Monitoring of English assessment tasks by school management teams in Sekhukhune East District, Limpopo Province

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the role played by School Management Teams (SMTs) in the monitoring and supervision of English assessment tasks in primary schools of Magakala Cluster in Sekhukhune East District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. This study was motivated by the way members of the SMT neglect their duties when they have to monitor and supervise English assessment tasks. This is a predicament considering that English is a Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) in most if not all the South African schools. As such, where there is under-monitoring and under-supervision of English assessment tasks, this is likely to compromise education standards. The two theoretical perspectives employed in this study are socio-cultural theory developed by Murphy and Hall and future-oriented theory popularised by Klenowski and Wyatt-Smith. The implication of the socio-cultural theory on classroom assessment is that attention is given to how learning is situated and distributed across the cultural settings. The future-oriented theory focuses on knowledge-generation through the use of technology. This study, is a qualitative case study. The three methods of data collection were interviews, documents review and observations. Interviews were conducted in this study in order to obtain data directly from the research participants. Documents review and observations were mainly employed to validate data collected through the interviews. Five primary schools were sampled and in each of the school, three research participants namely, a principal, an HOD and a teacher offering English in Grade six were purposively selected. Data were analyzed using a thematic content analysis and constant comparative methods. Amongst others, findings of this study revealed that in the main, most primary schools in Sekhukhune East District are functioning without important documents such as the Personnel Administrative Measures and other documents governing and regulating the administration of English assessment tasks. This study further, found that SMT members were lacking knowledge and understanding of how monitoring and supervision of English assessment tasks had to be appropriately conducted in primary schools. This study further, revealed that SMTs possess inadequate understanding of mechanisms to employ in order to effectively monitor and supervise both formative and summative English assessment tasks. On the basis of the shared findings, the researcher recommends for SMTs in primary schools to prioritize the improvement of how monitoring and supervision of English assessment tasks have to be performed. This study, further, appeals to SMT members to acquaint themselves with the available departmental policies and to allow to be guided by them in executing monitoring and supervision of English assessment tasks