Assessment of Needs and Capacity of District Office Professional Staff

5c. PLANNING INTERVENTIONS
JOB REQUIREMENTS
• Assisting schools in the
preparation of school
development and other plans
• Ensure that plans and
programmes for schools are
properly developed
• Guide, co-ordinate and support
principals in whole school
development
• Other job requirements in the
performance area
Planning interventions are critical to the organization and performance of
schools. But planning here is not limited to the facilitation of good performance
of the SMT and SGB. Planning is not a matter for EDOs only. In the current
context, the Department has established a transformation agenda and has
prepared an associated strategic plan in order to map out the vision and a set
of measurable indicators of what could and should be achieved. But this
planning must not stop at the Provincial Offices or even at the level of the
District Office. All plans must be articulated with schools, and school
development plans should inform both the District and the Provincial Strategic
plans. The professional role of all District professional staff in respect to
planning is very clear. Such staff must take the responsibility of bridging the
issues, constraints and challenges of practice with the strategic vision and
intervention of government. This sub-section of the report looks at job
requirements, personal capacity and training needs and options in respect to
planning. Here again, it could be noted that the choice of options for assessing
job requirements was quite limited. Nonetheless, critical areas of focus were
identified, although they were particularly associated with the responsibilities of
EDOs.
Job Requirements
Table 35 presents 3 job requirements in respect to planning. All are
considered highly important, especially in respect to “ensuring that the plans
and programmes of schools are properly developed”. But Table 36 again
shows that although these planning requirements are considered as essential
by all job classes - CES, Subject Advisors and Lecturers – they are most
critical to the job function of the EDO, and therefore considered most important
by EDOs. In this respect, over 90% of EDOs have noted these job functions to
be most important at the level of 4 or 5.
Table 35: Job Requirements: Planning Interventions
IMPORTANCE
LOW HIGH
89
FREQUENCY OF APPLICATION
LOW HIGH
%
NR 1&2 3 4&5 % NR 1&2 3 4&5
144 78 104 358 66 160 135 174 211 41
130 65 93 394 71 154 128 149 251 48
167 104 74 335 65 191 148 116 225 46
243 83 106 240 56 262 113 124 175 42