| Summary: | Post apartheid South Africa heralded changes in society and the
educational system as a whole. South African schools have in turn
become sites of phenomenal changes. The recent trends towards greater
decentralization and partial privatization for many schools have placed more responsibility on school managers and leaders. School managers and leaders are faced with situations in which effective and efficient school management requires new and improved skills, knowledge and attitudes to cope with a wide range of new demands and challenges.
During the apartheid era educational managers were subjected to many
forms of suppression, which favored the previous government. The
education system was characterized as being authoritarian, non -
consultative and non-participatory. Educational leadership focuses on technical and bureaucratic functions of the school, and greater emphasis was placed on vertical structures.
Leadership in South Africa today calls for a different mindset. The
challenge is for leaders to recreate school as learning organizations that
focus on results and accountability. There exists a need for schools to
move away from being fixed structures that focus on constraint and control. Real transformation will depend upon the nature and quality of internal management and how principals execute, delegate, consult and participate with all stakeholders. Self-management is accomplished by
an internal distribution of power within the school and in transformational
leadership. School principals need to adopt a new paradigm of leadership in which leaders are intuitive and visionary. Democratic South Africa places emphasis on transformational leadership. A transformational style of leadership is significant as this style of leadership embraces a charismatic, visionary, cultural and empowering concept of leadership. Emphasis is given to higher levels of personal commitment towards accomplishing the goal of organizational learning and the development of
a school climate that is productive and conducive to learning resulting in effective schools.
Principals need to align themselves with the values of the new constitution
bearing in mind democracy, equality, human dignity, freedom and justice.
The challenge and need for leadership are great if education is to be
uplifted and transtormed. One of the main findings of the research was a discrepancy between the principal's perception of his/her style of
leadership and the perception of the staff regarding the principal's style of
leadership. The principal perceived his / her role as a leader as being more
transformational than transactional while members of the staff saw the
principal as being a transactional leader. An extremely interesting finding
was consensus between School Management Teams (SMT) and educators
in respect of the views expressed: 75% of the SMT and educators agree
with the perception that the principal's leadership style was autocratic. === Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.
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