The advocacy of an appraisal system for teachers: a case study

Education systems all over the world, like all other organisations, have certain organisational goals that they set and wish to achieve. It is argued that for increased pupil performance, in the case of education systems, teachers must work harder and smarter. A performance system is regarded as part of the process to achieve this organisational goal, Some prominent researchers, however, forecast a movement away from performance management as we know it. In this paper we use insights from a specific school district in South Africa to highlight the need for effective advocacy of a performance system to ensure a measure of success. One of the major findings is that although advocacy in its narrow sense is a process to make stakeholders aware of a new policy, the data collected reveal two broad themes, namely, the process itself but also the issues about the content of that which should be advocated. Findings on the process itself focus on sufficient funding, effective training, reconsideration of the cascading mode of delivery, clarity on the roles of different structures, official sources of information, anticipated reaction of teachers and effective monitoring of the implementation process. Findings on the content of IQMS focus on the conceptual framework of IQMS, clarity of the content and contextual factors to be considered.