Heads of departments experiences of school mergers in North West province

Abstract

Although there has been much research on school mergers, there has not been a strong focus on the way in which heads of departments (hereafter HoDs) in the North West province experience school mergers. This qualitative case study, which used an interpretative paradigm, built on and contributed to understanding successful strategies used by displaced HoDs from middle to primary or secondary schools in performing their roles and responsibilities after the school mergers, the challenges they experienced and how they approached such challenges. Semi-structured interviews and a document analysis with purposive sampling of nine (9) participants, comprising six (6) female HoDs and six (3) male HoDs, were used to collect the requisite data. The study was underpinned by a conceptual framework, to identify and construct my views as a researcher, on the HoDs experiences of school mergers in North West province (Adom, Hussein & Agyem, 2018) as a lens for data analysis. The study findings indicated that there had been a significant change in the roles and responsibilities performed by the displaced HoDs. The HoDs had also demonstrated resistance to the school mergers as they had not been prepared for handling tensions and opposition (Pinheiro, Geschwind & Aarrevaara, 2016). It was also found that the HoDs had different understandings and interpretations of the concept of a school merger, and that the NWDoE had undermined them and had also not prepared them adequately enough for both the school merged and to cope in their new roles. The findings also indicated that the NWDoE had done very little to involve the HoDs in the entire school merger process. In addition, the findings also revealed that generally teaching and administering curriculum was a challenge for some of the expatriate HoDs due content gap in the subject areas allocated to them in their new roles. Accordingly, the study pointed out the need for retraining and workshopping the displaced HoDs, as well as placement in line with their areas of specialisation and proficiency. It was hoped that this might help them to handle the tensions they were experiencing and to decrease their opposition, diminish their resistance and, finally, assist them in performing their hugely changed roles and responsibilities in their new schools.