Assessment of Needs and Capacity of District Office Professional Staff

The data presented in Table 9 summarizes the profile of qualifications in the respective
District offices. The data shows that there is very little bias in terms of the allocation of
qualified staff to Districts; the profile of qualifications is generally similar in all Districts.
There is a slight trend, however for the more qualified staff to be located in District Offices
in the more urban centres. Most staff in District Offices have matric plus 3 to 4 years of
education.
Level of Experience in Current Position
The questionnaire used sought to establish the amount of experience represented in the
overall contingent of professional staff in the District Offices. Table 10 presents a
summary of the years of experience. The data seems to indicate that, generally, the
majority of staff have been in their current positions for less than 2 years; and, although
the contingent of District Office staff is generally older, their tenure in their respective jobs
is short. If one examines the data on experience according to position, then it will be
noted that Subject Advisors have the least experience of all professional staff. To an
extent, this is explainable because of the recent drive to fill positions in the District
Offices.
The evidence seems to suggest that professional development for this cadre of staff is
critical, and that it is essential to adequately bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Training measures such as coaching and mentoring are essential since most staff will
need practical guidance and development.
Relevance of Occupational History
One of the measures made is an assessment of the level to which people are fully
prepared to undertake their responsibilities. The measures formulated to assess
preparedness differed for Subject Advisors and EDOs. For Subject Advisors the
assessment sought to determine whether the following criteria was met – formal
academic qualifications in subject content, specialty, level of experience teaching in the
related subject area, number of courses and workshops taken in area of specialty and
number of years experience in the supervision of the subject as an HOD or in some other
supervisory role. Because of the quality of completeness of the data submitted by most
Subject Advisors, the information assessed was not sufficiently conclusive. For the small
sample which submitted complete data, the information presented seems to suggest that
many subject advisors have not been formally trained in the content areas in which they
are assigned.
A similar exercise was conducted for EDOs with similar results. In the case of EDOs, the
criteria used was teaching experience, experience as an HOD, experience as an SMT,
Deputy Principalship, and service in the Principalship before becoming an EDO. The
rationale used here was that in order to effectively service and support schools in terms of
management and governance, one must have “on the ground” experience in the
management of all aspects of school operation. The information is presented in Table 11
by the respective Districts.
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