Education Reporter
South African teachers face several challenges on the personal and professional development front, hindering them from progressing as leaders and managers. Topping their challenges are time and money, both needed to further their qualifications.
ADvTECH, SA’s leading private higher education provider, is addressing this challenge. It recently launched the Occupational Certificate: School Principal, offered via its distance learning college, Oxbridge Academy.
“The importance of accessible development opportunities for South African teachers cannot be overstated,” says Siyavuya Makubalo, Marketing Manager at Oxbridge Academy.
“Our teachers are tasked with raising the leaders of the future. However, they seldom can reach their full potential and become leaders themselves. When teachers have the chance to engage in professional development, it directly impacts not only the quality of teaching and learning they deliver in the classroom but also their career trajectories and self-fulfilment.”
Makubalo says the new occupational certificate’s purpose is to prepare teachers to become school managers.
“School managers lead, plan, develop and manage developed systems for effective and efficient delivery of quality education by ensuring the implementation and support of a value-driven ethos for quality teaching.”
“Teachers need to learn to lead and manage teaching and learning in a school; plan and manage the resources of the school; establish, lead and manage the relationship between and the impact of the internal and external community for the development of the school, and develop self and others through life-long learning to deliver quality teaching and learning.”
Makubalo says the benefit of continuing professional development via distance learning is that time-and-finance-stretched teachers can affordably study at their own pace while working and taking care of their loved ones.
“We believe this will be a game-changer for teachers in general, and also the skills complement in South African schools in particular, which is so desperately needed,” she says.
The Occupational Certificate: School Principal is NQF Level 6 accredited by the QCTO and SAQA accredited.
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