EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHERS’ PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL PRACTICES: THE CASE OF HARAR SOS HERMANN GMEINER SCHOOL

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the Effectiveness of Teachers’ Performance Appraisal Practices in Harar SOS Hermann Gmeiner School. To this end, the major objective is to examine how much school appraisal practices meets the objective, to assess the school appraisal process, to identify the major problems that affect the school teachers’ performance appraisal effectiveness and give recommendations. The methodological frame work was descriptive case study where a qualitative and quantitative approach were used. A total of forty teachers and three managers drawn from schools were used as data sources that were selected by employing available sampling technique. The data were gathered by means of focus group discussion, questionnaire, interview and document analysis and the instruments were pilot tested. The major findings of the study included that quite majority of the respondents disagreed with the school Performance Appraisal practice developmental benefit, and it executes to rank out the school teachers only, rather than identify the school teachers weaknesses and frame training for them, The major stake holders in teachers performance appraisal is teachers, For the right implementation of the performance appraisal practice, Teachers should be involved in the preparation of the guideline and they have to know about the standard of the system. However they are not involved in the system at every stage of the process, even the result of the performance appraisal is kept secret and it is not communicated to teachers immediately, The study show that the school teachers performance appraisal practice has no quality progress for the last three years and also it has problems when it comes to the implementation on schedule and communication. So the researcher summarized that problems are encountered in the implementation of performance appraisal scheme and the school management does not use the performance appraisal for developmental purpose, It is rather for evaluation purpose by giving the result at the end, and also the study show that the school performance appraisal practice is ineffective and problematic. And the researcher recommends that the school management should give a chance for teachers to participate in the guide line and system development and it would be good for the school management to use appraisal by taking pre and post observation for teachers professional development, The school management should use the system as a tool for identifying the weakness of teachers’ professional competency. And necessary steps should be taken by the concerned authority in order to revitalize the current practice of the performance appraisal of the teachers. To this effect, relevant appraisal should be an integral part of staff development work in the schools which is both positive and constructive. In this regard formative evaluation should come to the track for the real achievement of the school appraisal goal.