There is much concern in South Africa about the quality of teaching in our schools, and many teacher
development programmes have introduced a classroom support component where in-service teachers are assessed
on their teaching practice skills. However, limited research related to the support and assessment functions of such
interventions has been published. The qualitative study reported in this paper focused on the feedback reports
given to 249 rural mathematics and science teachers as part of the assessment of their teaching practices. The
teachers from the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) were enrolled on a teacher development
programme. The purpose of the study was to explore the nature of the feedback reports that were provided and to
assess the value of allocating assessment scores to the teachers. The data were broken down into 1 028 feedback
units that were used to generate open codes. These codes were refined into six main categories. The findings reveal
that the written comments covered a range of issues related to teacher professional development. However, the
majority of the comments did not provide rich opportunities for reflection. It was also found that the scores lay
within a narrow range and did not work well in differentiating between a range of competencies. It is recommended
that the feedback role of the university tutor should receive more attention than that of the evaluative function
of the classroom support visits.