School principals’ leadership development : lessons from the ACE school leadership programme on leading during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Authors

Kgwete, Ephraim Matala

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Education Association of South Africa

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented the world with many challenges – some of which were unprecedented challenge for school leaders. The South African Department of Education (DoE) introduced a new threshold qualification, an Advanced Certificate in Education (School Leadership) (ACE), which was the first concrete step towards implementing a compulsory professional qualification for principalship. In this study I employed qualitative case study research methods and procedures to investigate the influence of the ACE programme on leadership practices. Six township secondary school principals from the Mpumalanga province, South Africa, who had completed the ACE programme were purposively selected. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. A thematic approach was used to analyse the data. The findings display ample evidence of the nomothetic dimensions of the social systems theory, outweighing the ideographic dimensions in the preparation programme for principals. The study revealed that the programme mostly developed principals’ management practices and needed to develop principals’ leadership skills as well. Furthermore, the study revealed that principals were able to apply the management skills gained from the ACE programme during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Description

This article is based on the doctoral thesis at the University of Pretoria in 2014 of Ephraim Matala Kgwete "Understanding school leadership : a study of the ACE school leadership programme and leadership practices". URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2263/44145

Keywords

Department of Education (DoE), South Africa (SA), Idiographic dimension, Leadership, Leadership practice, Nomothetic dimension, Principals’ leadership roles, Principals’ preparation programmes, Social system, COVID-19 pandemic, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), SDG-04: Quality education

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG-04:Quality Education

Citation

Kgwete, E.M. 2025, 'School principals’ leadership development : lessons from the ACE school leadership programme on leading during the COVID-19 pandemic', South African Journal of Education, vol. 45, no. 1, art. #2026, pp. 1-10, doi : 10.15700/saje.v45n1a2026.