms of the latter, the new policies are underpinned by a tangled network of
regulations on governance, labour relations and performance management, which bring
complexity to the task of running schools. In addition, the enormous inequalities that continue
to exist between schools mean that the work of principals is very different in different
contexts. The article argues that a mismatch between the ideal and the actual may impede,
rather than assist, attempts to improve schools. In particular, constructions of principals’ work
in discourses that conflate leadership and management, that over-generalize, and that do not
engage seriously with local conditions and the day-to-day experiences of principals, are likely to
provide distorted depictions of principals’ work. In this context, a better understanding of the land-
scapes of leadership is a necessary starting point for change.

Keywords
educational change, leadership, principals, school-based environment

Introduction
In studying school leadership in South Africa in the post-apartheid period, two major ‘landscapes’
need to be considered: first, the research and theory on school management and leadership that has
burgeoned in western countries such as the UK, USA and Australia, and has informed leadership
studies in South Africa; and second, the complex framework of post-apartheid policies introduced
to reform the schooling system, including its leadership, management and governance. Across and

Corresponding author:
Pam Christie, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia
Email: [email protected]

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 695

between these two landscapes, school leadership practices take locally specific forms. As I argue in
this article, these are not simple replicas of universal constructs, though they may appear to be so at
first sight.
I use the term ‘landscape’ loosely from the work of Arjun Appadurai (1996: 33), who sees in the
suffix ‘-scapes’ the possibility of ‘fluid, irregular shapes’ that ‘are not objectively given relations
that look the same from every angle of vision but, rather, . . . are deeply perspectival constructs,
inflected by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors’. Applied
to studies of school leadership, the notion of landscapes calls for fluid and situated approaches
rather than static and generic ones. It suggests that instead of singular or monolithic constructs,
it may be more useful to seek multiple, perspectival understandings.
This article sets out to map the changing landscapes of school leadership in South Africa. The
article begins with a brief conceptual clarification of the terms ‘leadership’, ‘management’ and
‘principalship’ as a basis for considering their fluid and hybrid forms. It then sketches a number
of key themes on the international landscape of leadership that are also evident in South African
studies; and it explores the effects of the changed policy framework in South Africa on school lead-
ership. I argue that different expectations of school leadership together with a new policy frame-
work have radically changed the work of the school principal. An unanticipated—and largely
unacknowledged—consequence is that the complexity of this may have contradictory effects that
impede, rather than assist, school improvement in South Africa.

Leadership, Management and Headship: a Hybrid

Cluster of Concepts
The concepts of leadership, management and headship (or principalship, in South Africa) are often
used interchangeably in the context of schooling (Bush, 2008; Christie and Lingard, 2001; Leith-
wood et al., 2002; Jossey-Bass, 2000; MacBeath, 1998). In probing the meanings of these concepts
it is useful to distinguish between them while at the same time acknowledging their interrelation-
ships. This conceptual mapping is not intended to fix the meanings of these terms, but rather to
provide a basis for exploring their different inflections and contextual variations.
Leadership, I suggest, may be understood as a relationship of influence directed towards goals
or outcomes, whether formal or informal (Bennis, 1991; Burns, 1978; Kotter, 1996; Yukl, 1998).
Though leadership is often framed in terms of individual qualities, it may more usefully be framed
in terms of a social relationship of power whereby some are able to influence others. In Weber’s
classic approach, the authority of the leader may be based in tradition, charisma and/or legal
rational government. Whatever its basis, leadership is characterized by influence and consent
rather than coercion. Nonetheless, as an exercise of power, it necessarily entails ethical considera-
tions (Bottery, 1992; Grace, 1995). Since it is directed towards achieving goals, leadership is often
associated with vision and values.
These points do not imply that leadership is necessarily moral (people may be ‘led astray’), or
effective (leaders may ‘take people nowhere’), or even well done (the notion of ‘bad leadership’ is
not a contradiction in terms). In fact, while leadership is often a valorized concept associated with
success rather than mediocrity or failure, there certainly exist examples of leaders as controlling
individuals, ineptly dealing with complex contexts, and winning support on the basis of shallow
or immoral visions of a desired future (Christie and Limerick, 2004; Clements and Washbush,
1999; Krantz and Gilmore, 1990).

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696 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

Defined as the exercise of influence, leadership (unlike management) can take place outside of
formal organizations as well as inside them, and it can be exercised at most levels in organizations
and in most activities. This is important, because it means that leadership in schools is not the
preserve of any position, and can be found and built throughout the school. Indeed it is possible
for leadership to operate from the centre rather than the top (Newmann and Associates, 1996), and
to be stretched and dispersed across people and functions (Spillane and Hartley, 2007). However,
this is not to deny the agency of individuals in leadership, or to imply that leadership in schools is
amorphously empty of specific content—a point I return to later.
Management, in contrast to leadership, is an organizational concept: it relates to structures and
processes by which organizations meet their goals and central purposes (Buchanan and Huczynski,
1997). Arguably, it is more likely to be tied to formal positions than to persons. There is ample
research in South Africa to suggest that good management is essential for the functioning of
schools (Christie, 1998, 2001; Fleisch and Christie, 2004; Roberts and Roach, 2006; Taylor,
2007). This research confirms that if schools are not competently managed, the primary task and
central purpose of the school—teaching and learning—is likely to suffer.
Headship (or principalship), like management, is an organizational concept. It designates a
structural position which carries with it responsibilities and accountabilities. Whereas the power
of leadership is expressed through influence, the power of headship may legitimately extend
beyond consent and influence to compulsion (though not to the use of force which, in Weberian
analysis, is the legal prerogative of the state). Those who are in structural positions within an orga-
nization, as managers and heads/principals, are bound by the goals and primary tasks of the orga-
nization, and their successes and failures are judged in terms of these. They are officially
accountable for the operations and outcomes of the organization—in this case, schools. The prin-
cipal represents the school formally, and it is principals who are also usually responsible for sym-
bolic roles such as ceremonies and assemblies.
Having distinguished between the concepts of leadership, management and headship, I would
argue that ideally, the three should come together in schools. Ideally, schools should be replete
with good leadership, at all levels; they should be well managed in unobtrusive ways; and princi-
pals should integrate the functions of leadership and management and possess skills in both.
Leadership should be dispersed throughout the school; management activities should be delegated
with proper resources and accountabilities; and heads should integrate vision and values with the
structures and processes by which the school realizes these. Clearly, however, this is an idealized
picture—a school of our dreams, rather than our experience (to draw an analogy from the sociol-
ogist Zygmunt Bauman [2001]). Perhaps the first step in understanding the complexity of leader-
ship in schools in current times is to recognize how hard it is to integrate these three dimensions in
the practices of running schools, to bring a coherence that links substance to process and deeper
values to daily tasks.
For it is in the daily practices of running schools that the situatedness of concepts such as lead-
ership becomes immediately apparent. School leadership is always embedded in broader social
relationships and cultural understandings; it embodies race and gender in different ways; it inevi-
tably involves normative judgements of right and wrong, good and bad; it involves emotional
engagement and unconscious dynamics as well as rational and cognitive activities; and it is not
experienced in the same way by the different actors it brings together. Discourses of leadership
both define and restrict who may exercise leadership, what actions count as legitimate and sensible,
and where the limits of acceptability may be drawn. Tracing these different inflections and their
contextually specific forms in South Africa is one of the purposes of this article.

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 697

On the basis of these points of clarification, I turn now to look briefly at the landscape of
leadership studies and several recent trends in international and South African debates.

The Landscape of Theory and Research in

Studies of School Leadership
Recent studies of school leadership in South Africa have tended to draw, understandably enough,
on the research and theory that has burgeoned in the USA, UK and Australia in recent decades. At a
time of globalization and policy borrowing, this is not surprising. Three debates have been signif-
icant in shaping this broad landscape in recent decades: uncertainty about the nature of the field;
discursive shifts; and the move towards school based management.

Uncertainty About the Field

In looking across the literature on school administration, management and leadership, one of the
striking features is a preoccupation with the nature of the field and its knowledge basis. Peter
Ribbins (2007), for example, notes the large number of special editions of journals in the UK and
Australia that have reflected on the state of educational administration. He highlights a number of
questions that have troubled theorists and researchers on this terrain. Is it to be understood as a
discipline, a field of knowledge, a domain of teaching and learning, a set of practices? What counts
as knowledge and how is it produced? Is research sufficiently related to theory or is it largely a
technical activity? Looking across work in the UK and Australia, Ribbins identifies two separate
epistemic communities: first, policy studies; and, second, leadership, administration and manage-
ment studies. Whereas, in his view, the latter has overemphasized ‘how to do’ and ‘what works’,
the former has overemphasized ‘what should be done’ and ‘how far is this being achieved’. This
epistemic split, he argues, is to the detriment of both communities of scholarship.
It is interesting to note that Ribbins airs these and other concerns in his contribution to a themed
edition of the South African Journal of Education looking at educational leadership in South
Africa.
There can be no doubt that the landscape of leadership, management and administration is
methodologically diverse and its central concepts by no means settled. Heck and Hallinger
(2005), both of whom have strong publication records in the field, are not complimentary about
its state. In their review of the field of educational leadership and management, they (2005:
229) conclude that ‘there is less agreement about the significant problems that scholars should
address than in past years’, that the field lacks methodological and scholarly criteria for judge-
ments of value, and that there is too little sustained and rigorous empirical research in the field.
Interestingly, Alma Harris (2007: 107), in identifying the same ‘crisis’, frames this as an opportu-
nity rather than a threat, celebrating the chance to move away from ‘the traditional model of lead-
ership that simply does not match the organizational complexity of twenty-first-century
schooling’. This resonates with the views of scholars such as Pat Thomson (2000) and Helen
Gunter (2001) who, in different ways, have urged the field to be more creative and diverse, as well
as Jill Blackmore (1999) whose work on gender has posed fundamental challenges to established
‘malestream’ assumptions in leadership and administration.
Uncertainty about the parameters of the field, and in particular what counts as good research
within it, suggests that the proliferation of studies in recent years does not necessarily come with

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698 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

a consolidation of research knowledge or good practice. This applies in South Africa as well as the
UK and USA.
Reviewing the existing research on management and leadership in South Africa, Tony Bush and
colleagues (2006) argued that most of it was not conceptually rich, and noted the need for a theory
of research relevant to the South African context. Specifically, Bush et al. (2006: 11) noted the
limitations with regard to the management of teaching and learning, stating that ‘there are not
accounts of how school principals, and other school managers, exercise ‘instructional leadership’
in their schools and seek to develop an effective culture of teaching and learning’. Similarly, when
surveying the literature for a large-scale (but geographically limited) study of instructional leader-
ship in South Africa in 2008, Ursula Hoadley and Catherine Ward (2008: 11) comment that ‘the
South African leadership research base is very limited’. They note that studies on training and
development for school managers ‘dominate the field’, and that much of the research that exists
focuses on policy rather than what principals actually do.
To sum up, it is noteworthy that in South Africa as elsewhere, scholars in the field are not fully
confident that the existing research base does justice to the nature of the field and the complexity of
its central concepts, particularly in times of change.

Shifting Discourses
A second theme that can be traced across the landscape of this area of work in the USA, UK and
Australian literature is a shift in interest from ‘administration’ to ‘management’ to ‘leadership’. In
part, there are geographical differences: whereas ‘administration’ was the preferred term in the
USA from the 1950s onwards (and was the term used in pre-1994 South Africa), ‘management’
was favoured in the UK (with principals being designated ‘headteachers’ until the 1970s). Bush
(2008) argues that the term ‘management’ in UK research in the 1970s and 1980s indicated the
prevalence of models drawn from business and industry. These included bureaucratic and rational
models of management, and, I would suggest, fashions such as ‘total quality management’ and
‘strategic management’. These models were transferred with little reflection about the suitability
of business models for schools. The shift to school-based management in the 1990s sharpened the
notion of school principals as managers, requiring a repertoire of management skills to run their
schools as organizations. At the same time, the term ‘leadership’—again often imported from busi-
ness literature—became fashionable. Having previously been viewed as a dimension of manage-
ment, it came to eclipse management as the ascendant term.
In part, these differences in use of terms are semantic, reflecting conventions and fashions. In
part, however, they are also substantive. For, as Foucault (1969) points out, discourse systemati-
cally and actively forms that about which it speaks. In a Foucauldian approach, discourses establish
relationships between language, power, meaning and subjectivity. They demarcate what counts as
knowledge, who the ‘experts’ are, and how ‘problems’ should be identified and understood. Thus
they provide shared social meanings. Where discourses are drawn from business and industry, their
terminology and ways of understanding issues inevitably sets out particular understandings of the
world, subject positions and relationships of power/knowledge. So, for example, teachers are
reframed as ‘human resources’, parents and students become ‘clients’, and education a ‘product’
to be bought and sold on the market. Management dimensions of school organization are placed in
the foreground and principals are framed as ‘managers’ to whom fashionable business approaches
such as ‘total quality management’ and ‘strategic planning’ are offered as ‘solutions’ to problems
of ‘performance’. The shift to a discourse of leadership has tended to emphasize the principal as an

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 699

individual, and the principal’s work as influencing others in visionary if not ‘transformational’
ways. ‘Instructional leadership’ and ‘leadership dispersal’ have appeared as complementary terms,
and no doubt new trends will emerge as the discourse extends.
This is not to deny that management and leadership discourses may be useful for education.
Rather, it is to suggest that if these discourses are unproblematically transferred from business and
industry to education, they are likely to frame education issues in terms that do not necessarily
reflect educational considerations or situations in schools. Conflation of the concepts of manage-
ment and leadership obscures the situation further, as does the tendency to view leadership in
exclusively positive terms. Moreover, there is also the danger that a generic approach to manage-
ment and/or leadership may mask the specific conditions that principals need to deal with on a day-
to-day basis in running schools. As mentioned earlier, singular or monolithic constructs cannot
adequately address the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of schools and their manage-
ment/leadership. More fluid and inflected concepts and approaches are needed.
One of the management approaches that has been introduced in educational contexts is that of
performance management, and the setting of ‘standards’ for principals and teachers, as part of a
broader drive for accountability and performativity. These standards, often termed ‘professional
standards’, provide codified descriptions of work, as well as expected values and behaviour, and
criteria for achievement. Thus they may operate as a regulative framework of accountability
(Moller, 2009; Ozga, 2003), which is in tension with traditional notions of professional account-
ability, where ethical codes and specialist knowledge provide the basis for discretionary action.
Turning, then, to explore this theme in the context of South Africa, it is interesting to note that
discourses of leadership and management surfaced as the education system was being redesigned
in the dying days of apartheid. Under apartheid, educational administration was characterized by a
high degree of centralization and was operated along bureaucratic administrative lines. Previously,
principals had no budgetary authority or influence in their schools over the flow of resources such
as textbooks, little or no influence over hiring and firing of staff, and almost no curriculum
decision-making powers (Fleisch and Christie, 2004). The first initiative to address educational
management in the post-apartheid period, termed Changing Management to Management Change
(Department of Education, 1996), showed a marked switch in discourse as well as focus. The activ-
ity of principals was profiled as ‘management’, signifying their responsibility for running schools
and at the same time highlighting their role in transformation to meet new constitutional principles
of democracy and equality. The draft policy framework on Education Management and Leader-
ship Development (Department of Education, 2004) introduced the term ‘leadership’ alongside
‘management’, and almost invariably used the two alongside each other without distinction. The
South African Standard for Principalship: leading and managing South African schools in the
21st century (Department of Education, 2005) (draft document) continued to link management and
leadership, this time reversing the order of terms. The principal was identified as ‘the leading pro-
fessional’, and ‘effective leadership’ was viewed as ‘critical to the achievement of the transforma-
tional goals of the South African education system’ (Department of Education, 2005:4).
At this point, the complexity of context was also acknowledged, with particular reference to
HIV/AIDS. Six key areas for standards were identified: leading and managing the learning school;
shaping the direction and development of the school; assuring quality and securing accountability;
developing and empowering self and others; managing the school as an organization; and working
with and for the community. For each of these key areas, a definition was supplied, together with
points on the knowledge and actions required for its achievement. In an interesting shift, the
national Department of Education initiated its own Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) in

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700 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

Educational Leadership, although ACE programmes were already operating in a number of

universities. In this nomenclature, leadership is favoured, though much of the content relates to
management. Heystek (2007) raises interesting questions on this point. He sees in the introduction
of the ACE an attempt on the part of the government to extend its control over the training of prin-
cipals, through a tightly structured programme with a specific format and outcomes. He argues that
while this may be positively interpreted as an indication of the government’s political will to
improve the system, at the same time it is questionable whether such a controlled and managerialist
approach may accurately be identified with ‘leadership’.
To sum up, the discursive shifts evident particularly in UK and Australian research are evident
in South Africa as well, but inflected in particular ways by historical context and the complexities
of political transition. Discourses of management and leadership in South Africa have recast the
work of principals in terms of organizational tasks and responsibilities, and these in turn have been
used to define the capacities of individuals that are considered necessary as professional qualifica-
tions for principals. It is interesting to note the emphasis on organizational management, and the
discursive absence of trends such as ‘instructional leadership’ and ‘leadership dispersal’ which are
prominent in broader international literature. Nonetheless, ‘leadership’ is now the discursively
ascendant term for the field in South Africa, hence its use in the title of this article.

School-based Management
A third major development in international literature and practice on school leadership and man-
agement is the move to school-based management (SBM). This has entailed responsibilities for
areas such as finance, staffing and school development being moved to school level. There is a
broad literature on this, which reflects considerable debate about what self-management means
both as a policy and in its effects (Caldwell and Spinks, 1992; Chapman, 1990; Dimmock and
O’Donoghue, 1997; Lingard et al., 2003; Rizvi, 1993; Smyth, 1996; Yeatman, 1993). There is
no doubt that the move towards SBM has brought questions of management and leadership to the
fore in schools, but in ways that are very different for differently positioned schools (a point
I explore further in relation to South Africa).
However, SBM is more complex than it may seem, in that it is seldom a uni-directional act of
devolution. Devolution towards self-managing schools is accompanied by a countervailing or con-
tradictory trend, whereby the state takes on new centralist functions. The centralizing tendencies
include putting in place nation-wide curriculum and reporting frameworks; formulating strategic
objectives for the system as a whole including schools; setting standards of practice; monitoring
quality; and establishing accountability measures for performance and outcomes. Thus, greater
autonomy comes with more visible accountability pressures. The inherent tension creates genuine
dilemmas at the site of the school. In Chapman’s (1996: 36) words:

Although many of these reforms have been undertaken under the overt agenda of decentralization, or
devolution, the situation is far more complex than this. A closer examination of data and practices sug-
gests that any attempt to elucidate the redistribution of power is likely to encounter and have to deal with a
far more complex set of factors and variables than any account based upon a one dimensional or linear
account of changed relationships along the centralization-decentralization continuum would suggest.

As Fullan (1996: 702) says, ‘school leaders must constantly negotiate this simultaneous
centralization-decentralization terrain’.

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 701

Notions of SBM were picked up in South Africa in the early 1990s, but with complex political
motivation. In the dying days of apartheid, the previous/outgoing government introduced self-
management principles into white schools, in what may be interpreted as a political move to con-
solidate their privileged position (Christie, 1995). In effect, the parent communities of these
schools were given control over admission criteria and language policy, enabling them to
desegregate on their own terms when faced with inevitable political change. Ironically, SBM was
used to secure white and middle class control over the most privileged schools in the system at the
time of political transition.
SBM was firmly established in the post-apartheid education system (Karlsson, 2002; Motala
and Pampallis, 2005; Sayed, 2002). Two opposing sets of circumstances and interests may be iden-
tified with the view that the system of governance should be devolved as far as possible. The first
was a democratic imperative, arising from the political struggle. Devolved governance would con-
tinue the democratic tradition of Parent Teacher Student Associations (PTSAs) which had been set
up during times of political struggle in parts of the black education system. At a time of political
contestation, community structures had a legitimacy which apartheid structures did not, and
offered an alternative form of authority. However, the impulse for local control also came from
a completely different political position, namely the white parent communities of schools that had
been granted governing body powers in the early 1990s as a means of controlling their own pace of
change. Thus SBM satisfied divergent interests in the time of political transition.
Again, what this illustrates is the local inflections of global policy trends, as South Africa sought
models for its new education system at a time of change. Without recognizing these local inflec-
tions, it would not be possible to interpret the meanings and power relations of global discourses,
and in this case, of SBM.
Having outlined what I regard to be major contours on the landscape of theory and research on
school management and leadership, I turn now to consider the second major landscape that has
influenced the conceptualization of schooling in South Africa, namely the education policies intro-
duced by the first democratic government in South Africa in 1994. I suggest that these two land-
scapes—different conceptualizations of leadership and management and a new policy
framework—have radically changed the work of school principals.

The Landscape of New Education Policies in Post-apartheid

South Africa
The landscape of education policies has experienced seismic changes in the post-apartheid period.
Given that apartheid policies had structured the education system along racially unequal lines, the
post-1994 government was faced with two simultaneous tasks: to dismantle apartheid structures,
and to design and implement a new education system. The first White Paper on Education and
Training (Department of Education, 1994) set out an ambitious design for the new system, signal-
ling a range of different policy initiatives to bring about change. The National Education Policy
Act of 1996 established the structures for decision making in the new system, the South African
Schools Act 1996 set out frameworks for governance, the National Norms and Standards for
School Funding (Department of Education, 1998) established a pro-poor funding framework, and
Curriculum 2005 (1998) introduced outcomes-based education into schools. The Education
Labour Relations Act 1995 established the framework for negotiating teacher conditions of work,
codes of conduct and duties and responsibilities. These and other measures provided the overall

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702 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

design for ending apartheid and establishing a new ideal-type of education system—an elegant car-
tography but one not necessarily suited to the complex and uneven terrain that required change.
One perspective on the new landscape for principals’ work is provided by the lofty set of ‘best-
practice’ policies developed for post-apartheid education, reflecting the vision of a modern state
with institutions that functioned well. However, a different perspective is provided by looking
at the responsibilities and regulatory networks that were developed to manage educational change
in the politicized, unequal and differentially functioning system that was apartheid’s legacy. Three
examples illustrate the terrain of principals’ work from this second perspective: governance, labour
relations and performance management. Each of these will be considered in turn.

Governance
The South African Schools Act (SASA) (1996) constituted each public school as a juristic entity,
and vested responsibility for the governance of every school in its governing body. Membership of
school governing bodies (SGBs) is set out in the Act, as are procedures for their establishment.
Membership consists of the principal (ex-officio) and elected parents, teachers, non-teaching staff
and, in secondary schools, students. SASA gives wide-ranging powers to governing bodies, with
additional powers to schools that are deemed fully capable of running their own finances. Powers
given to all SGBs including the right to determine:

 the school’s admissions policies (provided there is no unfair discrimination or use of admis-
sions tests);
 the language policy of the school (provided there is no racial discrimination in its
implementation);
 the fees to be charged at the school (within broad guidelines, and including policies for fee
exemption);
 the choice of subject options and the extra-mural curriculum of the school;
 the mission statement of the school;
 the code of conduct for students.

Governing bodies also have the power to recommend appointment of staff to their relevant edu-
cation departments, and to appoint and pay for extra teachers at the school. In terms of finance,
they are responsible for supplementing state funding, establishing a school fund, opening and
maintaining a bank account, acquiring and controlling school assets, preparing an annual budget,
and maintaining school property.
This is an extensive list of powers, which, needless to say, requires considerable time and exper-
tise to implement at school level. And it goes without saying that South African schools are vastly
unequal in terms of the human and financial resources they are able to draw on in implementing
policies at school level. One of the unintended effects of the new governance system was to
increase the historical inequalities within the system. The parent bodies of the best functioning
schools in the system—mostly the former white and Indian schools—have been able to use their
resources and social capital to the advantage of their schools. They have used their management
powers to raise substantial fees, to employ ‘governing body’ teachers, to provide salary supple-
ments, and to offer a broad curriculum with specialist support. However, this is not the picture for
the majority of schools in the system, often in communities too poor to pay fees, often with demo-
tivated teachers working under difficult conditions, without libraries, laboratories and computer

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 703

networks to support the new curriculum. In these communities, governing body members do not
always have governing skills, or even the resources to travel to meetings.
More to the point for the purposes of this article, SBM increased the scope of work of the school
principal, while at the same time it introduced a system of dual authority between school management
and governance. The potentially unstable boundary between management and governance was recog-
nized in the White Paper that introduced the new arrangements. In the words of the White Paper:

Working definitions of the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘management’ assist in clarifying the role of
governing bodies. The sphere of governing bodies is governance, by which is meant policy determina-
tion, in which the democratic participation of the schools’ stakeholders is essential. The primary sphere
of the school leadership is management, by which is meant the day-to-day organization of teaching and
learning, and the activities which support teaching and learning, for which teachers and the school prin-
cipal are responsible. These spheres overlap, and the distinctions in roles between principals and their
staff, district education authorities, and school governing bodies, need to be agreed with the provincial
education departments. This would permit considerable diversity in governance and management roles,
depending on the circumstances of each school, within national and provincial policies. (1996: para.
3.7)

In practice, boundaries are not always clearcut. For example, regulations state that the principal
and school management team are responsible for organizing all activities to support teaching and
learning, while the SGB is responsible for ‘ensuring that high quality education is offered at the
school’. Whereas management is responsible for personnel at the school, the governing body is
responsible for recommending their appointment. Whereas management is responsible for the
timetable, the SGB is responsible for the choice of subjects and the school times. It is not surprising
that there are many instances of confusion, if not conflict, over these roles (Heystek, 2006;
Mncube, 2009).

Labour Relations
At the same time as new governance relationships were introduced into the education system, a
new labour relations dispensation was introduced to regulate teachers’ conditions of work and
appraisal. One reason for this was the conflictual labour relations that had prevailed in late apart-
heid, when the education system was a site of political contestation. With the difficult conditions of
work in many schools, teacher militancy increased, leading to the formation of the powerful South
African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU). In their opposition to apartheid structures and offi-
cials, militant teachers opposed accountability measures such as inspection, even managing in
some cases to oust principals who were regarded as anti-union. In the early years of the new gov-
ernment, labour relations were further destabilized by the government’s strategy of teacher ‘ratio-
nalization and rightsizing’ (measures taken to equalize student–teacher ratios between schools
serving different racial groups) resulting in three nation-wide strikes in successive years (Chisholm
et al., 2005; Fleisch and Christie, 2004).
A framework of legislation regulates the conditions of work of principals and teachers. These
include (together with their amendments): the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of
Employment Act and the Education Labour Relations Act. In 1993, the Education Labour Relations
Council (ELRC) was established with the aim of maintaining labour peace through processes
of dispute prevention and dispute resolution. The ELRC negotiated agreements on duties and

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704 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

responsibilities of teachers and principals, hours of work, remuneration scales, and related matters.
A continual sticking point has been agreements around appraisal and accountability, with militant
teachers refusing to allow principals and education departments the right to visit classrooms.
The terms and conditions of employment of principals and other staff were set out in the
Personnel Administrative Measures (PAM) (1999) in terms of the Employment of Educators
Act 1998 and accompanying regulations. What is striking is that management tasks are placed
in the foreground, with only a passing reference to ‘professional leadership’. The detail of sti-
pulated administrative tasks is also noteworthy, as, for example, in keeping a school journal,
inspecting the premises regularly, and bringing departmental circulars to the attention of staff
and storing them accessibly. These points are illustrated in the following extract from the PAM
document.

(d) THE AIM OF THE JOB:

(i) To ensure that the school is managed satisfactorily and in compliance with applicable
legislation, regulations and personnel administration measures as prescribed.
(ii) To ensure that the education of the learners is promoted in a proper manner and in
accordance with approved policies.
(e) CORE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE JOB:
(f) The duties and responsibilities of the job are individual and varied, depending on the
approaches and needs of the particular school, and include, but are not limited to, the
following:
(i) GENERAL/ADMINISTRATIVE
 To be responsible for the professional management of a public school.
 To give proper instructions and guidelines for timetabling admission and placement
of learners.
 To have various kinds of school accounts and records properly kept and to make the
best use of funds for benefit of the learners in consultation with the appropriate
structures.
 To ensure a school journal containing a record of important events connected with
the school is kept.
 To make regular inspections of the school to ensure that the school premises and
equipment are being used properly and that good discipline is being maintained.
 To be responsible for the hostel and all related activities including the staff and lear-
ners, if one is attached to the school.
 To ensure that departmental circulars and other information received which affect
members of the staff is brought to their notice as soon as possible and are stored
in an accessible manner.
 To handle all correspondence received at the school.
(ii) PERSONNEL
 Provide professional leadership within the school.
 To guide, supervise and offer professional advice on the work and performance of
all staff in the school and, where necessary, to discuss and write or countersign
reports on teaching, support, non-teaching and other staff.
 To ensure that workloads are equitably distributed among the staff.

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 705

 To be responsible for the development of staff training programmes, both

school-based, school-focused and externally directed, and to assist educators, partic-
ularly new and inexperienced educators, in developing and achieving educational
objectives in accordance with the needs of the school.
 To participate in agreed school/educator appraisal processes in order to regularly
review their professional practice with the aim of improving teaching, learning and
management.
 To ensure that all evaluation/forms of assessment conducted in the school are prop-
erly and efficiently organized.
(iii) TEACHING
 To engage in class teaching as per the workload of the relevant post level and the
needs of the school.
 To be a class teacher if required.
 To assess and to record the attainment of learners taught.
(iv) EXTRA- and CO-CURRICULAR
 To serve on recruitment, promotion, advisory and other committees as required.
 To play an active role in promoting extra and co-curricular activities in the school
and to plan major school functions and to encourage learners’ voluntary participa-
tion in sports, educational and cultural activities organized by community bodies.
(v) INTERACTION WITH STAKEHOLDERS
 To serve on the governing body of the school and render all necessary assistance to the
governing body in the performance of their functions in terms of the SA Schools Act
1996.
 To participate in community activities in connection with educational matters and
community building.
(vi) COMMUNICATION:
 To cooperate with members of the school staff and the school governing body in
maintaining an efficient and smooth running school.
 To liaise with the Circuit/Regional Office, Supplies Section, Personnel Section,
Finance Section, and so on concerning administration, staffing, accounting, purchase
of equipment, research and updating of statistics in respect of educators and learners.
 To liaise with relevant structures regarding school curricula and curriculum
development.
 To meet parents concerning learners’ progress and conduct.
 To cooperate with the school governing body with regard to all aspects as specified
in the SA Schools Act 1996.
 To liaise with other relevant government departments, for example, the Department
of Health and Welfare, Public Works, and so on, as required.
 To cooperate with universities, colleges and other agencies in relation to learners’
records and performance as well as INSET and management development
programmes.
 To participate in departmental and professional committees, seminars and courses
in order to contribute to and/or update professional views/standards.
 To maintain contacts with sports, social, cultural and community organizations.

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706 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

Performance Management
An important dimension of the labour relations framework that school principals need to navigate
is the move towards performance management in the South African public service. In education,
monitoring of performance of teachers, principals and schools has been a contentious issue, both
because of the breakdown of apartheid systems, and because of the continuing inequalities between
schools in the post-apartheid period that impact on teachers’ work (resulting in what are considered
to be unfair comparisons). Through a series of labour relations agreements, various complex
systems of accountability were set up in the post-apartheid period, involving peer- and
school-based reviews, but not classroom inspections. These included agreements on Development
Appraisal (1998), Whole School Evaluation (2001), and Performance Management (2003). These
overlapping, if not confusing, separate systems were brought together in 2003 into the integrated
quality management system (IQMS), which requires a complex system of paperwork and a time-
consuming monitoring system. Suffice it to say that these systems have a mixed record of under-
standing, implementation, and effectivity.
In 2008, after a devastating public service strike which included teachers, the occupation spe-
cific dispensation (OSD) was negotiated through the ELRC. The OSD establishes a performance
management and development system (PMDS) for public servants working in education. It sets out
the performance requirements of different levels of appointment within the education system, and
their links to qualification and remuneration. Principals (and deputy principals) are required to
draw up annual personal performance development plans setting objectives and targets. There are
six key result areas (KRAs) and fifteen core management criteria (CMCs); principals are required
to prioritize five KRAs, each with performance standards and indicators.
The six KRAs which are compulsory for principals are the same as those set out in the South
African Standards for Principalship (Dpeartment of Education, 2005):

(1) Leading and managing the learning school.

(2) Shaping the direction and development of the school.
(3) Assuring quality and securing accountability,
(4) Developing and empowering self and others.
(5) Managing the school as an organization.
(6) Working with and for the community.

In their individual performance plans, principals are required to break down KRAs into measurable
outputs, duties/responsibilities and activities, and to give each a percentage weighting in terms of
importance for their own job.
The 15 CMCs are:

(1) Job knowledge

(2) Technical skills
(3) Acceptance of responsibility
(4) Quality of work
(5) Reliability
(6) Initiative
(7) Communication
(8) Interpersonal relationships

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Christie: Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools 707

(9) Flexibility
(10) Team work
(11) Planning and execution
(12) Leadership
(13) Delegation and empowerment
(14) Management of financial resources
(15) Management of human resources

Each CMC also has performance standards and indicators, and principals must choose five for their
annual performance plans. Performance plans are appraised by district officials, and salary incre-
ments based on the outcomes. Interestingly, ‘leadership’ is optional as a CMC.
What this description illustrates is a performance management system that is intended to have a
strong impact on how the work of the principal is defined and evaluated. Not only is their own
work to be appraised in these terms; principals are also required to play a role in the appraisal
of others. Management capabilities are emphasized, and the assumption appears to be that defining
and assessing the work of principals in performance management terms will improve the function-
ality of schools.
However, it needs to be recognized that schools in South Africa do not function equally, and
that many schools are actually dysfunctional (Christie et al., 2007; Taylor, 2007). In
well-functioning schools, appraisal systems such as these may be achievable even though
time-consuming; however, in dysfunctional schools they may simply be unachievable, let alone
adequate to effect change. In dysfunctional schools, teachers do not always conform to overt
forms of regulation, such as arriving on time and keeping to school hours, or adhering to nation-
ally devised curriculum planning and assessment requirements. More importantly, ensuring that
teachers provide quality learning experiences for students lies beyond the reach of the existing
performance management system, as is all too evident from South African students’ poor
achievements on national and international tests. Schools in South Africa are still highly
unequal in terms of both resource levels and performance, and context has a strong influence
on the nature of the principals’ work. Teese and Polesel (2003) use the term ‘institutional geo-
graphy’ to describe the enduring and predictable patterns of inequalities between schools. Argu-
ably, the degree of difference between schools, and where schools lie on the institutional map,
are likely to have a major impact on the principal’s work and what it means to lead and manage
the school.
That said, it would be mistaken to assume that all poor and historically black schools perform
badly, and have deficient leadership and management practices. The Schools that Work Report
(Christie et al., 2007) highlights the dynamics of a number of schools that perform well in challen-
ging circumstances, as does Martin Prew’s (2007) comparison of successful and struggling prin-
cipals in similar difficult circumstances. Studies such as these challenge deterministic
arguments about school success and failure.
The argument I have been making is that the South African landscape of policy change stretches
beyond the evident beacons of new policy, such as the National Education Policy Act, the South
African Schools Act, Curriculum 2005, and so on. Extending beyond and beneath these is a com-
plex network of regulations and requirements, which have been put in place in schools that operate
in very different conditions and with different capacities to implement them. What is required of
principals is, I suggest, strongly influenced by these requirements, and the nature of the job is very
different in schools with different historical legacies.

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708 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 38(6)

Conclusion
In this article, I have attempted to clarify concepts of leadership and management, and to illustrate
two major landscapes that shape notions of the principal’s work in the South African education
system. One is the landscape of literature on leadership and management, which provides partic-
ular discursive constructions of the field and its changes, and provides particular ways of under-
standing the work of school principals. On this landscape, ‘leadership’ is the favoured term for
framing the work of the principal. At a time of global policy borrowing, it is possible to see the
shadows and forms of theories from countries such as the USA, UK and Australia on the South
African landscape. However, I suggest that these are not simple reflections of debates from
elsewhere, but rather are situated adaptations, whose forms are inflected by history and context.
A second landscape, one of new policy frameworks, provides another terrain for principals to navi-
gate. Here, I have argued, the beacon-like policies should not distract from the tangled regulations
that give effect to them, and the inequalities that render the terrain of the education system trea-
cherous in terms of working for change.
In this article I have argued that the expectations of school leadership as expressed in the liter-
ature and studies of leadership, together with new policy frameworks and regulations set out by the
post-apartheid government, have changed the work of school principals in complex and contex-
tually different ways. It is by now a well-established criticism of South Africa’s new policies that
they are more suited to the well-functioning parts of the education system, and have unintention-
ally widened inequalities. Taking this a step further, I would suggest that constructions of the prin-
cipalship in discourses that conflate leadership and management, that over-generalize, and do not
engage seriously with local conditions and the day-to-day experiences of principals, are likely to
provide distorted pictures and to create unrealistic expectations.
It is here that the mismatch between the ideal and the actual may impede, rather than
assist, school improvement in South Africa. In attempting to understand the principalship
in South Africa, I suggest that it is more useful to start from the position that there is no sin-
gle, entrenched picture of what it entails. Regulations of governance, labour relations and per-
formance management have a major influence on what the work of the principal entails, no
matter how this is framed in policy discourses. In addition, the functionality of the school and
its position in the overall institutional geography are likely to inform what the principalship
entails in major ways, and this needs to be recognized by those working for change in the
South African system. If generic instead of situated approaches to the principalship inform
policies, regulations and professional development for principals, they may well act as impe-
diments to the very changes they aim to support. A more appropriate approach would be to
recognize the situated complexities of the work of running schools—to say nothing of chang-
ing them under the very different circumstances in which they operate. A more thorough
understanding of the landscapes of leadership is, I suggest, a good starting point for mapping
the changes that are needed.

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Biographical Note
Pam Christie is Professor of Education at the University of Canberra, and Visiting Professor at the
University of Queensland, University of the Witwatersrand, and Cape Peninsula University of
Technology. Her interests lie in education policy, leadership and school change, from a social jus-
tice perspective.

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