Exploring Principals’ Reflections of Curriculum Management Changes in South African Rural Primary Schools

The educational processes constantly change and put much pressure on principals of primary schools in South Africa. This paper explores reflections of primary school principals and challenges they encountered when implementing and managing curriculum. The reflections will be sought from grade 6 rural primary principals in Mpumalanga province. A qualitative method of inquiry was used in this paper were data was collected using individual interviews with three principals and focus group discussions with School Management Teams (SMTs) of three primary schools. Findings show that the techniques used to administer the Annual National Assessment (ANA) are problematic; the timing of administering the ANA tests poses a challenge to principals. The National guidelines indicating aspects to be covered during ANA tests are not distributed to schools. The findings imply a need for greater capacity building of principals and further research into continuous curriculum changes in South African education system DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p122