Assessment of Needs and Capacity of District Office Professional Staff

5. A FRAMEWORK OF RESPONSIBILITIES FOR ASSESSING NEEDS
The study was based on the assumption that training needs must be assessed on the
basis of a full understanding of job responsibilities. In the previous section of the report an
attempt was made to understand the job responsibilities of District Office professional
staff on the basis of the gaps, issues and operational requirements of the school. At the
end of the chapter we developed, on the basis of the information collected, a brief
summary of the job responsibilities and training requirements implied in the information
collected. Again in this section we seek to start from the basis of responsibilities to
understand the capacity and training needs of professional staff in District Offices.
In order to more fully explore the responsibilities of staff, a survey was conducted on the
types of responsibilities that are allocated to managers in education, and more generally,
to the SMS in the public service. It was on this basis that a framework was developed for
a comprehensive analysis of capacity and training needs. It was concluded from this
analysis that all job tasks can be divided into fundamentally two areas of job
responsibilities – core content and generic requirements. The core content pertains to
the technical requirements which pertain specifically to the job or position; generic
requirements represent a variety of generic skills that all managerial staff need in order to
perform effectively. The elements of the framework are presented and briefly described
in Figure 2.
On the basis of this framework, information was collected from District Office staff in 3
areas: the requirements of the current job; a self-assessment of personal capacity and
training needs; and a selection of specific options for training.
Since the same framework was used to generate information in the respective areas, the
analysis across the generic areas presented a clearer picture on the capacity, job
understanding and circumstances of staff. The purpose of this section is to tell the story
of each area of job content.
In this regard, the section is sub-divided into 17 areas as presented in the framework
illustrated as Figure 2. A similar analysis is undertaken in each of the 17 areas of job
content. This analysis will cover the job requirements, the capacity assessment and the
options for training. It is on the basis of this analysis that priority areas of training will be
explored in the next section of the report.
An analysis of each of the 17 areas of job content follows:
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