Principals whose schools continue to produce poor results will have to pull up their socks or face demotion or losing their jobs.
Eastern Cape education MEC Mlungisi Mvoko said: “If a principal continues to get a pass rate of under 30%, we will have to let them go.”
Mvoko, who was speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting on Monday to formulate a five-year plan to improve education in the province, made it clear that there was no room for under-performing principals.
Mvoko said, as in the case of any sector, an employer would call in an under-performing employee to track their performance and if there was no improvement, there would be consequences.
In previous years the department has called in under-performing principals to listen to their challenges and facilitate training where required.
Mvoko now wants the department to call back those principals to track their performance and see whether they were where they agreed they wished to be.
“If they are not where they said they would be, we need to look for a way forward and look at what the consequences would be.”
Mvoko said instead of being promoted, under-performing principals would be demoted.
“We can never move the principal of a worst performing school to higher position. Imagine having a failed principal as a school education development officer – who will listen to him? He will never be able to run a district, let alone the province.
“We will give them an option to demote them and we know no employee is happy with being demoted, so they might end up leaving,” said Mvoko.
After last year’s matric exams, at least 50 schools were flagged as the worst performing schools in the province, with a pass rate of under 30%.
Topping the list of worst performing schools was Newton High, where only 3.8% of Grade 12 candidates at the school passed.
The MEC called on parents to ensure that principals were doing their jobs and a culture of high performance was maintained there.
“If a teacher comes to school drunk, parents should toyi-toyi to that school and tell the principal to report the matter. If the principal fails to do that, they should remove him,” said Mvoko.
Some of the MEC’s plans for the next five years include capacity building by driving a high performance culture; driving the economy through the implementation of the three-stream model – agriculture, oceans economy, travel and tourism.
The MEC also wants to upscale e-learning to help pupils in a changing world...