Leadership, Stakeholders and Learner Performance in Four Western Cape Schools

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed extraordinary gains the world over in enhancing access to education – but there has been much less progress in improving educational outcomes. To better understand and address this disconnect, the University of Manchester-based and DFID-supported Effective States and Inclusive Development global comparative research programme has supported a range of studies on the politics and governance of basic education in Bangladesh, Ghana and South Africa.

This paper is one of a series which explores the politics and governance of basic education in South Africa at national, provincial (Western Cape and Eastern Cape), district and school levels. Annex A provides an overview of the overall research design and hypotheses for the full set of papers. The focus of this paper is on some micro-level governance and political economy determinants of performance over time in four schools in the Cape Town metropolitan area. Sections I and II describe the paper’s analytical and empirical approach. Sections III-V detail the school-specific results. Section VI suggests some implications of the analysis.

Keywords: School governance, school leadership, political settlements, school principals, multistakeholder governance, education, South Africa