JOHANNESBURG: Nearly two months after the Governing Body Foundation (GBF) released a troubling finding that almost 60% of public school principals are ready to quit over overwhelming red tape, the Department of Basic Education has yet to respond to its recommendations.
GBF Chief Executive Officer Marna Jordaan said the foundation would raise the matter at the National Curriculum Framework meeting on 5 September and ask what action, if any, had been implemented since the report was released on 17 June.
“I want feedback from DBE on what they have done with this information. Where do we stand? Have they begun to do something about it? We are not going to let go,” she said in an interview.
Two weeks ago, the department had asked the GBF to resend the survey report, the Administrative Load of Public School Principals. “This is despite it being publicly available and despite the findings having already been discussed with the minister’s advisory structure.”
The report, based on responses from 305 principals – the majority of whom were from primary schools – found that 84% of principals very often worked after hours and 92% said their administrative workload had increased over five years. The responses were gathered across four provinces during March this year.
The burden extended beyond under-resourced, no-fee lower-quintile schools. More than 70% of respondents came from Quintile 5 schools, showing the problem is “not primarily a resource-poverty issue but a systemic failure in the way reporting and compliance are managed”, the report found.
I was a principal for 29 years and they would ask me three times a year how many toilets I had on the school premises. If I told them in January there were 25 toilets, the chances of that changing are very small.
Among its recommendations were coordinated reporting calendars across national, provincial and district offices, minimum notice periods for information requests, fewer last- minute meetings, simplified compliance requirements and digital reporting systems that would eliminate repeated requests for the same information, and ensuring communication is coordinated, targeted and purposeful.
Drawing on her own experience, Jordaan said schools were often asked to provide information that hardly changed from one reporting cycle to the next. “I was a principal for 29 years and they would ask me three times a year how many toilets I had on the school premises. If I told them in January there were 25 toilets, the chances of that changing are very small.”
While employing additional administrative staff would help, it would not solve the problem if the reporting system remained unchanged. “We have a little slogan that says ‘capture once, use many times’. This is what we are trying to get them to do because that will make a difference,” Jordaan said.
For Jordaan, the pressure is expected to intensify as primary schools implement compulsory Grade R without the infrastructure and staffing needed to absorb additional learners.
Jordaan suggested that the DBE could learn from the South African Police Service, which urgently redirected funds to beef up security operations during the June 30 anti-immigration protests. “When there was fear that huge unrest would break out in the country, suddenly they said they would make R600 million available for this crisis … Now, why can’t the education department do the same, to redistribute the money to fund the problem?”
Responding to queries, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube’s spokesperson Lukhanyo Vangqa referred to a National Education and Training Council review that confirmed that reporting tools had become fragmented and duplicated.
“The findings were that, in an effort to monitor the strengthening of curriculum, teacher training, accountability and other functions, the department has created a number of reporting tools that are sometimes fragmented and duplicated, thereby reducing efficiency.”
Vangqa added that it would issue directives in the second quarter of 2026 to drastically reduce the number of reporting tools required in schools. Although the quarter has passed, he did not say whether the directives had been implemented or identify which reporting requirements, if any, had been removed.
University of South Africa education professor Gezani Baloyi said the department should focus on strengthening the capacity of school management teams to implement policy and manage resources efficiently. “Some managers come across huge amounts of funds and do not have clear competencies in terms of handling that. Financial management is key,” he explained.
Baloyi said the department should invest in continuous training and learn from provinces where management systems were already working. “We need to benchmark and try to find out what good things are happening out there that we can put into our practice. We need to skill and reskill, train and retrain them so that they will have competencies.”
Equal Education board chairperson Mbekezeli Benjamin, speaking in his personal capacity, said many administrative systems had become outdated and should be reviewed regularly. Stronger school governing bodies and greater community involvement would also relieve pressure. “Education is not a government-only thing. It is a whole-of-society issue.”
National Association of Teachers’ Union representative Tsediso Hlalele agreed that principals needed stronger support but said many also failed to make full use of existing management structures. “While we wait for the department to resolve these problems which we know will take time, principals need to use the internal support they have, like their deputies, to help with the workload, because a failure to delegate work is a problem; they cannot be an island,” he said.
