Assessment of Needs and Capacity of District Office Professional Staff

As presented, an EDO who has followed the “full career path” would have held all the
positions in reference and would have fully met the criteria. The data was disappointing.
Only 59 or 52% EDOs have been principals. As many as 38 or 34% of EDOs are educators
who have not been principals and who have not even served on the SMT of a school. There
is one EDO without any experience in an educational institution. This indeed signals the
urgency of the need to place all EDOs in a programme of intensive training. This
programme must, somehow, allow EDOs to be exposed to and understand current practice
and issues in schools.
Profiles for Career pathing and Succession Planning
Here, an effort was made to determine the jobs to which staff aspire so that, in planning
programmes of development, some cognizance is taken of the career paths of individuals.
Specifically, the question asked sought to determine the next 3 positions to which people
aspire before they retire. Most respondents aspired to become District Directors, and most
of these aspirants wanted to do so within the next 3 years.
Another critical question asked was the age at which respondents intended to retire. The
question sought to determine the number of years on average that staff in the various job
categories had toward retirement. This presented another view of the threat of the aging
professional cadre in District Offices. This information is presented in Table 12. The
information again suggests, but even more strongly, that the Department only has a short
time to benefit from it’s more experienced District Office officials. A programme of human
resource planning is essential for District Offices. In this regard, a performance sustainability
plan should be prepared for each District Office so as to ensure that staff and staffing are
managed in a manner which will ensure the effective performance of the District Office.
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