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Principal leadership changes and their consequences for school performance in South Africa

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  • Wills, Gabrielle

Abstract

School leadership changes are gaining momentum in South Africa as larger proportions of incumbent principals near retirement age. While this presents opportunities to replace weaker school leaders with better ones, these changes may also destabilize school environments and impede on learning. This study explores this issue using payroll data on public school principals in South Africa linked to national data on schools and matriculation examination outcomes. School fixed effects and propensity score matching with difference-in-difference estimations confirm that principal changes are indeed detrimental to school performance with larger disruptive effects observed in poorer schools.

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  • Wills, Gabrielle, 2016. "Principal leadership changes and their consequences for school performance in South Africa," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 108-124.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:injoed:v:51:y:2016:i:c:p:108-124
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2016.08.005
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    Cited by:

    1. Jason A. Grissom & Brendan Bartanen, 2019. "Principal Effectiveness and Principal Turnover," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 14(3), pages 355-382, Summer.
    2. Posel, Dorrit & Grapsa, Erofili, 2017. "Time to learn? Time allocations among children in South Africa," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-10.
    3. Robert Cameron & Brian Levy, 2016. "The potential and limits of performance management: Improving basic education in the Western Cape," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-062-16, GDI, The University of Manchester.

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