In South Africa (SA), since 1994, black and white teachers are not subjected to racially-differentiated regimes of accountability any more. Currently they are uniformly subjected to standard, negotiated accountability policies. The new regime of accountability reflects an attempt to move away from a form of accountability perceived as policing, to one that is supportive and developmental. However, in practice, according to Chisholm and Hoadley (2005), these priorities manifest in distinctly different ways nationally and in local contexts. Despite different intentions, the new accountability regime failed to ensure that teaching constitutes teachers’ central focus and to promote a culture of teaching and learning within most schools. In addition, the Department of Education is perceived to provide minimal support to schools, both in terms of resources and the means to understand and implement new reform. One of the objectives of our investigation was to attempt to understand the different responses to accountability policies, especially when these different responses seem to be aligned with historically designated school types. International frameworks of accountability like that of Ball (2004) or Carnoy, Elmore and Siskin (2003) cannot indiscriminately be applied onto the SA context. For example, external accountability often refers to standardized testing designed to “push” teaching in particular directions. Meeting certain targets is linked to specific rewards and sanctions. In SA a less intrusive, negotiated accountability regime is used to determine compliance with external requirements. There are no particular sanctions for non-compliance. Another objective of our study was to identify and analyse similar differences and similarities between accountability systems internationally and in SA. Generally SA teachers’ scores are rather high. They reported higher internal than external accountability (Mean 4.67, SD .38 and Mean 4.12, SD .50 respectively). This finding may be consistent with the government's emphasis on the developmental aspect of accountability. As in other countries, collectivism (Mean 4.35, SD .51) ranked higher than individualism (Mean 3.93 SD .77). The scores for total accountability (Mean 4.39, SD .38), external accountability and for collectivism are the highest of all countries involved in the study. This might indicate that SA teachers perceive themselves to maintain exceptionally high professional standards.

Ball, S. J. (2004). Performativities and Fabrications in the Education Economy: Towards the Performative Society. In: The Routledge Falmer Reader in Sociology of Education, ed. by S.J. Ball. London: Taylor and Francis. Carnoy, M., Elmore, R, & Siskin, T. (eds.) (2003). The New Accountability: High Schools and High Stakes Testing. New York: Routledge Falmer. Chisholm, L. and Hoadley, U. (2005). The new accountability and teachers’ work in South Africa. Pretoria: HSRC.