A systems perspective on school improvement approaches

Abstract

In this paper, the impact of school leadership on the learners' academic performance is considered in the South African context. School leadership is a systemic concept that cannot be analysed out of its context and thus we develop a simulation model to investigate the effect of various school leadership and management intervention programs on the principals themselves, and on the schools which they lead. The model is initiated with a mix of narrative and qualitative data. Interventions on the basis of what-if scenarios are modelled to illustrate the systemic nature of the education environment. The model can also assist school leaders to visualise the nonlinearity, time dependence and interdependence of the impact of their decisions. We show that interventions have to be made early and consistently to improve and maintain the system and that there is no immediate silver bullet solution.