School monitoring and change: a critical examination of Whole School-Evaluation

Abstract

This article engages with the challenges of school change, and the conceptual framework and assumptions of using accountability and support as improvement tools, It looks at lessons from various conceptual and empirical ,analyses and evaluation studies of school change,interventions to critically examine the Whole-School Evaluation (WSE) policy introduced in South African education in 2001. It analyses the content, form and underlying assumptions that schools can be improved through monitoringievaluation and development. This article argues that the WSE policy, in its present form, will not be able to achieve its intended outcomes. A different form of school monitoring and evaluation system, which is more appropriate to the context of South African schools, is needed to achieve the desired outcomes.

Keywords:

• School Monitoring
• evaluation
• development