School Inspection for Quality Leadership, Teaching, and Learning in South Africa: The Current State of Education School Inspection

Literature Review

The need to ensure quality leadership, and, teaching and learning in schools for better learner performance has widely been a topic for research and debate in many parts of the world. Among the topics in these studies has been the focus on the fact that desirable school-level outcomes are associated with coherent support for meeting performance expectations and for translating information about performance into everyday practices of teaching and learning. Within schools a range of leadership patterns exist; the principal, assistant or deputy principals, middle managers or Heads of Departments (HoDs) and teachers. All of them form part of the management team. The term leader is used to refer to any manager or person in a position of responsibility. According to Prindle (2012) leadership refers to a “critical component of an organisation that has an important influence on organisational change strategy and its impact to the organisation.” In contemporary discourses on leadership (Phaneuf 2007), the term leadership, refers to a person who holds a dominant position, and, to a person who exercises a certain influence, either because of the professional role or personal charisma possessed. Her actions allow the group to attain its objective effectively.