Expulsion on the cards for school heads who fail

A report card for principals is set to shake things up at South Africa's schools.

Headmasters face being demoted or fired for failing to monitor teacher performance or managing absenteeism levels .

The hard-hitting proposals from the Department of Basic Education would require principals and their deputies to sign performance agreements for the first time.

The director-general of the department, Bobby Soobrayan, said the main purpose was to deal with "low performance".

"Looking at the annual national assessment results, we can see we have a major performance quality challenge in this country and this is a measure to deal with that."

While some principals have welcomed the proposals, others felt they should only be implemented once all schools were equally resourced.

Vishnu Naidoo, head of Buffelsdale Secondary on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast, said: "Former Model C schools are adequately staffed and have enough money. At my school, the funding norm is R160 per pupil and only 30% of pupils are able to afford the R900 annual school fees." He said absenteeism would always be a problem.