About three quarters of principals and deputy principals who participated in a teacher development programme have failed to achieve the minimum score required.

A system known as Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) is administered by the SA Council for Educators (Sace), and is aimed at improving teaching and management styles.

Teachers are expected to achieve a minimum of 150 professional development points within three years by participating in a range of activities.

But almost 75% of principals and deputy principals - 3458 out of 4628 - who participated failed to achieve the minimum points in the stipulated three-year period.

The three categories of tasks for which teachers are awarded points include those that are self-chosen, school-initiated and those organised by the education department or service providers.

For example, a self-chosen task could include reading an educational article from a magazine, newspaper, journal, research paper or website, with teachers who read a minimum of four of these being awarded 10 points a year.

In an article published in the April edition of Educator's Pulse, a Sace in-house publication, the author expresses disappointment over the results of the first group of principals and deputy principals who participated in the CPTD system from 2013 to 2016.

"It is equally disappointing to note that the majority of the first group either did not participate in the system or participated but did not reach the expected minimum of 150 professional development points," the article stated.

"This happened even after the council extended the reporting period to June 30 2017, mobilised teacher unions and the South African Principals Association to organise support sessions, and also developed and implemented the acceleration plan to support them, which unfortunately very few attended."

Despite the poor results, Sace has set itself an ambitious target of getting more than 158000 teachers, heads of department, deputy principals and principals, to complete self-initiated professional development tasks this year, and a further 174639 next year.

It has earmarked R16-million for the implementation of CPTD this year.

But Anthea Cereseto, an education consultant and former headmistress of Parktown Girls High in Johannesburg, believed the problem was largely administrative.

"There are more than 400000 teachers, and the system is enormous and requires a lot of manpower."

Cereseto said the problem was that there were not enough relevant programmes for teachers. She said the idea behind CPTD was that teachers would choose programmes to improve their own knowledge to become better teachers or managers.

Sace spokesperson Themba Ndhlovu said there was a misconception that the process "leads to extra administrative work".

He said schools and external providers were not reporting activities that teachers had participated in.

"Some say they are leaving the system in the next three years, so why should they participate in it.

"The rationale was that we are registering professionals. Why should we then move from the premise that says they are not going to comply?"