No abstract

While it is argued in the paper that the New Public Management theory and practice has been applied much more in education than in any other area in the public sector, literature on education leadership and management still reveals a startling degree of confusion among education authorities, managers and leaders over what strategies to apply in order to bring out commitment, positive results and accountability among the school leaders. The authors argue that the confusion is caused by the fact that there has been a dramatic change in education policymaking that has adopted a more market-oriented approach and underplayed the conception of "education as a public good." The authors conclude that this change has led to the obsession of educational authorities with quantifiable outcomes which have an adverse effect on the standard and quality of education in South Africa.

Utilizing a grounded theory approach to understand the issues surrounding teachers’ performance appraisal, the researchers investigate the principals’ understanding of the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) and also explore the problems and flaws in its implementation. A purposive sampling procedure was used to select six school principals from three education regions in KwaZulu-Natal for the study. The results of the data analysis indicate that the implementation of the IQMS at schools has not been smooth. There has been a lot of hostility, negativity and resistance from the teachers that were appraised. The challenges that the principals were faced with, emanated from the lack of coordination, lack of trust, lack of clarity of roles and poor training. It is recommended that trust and better understanding be built between principals and teachers through information-sharing seminars and workshops, and regular feedback from the education officials. Key words: appraisal, implementation, IQMS, peer group, performance measurement, professional development, salary increase.