Does instructional leadership drive educational improvement in South Africa? Evidence from Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis

ABSTRACT

Quality school leadership and management are important determinants of teaching and learning quality. According to South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP), principals should provide administrative and curriculum leadership to schools. This study investigated the improvement between 2015 and 2019 Grade 9 mathematics scores in South Africa, and explored the extent to which the difference could be related to instructional leadership. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition technique, the performance gap is decomposed into a part that is associated with changes in the number of educational inputs, such as student, teacher, and school/principal characteristics, and a part that is associated with changes in the efficiency of the educational inputs. The findings suggest that instructional leadership variables are positively associated with increased mathematics scores but the return to student achievement was lower in 2019 than 2015. The findings also revealed that instructional leadership led to less improvements among under-resourced schools in 2019.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructional leadership
• educational improvement
• Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Martin Gustafsson and Vijay Reddy for their comments on earlier drafts of this research. However, I remain responsible for all errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Section 16A of the South African Schools Act (SASA) makes provision for the principal of a public school to prepare an annual report on the academic performance of the school in relation to minimum outcomes and standards and procedures for assessment determined by the Minister in terms of Section 6A. Moreover, Section 16A provides for the principal of a public school that has been identified by the Head of Department (HOD) in terms of section 58B to prepare an academic improvement plan at the beginning of each year and to present it to the HOD and the school governing body (SGB) meeting.

2 Section 58B of SASA provides for the HOD to identify annually any public school that is underperforming, based on the report referred to in Section 16A (1) (b) and from other relevant reports. The section allows the HOD to issue a written notice to the school if he or she believes that the standard of performance of students is below the standard prescribed by the National Curriculum Statement and is likely to remain so unless he or she exercises his or her power in terms of the Act.

3 Policy on Whole School Evaluation (WSE) provides for external moderation, on a sampling basis, of the results of self-evaluation carried out by the schools. The policy evaluates the effectiveness of a school in terms of the national goals, using national criteria, with the aim of increasing the level of accountability in the educational system.

4 SES asset quintiles based on the asset-based index of SES for each student, constructed by using principal component analysis (PCA) as described below. Students were grouped into one of five SES quintiles, with quintile 1 identifying the lowest SES and quintile 5 the highest. Despite the shortcomings of applying the PCA to binary and categorical variables (Howe et al., 2012; Kolenikov & Angeles, 2009), a large seven-country study used multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) but found no significant differences between both indices (Booysen et al., 2008).

5 The South African educational system is divided into three tiers: primary school, from grade 0/1 to grade 7 (compulsory); secondary school which comprises grades 8 and 9 (compulsory) and grades 10 to 12 (non-compulsory); and tertiary education, that is, universities and technical colleges (Churr, 2015).

6 School quintiles in South Africa are based on the socioeconomic status of a school and determined by measures of average income, unemployment rates, and general literacy level in the school’s geographical area (Dass & Rinquest, 2017). Quintile 1 schools refer to those in the most economically disadvantaged (poorest) geographical areas, while Quintile 5 ones are those in the most economically advantaged (affluent) geographical areas.

7 TIMSS International Benchmarks provide an interpretation of the TIMSS results in relation to the students’ performance on the assessment items. TIMSS describes levels of achievement at four points along the scale as International Benchmarks: Advanced International Benchmark (625), High International Benchmark (550), Intermediate International Benchmark (475), and Low International Benchmark (400).

8 These TIMSS International benchmarks are described as follows for achievement in mathematics: Low benchmark – students have some knowledge of whole numbers and basic graphs; Intermediate benchmark – students can apply basic mathematical knowledge in a variety of situations; High benchmark – students can apply understanding and knowledge in a variety of relatively complex situations; Advanced benchmark – students can apply and reason in a variety of problem situations, solve linear equations, and make generalisations (Mullis et al., 2016).