SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: A BUREAUCRATIC BURDEN BORDERING ON BANALITY

School self-evaluation (SSE) is an example of a contemporary organic approach to school improvement where governments worldwide are increasingly adopting whole-school evaluation (WSE) strategies in an effort to improve teaching and learning practices. School evaluation found its genesis in South Africa in 2001 when the National Policy on Whole-school Evaluation was promulgated as an attempt to propel school improvement within a very diverse and inequitable public education terrain. The post-apartheid South African government instituted a school evaluation system which paid equal attention to internal (self) and external evaluation apparatuses. In the South African context, SSE is a prescribed National Department of Education intervention primarily aimed at improving classroom practice and ultimately whole-school performance. However, from a policy-implementation perspective, SSE in South Africa is fundamentally conceptualised within a mandated accountability framework underpinned by a quality assurance paradigm immersed within an audit school culture philosophy. While public schools have been offered greater decentralised management/leadership leverage, through SSE, to determine their own school improvement paths, public school staff tend to view the implementation of this externally imposed intervention as an annual superficial ritual to be overcome. Consequently, a repetitive cycle of ineffective implementation tends to concretise negative behavioural dispositions towards public policy interventions such as WSE. Using a concurrent triangulation mixed methods approach comprising a structured questionnaire, supported by focus group interviews, individual principal interviews and open-ended responses, this study elicited data supporting the overarching conclusion that there are inherent tensions between a compliance policy-driven implementation approach to SSE and sustained improvements in teaching and learning practices.