South African school principals call for reduced workload
In South Africa’s Limpopo province, Mashudu Ramulumo, president of the South African Principals Association (Sapa), called on education departments to reduce the administrative burden on school principals. At the association’s national conference, which brought together more than 850 principals, he proposed five steps to address problems that distract school leaders from organizing education.
As Daily Maverick reports, Ramulumo said that principals often have to repeatedly submit the same data to different units of education departments, in different formats. The association proposes introducing an electronic system in which school information would be submitted once, while authorized officials could access it without additional requests to principals.
Administrators and funding
As its second step, Sapa called for departments to fund the employment of an administrator or clerk at every school. According to Ramulumo, principals currently perform some of this work themselves, while some schools rely on parents to pay administrative staff.
The association also called for resolving the shortage of teachers, overcrowded classrooms and infrastructure constraints. Ramulumo noted that the student-to-teacher ratio ranges from 35 to 40 pupils per teacher, depending on available funding. He stressed that principals cannot independently address the consequences of insufficient numbers of teachers and classrooms.
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The fourth demand concerns the timely transfer of norm- and standards-based funding to schools. Delays, Ramulumo said, make it difficult to purchase stationery and pay for examination expenses, electricity and water. In such situations, principals are sometimes forced to use their own credit cards or negotiate deferred payments with suppliers.
Preparing for the use of AI
Sapa identified preparing principals and teachers to use artificial intelligence as its fifth area of focus. Ramulumo believes that banning the technology in classrooms is not a solution; instead, school staff should be taught how to work with it and students should be explained the rules for proper AI use. He also called on authorities to address internet connectivity problems, which are especially acute for rural schools that lack funds for mobile data or Wi-Fi.
A Governing Body Foundation survey mentioned in the Daily Maverick article found that nearly 60% of school principals were prepared to leave their jobs. Another 92% of respondents said their administrative workload had become higher or significantly higher than five years earlier, while 71% reported a significant or serious impact of administrative requirements on their core duties.
