The impact of mentorship as a key performance area for senior personnel in high schools in the Western Cape

Abstract

There is always much debate about the performance of high schools, especially around the lack of learners excelling and the Grade 12 poor pass rate. This dissertation nvestigates the impact of mentorship on the performance of principals, deputy principals and subject heads at a selection of high schools in the Cape Town metropolitan area. Literature on the topic indicates that various types of mentorship programmes exist. The literature review consisted of journal articles, books and policy documents. For the purpose of the empirical study, the research question of whether mentorship has a positive impact on the performance of senior personnel in high schools was best answered by following a quantitative approach to research. The study population comprised 42 senior staff members from three high schools in the Cape Town metropolitan area. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from the sample of 21 senior staff members, and the data analysis was done by means of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using pie charts to illustrate the results. The study found that mentoring subordinate educators and principals is a Key Performance Area (KPA) of the convenience randomly selected schools that fall within the respective district under the jurisdiction of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), that key personnel are familiar with mentorship, but that there are some issues that need to be resolved. It is envisaged that the implementation of mentorship programmes at high schools will positively influence the development of educators, and impact positively on the performance of key personnel and the performance of the affected schools.