The effect of school inspection on the quality of education in the Ondangwa educational regions of Namibia

Abstract

Abstract provided by author:

The implications of the results of the study are that all the problems pertaining to school inspection can be alleviated by proper training of inspectors and improvement of their conditions of service, because the study has shown that the ineffectiveness of school inspection is attributed to these

The research instruments which were employed in this study were the questionnaires. The sample was 110 respondents. There were 12 inspectors and 98 teachers. Eight hypotheses predicting the nature of the relationships of the research variables were generated and tested. The results of the investigations provided evidence supporting the first six and the eighth hypotheses but not the seventh

The results of the study has shown that inspectors' conditions of service were unsatisfactory. Inspectors were supervising too many schools; they had too much office work to do; most of them were not given job descriptions and inspection policies, consequently they were unlikely to know what and how to inspect and supervise; some inspectors had no reliable official transport; as a result of a shortage of advisory teachers, each inspector was also responsible for the provision of professional support to teachers in his or her inspection circuit

Furthermore, the study has shown that the majority of inspectors had poor educational background. Their highest academic qualification was Grade 12, while their highest professional qualifications were undergraduate teaching qualifications. Only a few of them were given induction when appointed as inspectors, and their in-service training was less effective in that it was either irrelevant to school inspection, too short, or was never followed up. The above-mentioned factors adversely affected the main function of school inspection, namely monitoring and evaluation of the quality of education