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Interrogating the White Paper 3 of 1997 which upholds academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability, I make the case for justice through higher education using public accountability. I argue that the higher education system in South Africa is capable of fulfilling such a role in the context of extreme injustices but not without a critical engagement of the extent and causes of these injustices and an understanding of their implications for academic curricula, practices and deeply embedded conceptions of knowledge. A redefinition of higher education institutions' public accountability in terms of responsibility to their 'institutional locale' or community (the populations whose needs they should be meeting) can be an effective 'proactive tool' with which higher education can redress social injustices. This requires an interrogation of the social, political and economic conditions of possibility that either inhibit or aid educational desire and attainment. An investigation of this nature entails a rigorous reappraisal of all three of the key principles within which higher education systems operate--academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability--if they are to guard against the continued perpetuation of epistemic and social injustices.

In the research reported on here we explored teachers' understanding of what they perceived as core values of ethical leadership in education. Using qualitative research within an interpretivist design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with teachers and school management team (SMT) members and analysed using Tesch's coding method. The theoretical underpinnings of the paper are grounded in 3 distinct ethics of care, justice and critique. The findings cannot be generalised since the results highlighted in this article only report on those applicable to this small qualitative sample. The main themes that emerged from the findings included the participants' understanding of 3 core values of ethical leadership. They emphasised trust, respect and transparency as vital components of ethical leadership. Recommendations include more training and research for secondary school teachers who are not well equipped with the knowledge, skills and tools to approach the needs of disenfranchised and disadvantaged learners at their schools. A more nuanced understanding of transparency in schools, policy and practices is needed.

Teacher absenteeism is of concern in today's developing educational climate. In South Africa, where education itself is a contested terrain, and decades of disadvantage still impact resources and skills, despite democracy, it is a compelling challenge. This paper, based on a study of how independent primary schools in Gauteng, South Africa, manage teacher absenteeism, offers an analysis of the management practices employed so that some lessons can be extrapolated. The paper draws from real teaching experience in South African primary schools, noting the huge impact of teacher absenteeism and its implications for teaching and learning. Five co-educational (with both genders), independent primary schools were selected for this qualitative study, using Christopher Hood's Cultural-Theory Framework, document analysis, interviews and observation. Findings homed in on processes used to track teacher attendance policies; directives and instruments that regulate teacher absenteeism; factors that influence teacher absenteeism; leadership styles; rewards for good attendance; penalties for abusing leave, and strategies and measures to manage teacher absenteeism. We conclude with recommendations in response to this challenge and emphasise the need for further research.

South Africa, like the rest of the world, was affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. From March 2020, the country's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, imposed lockdown regulations in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which led to the closure of universities. When the national regulations allowed for the resumption of university activities, the University of Limpopo had to set up quarantine and isolation facilities as a strategy to manage infections. As a new initiative, challenges would be expected in managing this unfolding situation. Against this background, this paper considers the findings of a study which focused on the establishment and operations of quarantine and isolation facilities at the university. Documents were analysed for the purpose of data construction and substantiated with data collected through semi-structured interviews. The university staff members responsible for the facilities were purposively selected to participate in this study. Data were analysed through thematic content analysis. The study found that the university established the quarantine and isolation facilities according to government guidelines; the facilities were well managed; and activities were implemented as expected. However, operational challenges that require improvements were identified and this article accordingly makes recommendations.

Promoting teacher professionalism is regarded as a strategy to address the disparate quality of learning in South African classrooms. Through a qualitative analysis of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes offered by five universities, this paper analyses the messages of teacher professionalism transmitted to pre-service teachers. Findings show that professionalism in teaching is variously conveyed to pre-service teachers as being located in their personal appearance and attributes; within their personal morals and shared ethical imperatives; in the kinds of workplace relationships they build, and in their use of formal knowledge for reasoned judgment in practice. The Specialisation Dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton, 2014) is used to show that when teacher professionalism is presented as highly individualised traits, the possibilities of developing shared knowledge-based teaching practices is reduced, and the importance of conceptuallyinformed judgments is obscured. This shuts down possibilities for systemic improvement. Conversely, if teacher professionalism is primarily located in what teachers know and can do with that knowledge, the social, moral and affective dimensions of teaching are underemphasised. Ideally, approaches to teacher professionalism ought to introduce students to teaching as a communally-owned practice, based on shared knowledge that enables reasoned judgment. The paper draws on the conceptual tools offered by LCT to suggest how social and epistemic relations can be weakened and strengthened to enhance the construct of teacher professionalism offered to prospective teachers through their ITE programmes.

In South Africa, the scholarship of epistemic justice has taken on an historical gaze with higher education framed as a social institution that might ameliorate the historical traumas of colonialism. Undoing the legacies of colonialism has been framed as the democratisation of the knowledge project. Using the White Paper 3 of 1997 that posits academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability as fundamental to institutional governance, in part I (EJ1285191) of this analysis I broadened public accountability to include the social, political and economic factors that inhibit or act as catalyst to the attainment of educational desire. In this second part publication, I am interested in developing and proposing epistemic impartiality. This concept is developed from Mitova's proposition of 'decolonising knowledge without too much relativism', which ultimately fosters epistemic justice through rigorously scrutinising each epistemic tradition. My suggestion is that epistemic impartiality enables dialogue between divergent traditions.

Objective: Schools are important settings for health promotion. In schools, children and adolescents can be reached regardless of their social background, which represents a unique opportunity for promoting health. Several studies have demonstrated the importance of school leadership in initiating and sustaining health promotion; however, efforts to systematically review the influence of school leadership on school health promotion are still lacking. Hence, this paper analyses empirical studies published in scientific journals on school leadership and health promotion in schools. Design: Systematic literature review. Method: Informed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines, a review was conducted using two main databases: Web of Science and Scopus, which retrieved 51 eligible articles. Results: The review of these articles resulted in the identification of seven main themes -- school leaders' health; attitudes, knowledge and behaviour; accountability; support from school leaders; shared leadership approaches; capacity building and parent engagement. Conclusion: This systematic literature review expands the literature by highlighting the school leadership factors that promote school health promotion in Oceania, Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia continents. Future systematic literature reviews could explore studies and different aspects of health promotion by teachers, especially in the Asian context.

If the intention of South African education legislation is to professionalise teachers, and if this is seen as empowering them for their task, connected to quality education, then it is indeed a worthy ideal. However, pedagogical values have been redefined within a neoliberalist framework, serving corporate culture and lowering the pedagogical role of teachers to a position of obedience to market norms. In the attempts of professionalising teachers, education has fallen prey to an ideology of new managerial professionalism -- the worthy ideal of professionalising teachers has become a mechanism for dominating the very people it set out to liberate. Within the context of a growing global economy the pedagogical values that embody the professionalisation of teachers have been replaced by values aligned with economic growth. The professional role of the teacher and educational reform has been driven by a political ideology committed to new managerial professionalism. The paper highlights the way in which an overemphasis of the professional status of teachers within a neoliberalist framework establishes and sustains relations of domination in South African education. The effects of new managerial professionalism on education are also explored.

The paper examines the extent to which sub-national public officials are efficient in delivering basic education services and argues that technical inefficiencies, especially in the management of public funds for education, could potentially contribute to poor education service delivery in South Africa. A conceptual framework is proposed to show the underlying mechanisms by which these technical inefficiencies can adversely affect education outcomes. The analysis is based on two micro-level surveys that were applied at 175 public primary schools and 13 district education offices (DEOs) in two provinces in South Africa: the North-West Province and Gauteng. The analysis reveals that South Africa has a well-planned decentralised structure to administer education. However, districts have significant human resource constraints. Capacity is often lacking and record-keeping, particularly of financial information, is very poor. Lack of technical efficiency has resulted in misappropriation of funds (leakage) and extensive delays in remitting funds to schools. The paper concludes that these inefficiencies potentially affect education outcomes and therefore should be given due consideration when designing and implementing education policy reforms.

The call for the decolonisation of universities and curricula in South Africa was at the centre of the 2015 Fallist protests. The protests, which left a trail of destruction and many universities closed for periods of time, had as one of their positive outcomes the precipitation of a renewed interest in the decolonisation of university education debate. The debate on decolonisation at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa is long overdue, given that the Western model of academic organisation on which it, like most South African universities, is based, remains largely Eurocentric. This paper adds to the debate by discussing what decolonisation might mean to the DUT's students, staff and the greater community. It explores the importance of decolonisation and how this process can be taken forward at DUT. The purpose is not to prescribe how decolonisation is to be done but to open up ways of (re)thinking university curricula and opportunities for further discussion and action.

In this paper I call for an unequivocal legitimisation of the living "I" in educational research. The paper itself becomes a context that explains this call. It is a report of my action research into my professional learning through working in South Africa, within the context of new policy frameworks for continuing teacher development. The call embeds issues about the need for higher education practitioners to produce their explanatory accounts of practice as they support teachers' enquiries for improving practice and knowledge creation, and to legitimise a free academic press for the dissemination of those accounts. The accounts need to demonstrate epistemological, methodological and scholarly validity, to strengthen practitioners' attempts to influence policy debates about continuing professional development. By clarifying the processes of establishing quality, it becomes possible to show the links between continuing professional education and the active contributions of practitioners to economic and social wellbeing.

Internationally there has been some interest in how critical pedagogies might be enabled in higher education to support transformative social agendas. Few writers, however, have theorised the ethico-political aspects of this effort from a feminist new materialist perspective. By focusing on the analysis of an inter-institutional collaborative course which was constructed across three disciplines and two differently positioned universities in Cape Town, South Africa, this paper examines the design of the course retrospectively from a feminist new materialist theoretical framing. In so doing, it moves beyond more traditional understandings of critical pedagogy to consider the design and student engagement with the course from the perspective of what we call "response-able pedagogies." Response-able pedagogies are not simply examples of the type of learning that can take place when power relations, materiality and entanglement are acknowledged; they also constitute ethicopolitical practices that incorporate a relational ontology into teaching and learning activities. We propose that ethico-political practices such as attentiveness, responsibility, curiosity, and rendering each other capable, constitute response-able pedagogies. The paper focuses on the transdisciplinary and interinstitutional course to consider how these ethico-political practices which constitute a response-able pedagogy might (be put to) work and how the students were both enabled and constrained by this design in terms of their responses to such ethico-political practices.

The main objective of this article is to discuss the affective dimension of resistance in critical pedagogy in a way that would recognize neoliberalism's affective repercussions. The point is not merely to show that affect is involved in the emergence of resistance in critical pedagogy, but rather to expand the articulation of resistance in neoliberal education through the lens of affect theory. Specifically, the paper theorizes how critical pedagogy can cultivate 'everyday' or 'invisible' acts of resistance that constitute forms of 'counter-conduct' in ways that acknowledge, engage with, and further enhance teachers' and students' critical engagement with the affective aspects of resistance and neoliberalism. It is argued that the call for a critical pedagogy to acknowledge the affective dimension of resistance marks an important and necessary moment that allows critical pedagogy to be further enriched in attempts to address the challenges faced by teachers and students in neoliberal education.

This lecture argues that the politicisation and instrumentalisation of the university caused by neoliberal frames has as a result the depoliticisation of knowledge and of the academic as individual. This depoliticisation has turned academic freedom into a right to disengage not only from the political fight around these issues but also from the deliberation about knowledge. The lecture uses the thinking of Arendt and Bourdieu to propose a different approach to the conceptualisation and practice of academic freedom. [This article was presented at the Daantjie Oosthuizen Academic Freedom Lecture, Rhodes University, 31 October 2014.]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the literature on school leadership and management in South Africa, linked to the 20th anniversary of democratic government and integrated education. Design/Methodology/Approach: The authors conducted a systematic review of all published work since 2007 with a more selective review of sources before 2007. Findings: The findings show emerging evidence about the development of school leadership and management in South Africa but they also highlight on-going challenges, including poor learner outcomes, conflict with teacher unions, uneasy relationships between principals and school governing bodies, and leadership which remains focused on administration rather than teaching and learning. Research Limitations/Implications: The findings show that research on school leadership and management is developing but remains limited in terms of its scope and a reliance on small-scale unfunded projects. Practical/Implications: The findings confirm the need for specialist leadership training for current and aspiring principals and for other senior and middle leaders. Social/Implications: The findings show that South Africa remains a divided society with great differences in the quality of education available to learners, based on social class rather than race. Originality/Value: The paper's value lies in the comprehensive and systematic review of research on school leadership.

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low socio-economic status (SES) schools in the Western Cape, South Africa. The paper shows that teachers and school managers have an ambivalent attitude to tests, wary of the reputational costs they can incur, but also curious about the differentiated picture test results can give them as they learn to "read" the underlying codes embedded in the results. The paper concludes that a focus on what tests make visible and a recognition of the pedagogic agency of teachers points to potential pedagogic benefits of systemic tests.

This paper investigates the underlying causes of financial mismanagement in public schools and focuses on the perceptions of various role players in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The various Departments of Basic Education in South Africa allocate funds to schools each year, and expect school principals and school governing bodies to manage it appropriately. The problem is that in some schools, the principals, teachers and school governing body members are perpetrators of various financial mismanagement activities related to financial mismanagement. This article reports on qualitative research used to arrive at an in-depth understanding of why financial mismanagement occurs in certain schools. For this purpose, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with principals, finance officers and departmental officials and analysed thematically. The findings revealed a lack of knowledge of legislation and skills, poor monitoring and control of funds, unavailability of financial policies in schools, omission to act against culprits, and lack of honesty, openness and trustworthiness. The article proposes remedies that might bring financial management in public schools in line with the principles of good governance.

Trust and accountability are often positioned as opposites, the argument being that accountability is based on distrust and correction of identified deficiencies. Yet, trust is also important in order for accountability to lead to improvement; only when teachers and principals are open about the quality of their teaching and their school can there be a meaningful discussion about change. How can we overcome this dilemma? This paper will address the inextricable interaction between trust and accountability, presenting examples from a study in South Africa of how external control in a setting of distrust can undermine agency and improvement, and how high levels of trust can promote more effective accountability relationships. Our study provides relevant insights into why some education systems are unable to generate, evaluate and scale innovations in learning when a lack of trust and capacity leads to strong opposition to external accountability, and when strong bureaucratic accountability creates further inefficiencies in pressurizing educators across the education system to report and monitor on various aspects of education where these efforts do not actually improve the quality of teaching in the classroom or provide information on good practices.

With inequality persistent across geopolitical contexts, 'transformation' continues to be expediently cited in the rhetoric of higher education institutions. Illuminating alike issues worldwide, the paper critically examines race, inequality and oppression among the black and women academics who were selected as recipients of post-apartheid academic development programmes at an historically white institution in South Africa. Utilising a report-and-respond approach, participants initially responded in a questionnaire to definitions of notions of transformation espoused within The Integrated Transformation Plans of South African universities. This was followed by non-deterministic small group discussions of the researchers' interpretations of those responses. The recipients' lived experiences provide deep insights, from within, into the misalignment between those discourses espoused and those practiced, which have implications for transforming the institutional culture of the dominant in-group. Emerging ahead of the implementation of a self-regulatory tool for higher education institutions across that national context, many of the participants called for structural accountability mechanisms in the face of their frustration with current ineffectual approaches. A concern about institutional responsiveness to research findings of such critical studies is raised.

This paper reports on evidence from five school principals regarding leadership practices that work in multiple deprived contexts. The South African educational landscape is complex, often described as a cocktail of first and third world institutions. Looking at the schooling system on a continuum, on the one end there are first class schools which can compare favourably with the best in developed countries. On the other extreme there are dysfunctional schools. However, along the scale there are few schools in multiple deprived areas which display high degrees of resilience and perform at levels comparable to first class schools in terms of Matriculation examination results. This paper draws from a study based on the proposition that leadership was the greatest factor to explain such performance. The study was then informed by a quest for knowledge regarding the nature of such leadership. Such knowledge is needed as the country fights to turn around the many dysfunctional schools there are. While there is a corpus of scholarship that "speaks" to this matter internationally, there remains need for home-grown insights in that regard. Two theoretical lenses (servant leadership and the asset-based approach) were applied. The study employed a qualitative approach involving individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews with five purposively selected school principals each representing their school. Findings suggest that the schools in question adopted inside-out development approaches involving the philosophy that they were masters of their own destiny. Time, commitment, and accountability were some of their greatest assets, things that did not have to come from outside the schools. Internal success paved the way for stronger and more fruitful synergies with the "outside world." We conclude that schools in areas of multiple-deprivation need leadership that moves them away from notions of victimhood and deficit thinking towards asset-based approaches.

Applied linguists should strive to ensure that the tests they design and use are not only fair and socially acceptable, but also have positive effects--this, in light of the fact that tests can sometimes have far-reaching and often detrimental effects on test-takers. What this paper will attempt to do, is highlight how this concern for responsible test design is articulated in an emerging framework for applied linguistics. The paper begins by questioning the role of applied linguists working within this framework before focusing specifically on the concepts of accountability, dual accountability, public accountability and academic accountability with particular reference to their use in language and academic literacy testing. The last part of this paper sees the practical application of the concept of (academic) accountability to the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS). With regard to the accountability of the test developers, which is the focus of this article, the intervention programme which follows the test must be considered.

Change and transformation in the understanding and definition of citizenship has led to the emergence of citizen-oriented public service approach. This approach also raised a new term and concept in the field of public budgeting because of the transformation in the processes of public budgeting: citizens' budget. The citizens' budget which seeks to ensure participation of the citizens in the budgeting process serves as a tool to ensure that the budget is shared with the public transparently and that the people take part in the budgeting processes. Citizen's budget is one of the main tools and instruments that the central and local administrations could use to ensure greater transparency and citizenship participation. This study focuses on the concept of citizens' budget, its goals and principles. In addition, the paper also analyzes the phases of budget-making and the expected outcomes out of the citizen-oriented budgeting. Furthermore, the study, referring to practices of different countries in this field, offers some insights on the citizens' budget.

This paper will focus on the shifts in discourses about teacher education and teacher voice within the South African research and policy environment over the last four decades. The alignment of the political and educational agenda in providing resistance to the apartheid system culminated in 1994, the start of the new democracy. The preceding 20 years (1974-1994) were characterised by defiance of the subjugation of teachers' voices, and the need to find agency amongst teachers. The shifting agenda of the strong teacher union movement during these resistance years and within the post-apartheid 20 years (1994-2014) is the subject of this paper. The attempt to generate a focus on teacher professional quality agendas is presently becoming increasingly challenging. Has the teacher agency agenda produced a disregard for teacher professional development? Are teachers protective of their own inadequacies to enact the transformation for which they campaigned? Are the new educational authorities reverting to yet another form of earlier accountability and performativity regimes to regulate teachers? The paper traces a critical account of these shifting historical trends in activating teacher voice. It argues for "deliberative action" to reassert teacher voice.

Although becoming a more racially-integrated society, the legacy of Apartheid still affects learners' social engagements in and outside their classrooms. Adopting Nussbaum's (2010) capabilities framework for a socially just democracy, this paper examines 27 pre-service teacher education students' perceptions of a digital storytelling project and its potential for recognising and honouring capabilities necessary for engaging empathetically with the "other". Using narrative inquiry, and specifically Bamberg's (2006) "small stories" approach, the research team analysed 30 stories students constructed in four focus group conversations at the end of the project. In these stories, most of Nussbaum's (2010) capabilities were evident. We found that, in the collective sharing of their stories, students positioned themselves as agentive selves, displaying the belief that they can make a difference, not only individually within their own classrooms, but also as a collective of teachers.

The first aim of this paper is to clarify the concept "performance management" as an aspect of the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS). The second is to report on an exploration into the experiences and perceptions of management teams in the implementation of performance management. As part of the qualitative research design, the individual interview was selected for use in this research. Fifteen participants drawn randomly from 24 schools were interviewed. The findings revealed the weakness of integrating development with appraisal since it leads to the neglect of development in favour of appraisal which is linked to incentives. A lack of knowledge and expertise on the IQMS processes such as mentoring, coaching, and monitoring was found to hamper the zeal to implement performance management. Teachers, as co-developers of education policy on the ground, act as a driving force behind the actualisation of transformation in education. The development of teachers is therefore crucial in an education system that is in the grips of transformation.

The paper sets out to show that teaching is among the five undeniably oldest and historically character-shaping professions in the world, the others being engineering-architecture, medicine, law, and accounting and each of these professions has a unique story in connection with its genesis and its influence on social organisation. The paper indicates, however, that while the other four have had a comparatively better advantage in terms of occupational status, social esteem, popular veneration or respect, teaching has not enjoyed a similar experience and treatment. An analysis is undertaken into the historical and contemporary factors of similarity and contrast among the professions in the varying levels of self-image building, status and public adulation that have made the teaching profession "an unequal among equals". Recommendations and propositions are then offered towards correcting the situation and making the teaching profession attractive to the younger generation of men and women of tomorrow and the future, particularly within the eastern and southern Africa region.

This paper examines the translation of global educational norms of quality assurance in two countries with very different regulatory regimes in higher education: Chile and South Africa. The translation process is conceptualised here as a contested socio-political process of appropriation and creation of meaning. Drawing upon the strategic-relational concept of selectivity, the paper argues that quality assurance policies have become a hegemonic tool for re-organising higher education because a variety of--partly contradictory--meanings and interests can be attached to them: quality assurance is linked to rationales such as democratic transformation, re-establishing public governance, strengthening market governance, contributing to national competitiveness, internationalisation of higher education or positioning universities in the (global) education market. Looking at the translation of quality assurance policies with the concept of selectivity enables us to see how structure, agency, discourses and scales operate strategically-selectively in creating compromises between different interests in higher education governance. (Contains 9 notes.)

It has been argued that traditional governance practices and decision making associated with the collegial model are no longer effective in universities, and business-like management techniques should be adopted. Dwindling resources, external demands for accountability, and increased competition for market share, have resulted in efficiency measures and increased demand for performativity. Executive leadership techniques that crept into universities during the early 1980s, referred to as 'managerialism' or 'executivism', are now widely practised. The increased focus on managerialism in the last decade has resulted in collegial crises and heightened conflicts between academics and administrators. The emergence of 'executive deanship' in South African higher education about a decade ago was in keeping with international trends and local demands for efficiency and performativity. With specific reference to the universities in the Gauteng province, this paper argues that the blanket introduction of executive deanship (referred to as executivism) appears not to have contributed to the envisaged operational efficiency, performance, and effectiveness, as initially claimed. Rather than fostering an enabling and empowering environment, it has added new layers of complexity to deanship pointing to a potential crisis in the advancement of the academic project. The position of dean is now more management oriented and allows little or no room for strategic intellectual and academic leadership.

The ways in which Africanisation and decolonisation in the South African academy have been framed and carried out have been called into question over the past several years, most notably in relation to modes of silencing and epistemic negation, which have been explicitly challenged through the student actions. In a similar vein, Canada's commitments to decolonising its university spaces and pedagogies have been the subject of extensive critique, informed by (still unmet) claims to land, space, knowledge, and identity. Despite extensive critique, policies and practices in both South African and Canadian academic spaces remain largely unchanged, yet continue to stand as evidence that decolonisation is underway. In our paper, we begin to carefully articulate an understanding of decolonisation in the academy as one which continues to carry out historical relations of colonialism and race. Following the work of Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang (2012), we begin the process of "de-mythologising" decolonisation, by first exposing and tracing how decolonising claims both reinforce and recite the racial and colonial terms under which Indigeneity and Blackness are "integrated" in the academy. From our respective contexts, we trace how white, western ownership of space and knowledge in the academy is reaffirmed through processes of invitation, commodification, and erasure of Indigenous/Black bodies and identities. However, we also suggest that the invitation and presence of Indigenous and Black bodies and identities in both academic contexts are "necessary" to the reproduction and survival of decolonising claims, which allows us to begin to interrogate how, why, and under what terms bodies and identities come to be "included" in the academy. We conclude by proposing that the efficacy of decoloniality lies in paradigmatic and epistemic shifts which begin to unearth and then unsettle white supremacy in both contexts, in order to proceed with aims of reconciliation and reclamation.

While it is argued in the paper that the New Public Management theory and practice has been applied much more in education than in any other area in the public sector, literature on education leadership and management still reveals a startling degree of confusion among education authorities, managers and leaders over what strategies to apply in order to bring out commitment, positive results and accountability among the school leaders. The authors argue that the confusion is caused by the fact that there has been a dramatic change in education policymaking that has adopted a more market-oriented approach and underplayed the conception of "education as a public good." The authors conclude that this change has led to the obsession of educational authorities with quantifiable outcomes which have an adverse effect on the standard and quality of education in South Africa.

In South Africa, the scholarship of epistemic justice has taken on an historical gaze with higher education framed as a social institution that might ameliorate the historical traumas of colonialism. Undoing the legacies of colonialism has been framed as the democratisation of the knowledge project. Using the White Paper 3 of 1997 that posits academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability as fundamental to institutional governance, in part I of this analysis I broadened public accountability to include the social, political and economic factors that inhibit or act as catalyst to the attainment of educational desire. In this second part publication, I am interested in developing and proposing epistemic impartiality. This concept is developed from Mitova's proposition of 'decolonising knowledge without too much relativism', which ultimately fosters epistemic justice through rigorously scrutinising each epistemic tradition. My suggestion is that epistemic impartiality enables dialogue between divergent traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes the use of a standards-based approach to reporting results from large-scale assessment surveys in South Africa. The use of this approach is intended to address the key shortcomings observed in the current reporting framework prescribed in the national curriculum documents. Using the Angoff method and data from the Annual National Assessments, the article highlights how standard setting procedures should be conducted to develop meaningful reports that provide users with relevant information that can be effectively used to identify and develop appropriate interventions to address learning gaps. The findings of the study produced policy definitions and performance level descriptors that are proposed for use in enhancing the reporting of results for grade six English and mathematics. Moreover, the findings also indicate that the reporting of the Annual National Assessments using the national curriculum reporting categories overestimates the percentage of learners classified at the lowest performance levels and underestimates those in the next category. This finding has serious implications for the implementation of targeted interventions aimed at improving learning for all. The paper concludes by noting areas of further research for enhancing the use of results of large-scale assessment surveys and for supporting schools and teachers in addressing specific learning needs of all learners, especially the poor and marginalised.

The governance of teachers during apartheid in South Africa was characterised by high levels of disparity in teacher distribution and in conditions of labour. In the post-apartheid context policies and interventions that govern teachers are critical, and teachers can be seen to be placed in a central role as actors whose distribution, employment, recruitment and deployment can serve to redress the past, promote equity and build trust for social cohesion. In this context, this paper examines several teacher governance mechanisms and interventions, namely the post provisioning norm and standards (PPNs), the Funza Lushaka Bursary Programme (FLBP), and the South African Council of Educators. The analysis suggests that undifferentiated policy frameworks for teacher governance result in measures that weakly account for differing contextual realities and persistent inequality. Additionally, the emphasis on technocratic measures of accountability in teacher governance interventions constrains teachers' agency to promote peace and social cohesion.

Corruption and malpractices in higher education are today a major concern in nearly all higher education systems worldwide. It is a multifaceted phenomenon and has become particularly visible in the academic domain. This paper represents an exploration of the possible role that quality assurance can play in addressing corruption and malpractices. First, it briefly studies the factors that enhance the risk of corruption and malpractice in higher education. Second, it examines how quality assurance systems can potentially identify and prevent corruption in higher education. Third, it discusses organisational options that prevent corruption in the quality assurance procedure itself. In other words, how the quality assurance procedure should be built in order to lower the risk of becoming itself the object of unethical behaviour and corruption.

This article synthesises findings from two systematic reviews that examined evidence of the link between large-scale assessments (LSAs) and education policy in economically developing countries and in countries of the Asia-Pacific. Analyses summarise evidence of assessment characteristics and policy goals of LSAs that influence education policy, when LSAs are used in the policy-making cycle and types of education policies impacted, and factors that influence the use of LSAs in policy-making. Results show national assessments conducted at both primary and secondary school levels to have an impact on education policy. LSAs are used more often for monitoring education quality and equity purposes followed by accountability purposes. International assessments are more often used to leverage policy priorities than other assessment types. LSAs feature mainly at the monitoring and evaluation stage of the policy cycle. The education policies impacted by LSAs relate considerably more to curricular reforms and performance standards as well as assessment bodies and activities and far less to resource allocation and teaching and learning policies. Finally, whereas the quality of assessment programmes facilitate impact, financial constraints and uncertainty as well as weak assessment bodies hinder the impact of LSAs on education policy.

Over the past 25 years, there has been growing investment in concepts of rights in the areas of HIV prevention, care and treatment, including HIV- and AIDS-related education delivered in schools. Despite this increasing commitment to the notion of rights, few efforts appear to have been made to understand the varying conceptions of rights that underpin different kinds of initiatives. Engaging with a multi-disciplinary body of literature on the issue of rights, and through a focus on three rights-informed HIV- and AIDS-related initiatives, this paper seeks to address this gap in the current literature. In so doing, it also examines a central tension within human rights discourse, namely between the construal of rights as shared and universally applicable to all human beings, while being created in and limited by the location in which they were elaborated, as well as by the language used to formulate them. More explicit engagement with the diversity of approaches made possible through a commitment to human rights may facilitate forms of HIV- and AIDS-related education that are more meaningful to young people.

Since democratisation, South Africa has struggled to create a stable system of local governance. There are constant municipal failures. Higher levels of government have to intervene in municipalities regularly. This study, therefore, set out to assess the effect of intervention mechanisms, including preventative measures, as part of the broader accountability and oversight setting. Based on a qualitative research approach, this paper argues that both prospective and retrospective accountability forms are weak. Post-factum interventions yield only limited results. Overall, these mechanisms are not able to form stable local governments and prevent municipal failures. Ultimately, this paper infers that strengthening prospective accountability and oversight mechanisms has the capacity to increase the stability of the local governance system. This finding has important implications for developing new accountability and oversight practices in South Africa and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, very few standard-setting exercises are carried out in education and, if they are, teachers are not involved in their execution. As a result, there is no clear understanding of what the standard is and how it was arrived at. This situation is compounded when teachers are held accountable when learners do not meet the prescribed standards. The aim of this paper is to explore how teachers experienced a standards-setting process and if any reflection on teaching and learning practices took place. The research question addressed is: How was the SAMP standard-setting exercise experienced by teachers? Standard setting is an important component in monitoring systems whether national or school-based monitoring systems. The South African Monitoring system for Primary Schools (SAMP) is a school-based monitoring system. The Grade 1 SAMP assessment is administered in English, Afrikaans, and Sepedi. As part of SAMP, a standard-setting exercise was undertaken for the Grade 1 assessment to better inform the dissemination of performance results to schools. As part of a bigger research project, a participatory qualitative approach was followed in which 27 participants were asked to partake in a modified Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) process. Several themes were identified by the teachers, namely reflections on practice; emotions before and during the standard setting workshop; benefits of working in a group; and improvements in the process. In this article, these themes are explored and their relevance for standard setting within school contexts discussed.

The paper reports from a comparative study on systems of quality assurance in 19 countries around the globe, and how these systems function as accountability mechanisms. Based on a theoretical framework for assessing how accountability mechanisms can contribute to build trust in the higher education sector, the analysis of the quality assurance systems underline the dominant role of quality assurance systems as the prime accountability mechanism in the sector, often accompanied by semi-autonomous agencies emphasising various forms of accreditation. Based on an assessment of the quality assurance systems it is still suggested that the current forms of accountability are not stimulating the up-building of trust in and of the sector. In the conclusion, some reflections are offered as alternatives to the current situation.