This study investigates the impact of school governing bodies (SGBs) empowerment on school governance in King William’s Town. The study focuses on SGBs challenges and plights, highlights the effects of their lack of empowerment and suggests the review of the election criteria used to elect SGBs who have the potential to be empowered. Furthermore, it explores the elements and methods of empowerment that can be utilised to empower SGBs and examines the difficulties SGBs experience in accounting for finances and formulating and implementing policies. The researcher makes recommendations on the empowerment of SGBs based on the findings of the study. It was necessary to review literature on empowerment and school governance to attain the research goals. Conflicts and the mismanagement of finances indicate a noticeable gap between South African Schools Act policy intention and policy practice. The majority of SGBs, particularly the parent component in rural and semi-urban areas, have low levels of education. As a result, it is difficult to empower members because they have little or no basic knowledge, skills and expertise with regard to school governance. The manner in which SGBs function and carry out their duties, roles and responsibilities indicates that SGBs received inadequate training. SGBs lack awareness of the regulations governing the appointment of educators, hence a number of disputes arise. The increasing number of disputes (both formal and informal) in respect of appointments and promotions results from misinterpretations of or variations in legislation governing appointments in schools as well as the competency or capacity of SGBs. To investigate this problem, interviews were used as the research instrument to gather data from eight participants from selected schools. The main finding is that the majority of the SGBs studied are incapable of being empowered due to low illiteracy levels of some members. Low levels of or no education, a lack of basic knowledge and skills and other factors, such as a lack of educational insight and the inaccessibility of information and resources due to the use of English as the medium in which SGBs are serviced, compound the problem. The quality of the empowerment workshops, which are 'one size fits all', have a marked effect on their efficiency.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:21120 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Ronoti, Zamikhaya Sydwell |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MPA |
| Format | xi, 95 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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