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14/07/2016

It is the Free State Department of Education’s (FSDoE) goal to enhance school performance and eradicate low levels of learner attainment in schools. VVOB contributes to this via the capacity strengthening of School Management Teams (SMTs) of 20 primary and secondary schools in Lejweleputswa on effective leadership. This is seen as an opportunity for SMTs to improve the quality of their leadership in line with the Standards for Principals, and for the Circuit Managers to improve the quality of their support to SMTs.

VVOB contracted the services to the Billion Child Foundation (BCF) for the facilitation of a programme which consists of four workshops, spread over 4 months and on-site support.

On 13 and 14 July SMTs gathered for the third workshop.

The facilitators deployed experiential hands-on participatory learning techniques. An example of this is the communication game: one member of the group had to instruct others to create a complicated pattern of shapes. Based on this experience (successes and failures) participants reflected on the instructions they give at their schools and identified pitfalls.

Participants learned how to utilise/implement the BCF Highly Performing Public Schools Toolbox. This Toolbox contains templates to create Turnaround Strategic Plans, leadership, change management and marketing/negotiation skills and systems to enable each participating school to become a high performance school which operates as a business -making it an edu-business- with an enabling environment for high quality teaching and learning.

Group discussion of each school’s proposed turnaround strategy enabled participating SMTs to benefit from the knowledge, experience and suggestions of their colleagues and thereby generate innovative solutions to address their schools’ unique challenges and to continually refine their strategies.

Pictures can be found here.