Assessing the influence of management of service delivery process in Education on learner achievement in the Rekopantswe Area Office

Abstract

The study is aimed at examining the management of service delivery in education and how it affects learner performance. Furthermore the study aims to establish the nature, scope and characteristics of service delivery, factors that contribute towards effective service delivery and challenges faced by both educators and managers in providing education. The study derived its findings by both quantitative and qualitative analysis using SPSS. The major findings of the study was that the majority of teachers were in the older age group of 50-years followed by the 40-44 years group suggesting that teachers in the Rekopantswe Area Office have been in the teaching profession for a long time, approximately had over 10 years in the profession. This implies to principals as well. One of the findings was that the majority of the principals have at least a diploma as their highest qualification. The results also showed that most of the schools in Rekopantswe Area Office are in the rural areas which may reflect the general socioeconomic background which is generally rural. These findings were collaborated by Potiet al.2014 in their study which highlighted that as a result nature of the province, schools in these areas needed urgent attention to retain teachers and improve quality education. The study showed that most principals agreed that the new curriculum was suitable for dealing with South African development needs but is dependent on teachers having to fully understand the curriculum and how to implement it in order to have a positive impact on leaners. This finding is supported by Lizer(2013) and Moodley(2013) who discovered that the implementation of the new curriculum in the schools was still a challenge due to lack of time on the part of educators and poor infrastructure. The study highlights challenges faced by both educators and managers in providing education. The majority of teachers and managers points out that they were not given enough time to adjust to the new curriculum, and had not enough time to teach learners the subjects effectively. This is emphasized by Jacobs, Vakalisa and Gawe(2004) saying that even with the training received, teachers remained confused and struggle to effectively teach learners. The results also showed that most principals agreed with the statement that there were initial difficulties encountered in adjusting to CAPS and support was forthcoming from the education department and most teachers disagree with the statement that they were given assistance to understand the curriculum. However results show that some principals disagree that the initial administrative challenges were resolved. Some of these initial administrative challenges may be as a result of CAPS which was still not easy to to teach and as a result became difficult to implement. The study recommends that the challenges be addressed so tat it does not impact negatively on staff morale and affect learner performance.