Re-thinking management of school-business partnerships: a case of Limpopo area of South Africa

Abstract

The new democratic system in South Africa has inherited an education system that had divided schools along racial, ethnic, urban, rural, public, and private lines. Major challenges of inadequate resources, ineffective school leadership, teaching incompetency, and poor learning attitudes experienced in the South African public schools, which resulted in low learner achievements, have necessitated the need for intervention from different stakeholders, one of them being school-business partnerships. School-business partnerships have been formed with the purpose of improving school leadership, and to consequently impact positively on underperforming schools. For this to be achieved, proponents of democratic leadership believe that school visions, missions and goals will be achieved when parents, teachers, principal, business leaders and employees, municipal or community leaders, as well as education officials, are involved in the decision-making process. The main objective of the study was to establish management interventions for the effective management school-business partnerships, and to establish challenges in the management of school-business partnerships. To find out the above, other objectives were: to investigate the use of a school-business partnerships policy framework; to find out the key stakeholders, roles and relationships in the management of partnerships; and to find out the methods used in implementing development programmes used in school partnerships. Using a mixed-method design, purposive sampling was utilised to gather information from three schools and respondents that had previously participated in the Partnership for Possibility (PfP) project, a partnership involving schools’ principals and experienced businesspeople to help in improving school leadership in the Palala area of Waterberg district in the Limpopo province. The study found that the school-business partnership structure, the school-business partnership policy, and the school-business partnership vision, goals, and objectives were lacking. Further, the roles of the key stakeholders were not identified, and methods of implementation of development programmes were not clearly spelled out. The schools’ business partnership practises lacked foundational principles, guidelines and tools for its effectiveness and efficiency to assist in achieving better school outcomes. The study recommends that developing a strong, focused school-business partnership team is a vehicle to provide innovation in public schools This team should be supported by policy, and consist of members from school, the community, and business. The school and business should include development programmes in their strategic planning, to make education more accessible, equitable and inclusive, with more opportunities.