Transform schooling in South Africa

Transform schooling in South Africa

Shadows of the past

The school matriculation results for 2014 show a lower pass rate for KwaZulu-Natal province than in the previous year. Political administrators have taken a measure of responsibility (Mercury, 7 January 2015), a commendable action on their part. They have also quite correctly pointed to poor teacher performance as a major causal factor, attributing it not only to poor training, but to weak subject knowledge and even laziness.

There’s little point in becoming obsessed by these indicators, since they are primarily reflective of the fortunes of the millions of pupils and students moving through the system of twelve years of schooling, rather than just those writing matriculation. If one is to understand the poor performance of many learners, one needs to focus on their experiences during the earlier years of schooling. And one needs to maintain balance; many learners not in the firing-line have done very well indeed.

Many have done very well indeed.
End of a journey; start of another. 

Of the total number of pupils who entered schooling more than a decade ago, only about one-quarter finally ‘passed’ their formal education with a satisfactory result. Many fell out along the way, and a few failed at the final hurdle. In some cases they were hampered by persistently large classes and the non-delivery or late delivery of text books. Some were not allowed progression at a late senior secondary stage, to prevent their failures from being added to the final statistic. When one takes the initial entry numbers of those coming into the system into account, the overall result is dismal.

It is common knowledge that much exam-coaching of students is done in the higher levels, which with the production of exam model answers results in slightly elevated pass rates but poor educational experiences. Exam papers are sometimes sold, and cheating is apparently rife, with 5300 students currently subject to investigation (Mercury, 09 January 2015). The reasons for failure are complex, made up of a great many factors. The aetiology behind an inadequate schooling system and the actual, limited educational experiences derived from it by many pupils is more complex still.

The root cause

From the early days of the apartheid era when the differential of spending was decided on racial grounds (R16 per white child, R1 per African child in 1971) to the present day, the rot has gnawed away steadily. The weaknesses in our education system are a compound of many factors, but in the modern day a lack of sufficiently deeply committed, well-trained and creative professional teachers remains the root cause. One reads statements to this effect in the front-page article of the Mercury of 7 January 2015.

One gets the feeling that some within the teacher corps simply do not understand the level of commitment and hard grind required by the profession. Unions do not seem willing to intervene. The slogan still seems to be the old historical one of ‘rights before service’.

Talk and chalk methodologies have prevailed throughout the history of education in South Africa, in which teacher-centred instructional methods were widely prevalent, supported by a standardised textbook. Content-dissemination and memorisation were prevalent methodologies, with little thought given in many schools to creativity and innovatory thinking.

CORDTEK

I served on the staff of the Edgewood College of Education in Pinetown, a suburb of Durban, for over twenty years. I was Deputy Rector for the last few years of service, and was therefore deeply implicated in training thousands of teachers over two decades. Our Rector, Professor Andre le Roux liaised with more than a hundred institutions for training, via CORDTEK (Committee of Rectors and Deans for Teacher Education KwaZulu-Natal).  Senior staff committed to working together in the ‘New South Africa’ then emerging, to maintain and even enhance standards by open-minded collaboration and the sharing of facilities.

In the New South Africa that emerged in 1994, such projects as CORDTEK were however rejected by the new incumbents. Thereafter, many highly competent professional administrators, lecturers and teachers retired of their own volition or were encouraged to retire, thus losing a great deal of accumulated wisdom and experience.

Seeking a way forward

I personally welcomed the New South Africa and during the ten years prior to the political changes of 1994 undertook research on multi-cultural, non-racial education and gave numerous public addresses in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

The research was a D.Phil. study titled An exploratory study of the South African New Era Schools Trust. A four-year longitudinal study, it was completed in 1989 through the University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu-Natal).

I analysed the possible pathways of transition to a non-racial dispensation, encouraged privileged institutions to accept the process in a positive way and urged an open-hearted, collaborative effort.

During our staffroom discussions in the 1980s and early 1990s, the view was expressed that it could take thirty years or more for South Africa to move beyond the apartheid legacy. This implied attempting to construct or upgrade adequate school buildings and other facilities, develop multi-cultural curricula, re-organise disparate systems and their administrations, integrate teacher education institutions, alter mindsets as best possible, reduce class sizes and enhance examination procedures.

A lingering cost of the struggle

During the College’s practical teaching programmes, for which I was responsible as Deputy Rector, I liaised with three hundred school principals and visited many primary and secondary schools. I noted how the prevailing disillusion with highly discriminatory apartheid education had for years been channelled into resistance to the system, often activated as a go-slow on the part of educators. It was an understandable reaction, yet at the heart of it lay future disaster for South Africa.

In many schools, very little education was taking place. The liberation ends were seen to justify the means. Some principals who tried to raise their school’s standards and provide sound leadership were threatened, and office windows were smashed and the buildings even set on fire. With their lives at risk, it was understandable that most teachers accepted the status quo; thus setting a pattern for the future. As far as I could make out, many parents were prepared to accept the situation since they too, would ultimately benefit from political change.

I had for long recognised the political ends (a non-racial schooling system) as necessary and commendable, but was wary of the destructive means used to achieve those ends. Teachers were vulnerable to settling into a comfortable pattern of minimalist teaching that would not be suited to the transformed and vigorous society South Africa required. Training colleges were not immune; and there, too, resistance at all costs was the watchword.

I believe that the pattern set in those years has persisted to the present day. Apartheid during the seventies and eighties was successful in teaching people how to resist through withholding their labour. It seems to have continued to the present time, although formal apartheid is long gone. And all the while, few civil servants have given serious thought for the children who were caught in the middle of the fracas; their needs became secondary or lost sight of. Indeed, apartheid has much to answer for, but so has the lethargy and occasional arrogance that superseded it.

Since those years my wife and I, who have no children of our own, have seen to the education of numerous young Zulu boys and girls. It became our alternative commitment. All are now adults to whom we gave a home, financed as best possible, motivated and guided during their years of education. Several are now qualified with diplomas or degrees. The experience, not yet concluded, has given us insights into many aspects of current education. My wife retired from a secondary school principal post a few years back, so our insights have remained current.

After the advent of a ‘new’ South Africa, the ‘new brooms’ in formal state education got busy; quite possibly too busy. Some of the remaining most competent teachers left or were ousted by officialdom making their lives unbearable. Many in-service courses dwelt on the historical past rather than the promising future. And, they brought in ill-conceived changes without sufficient preparation of those who would implement the system.

Outcomes Based Education

Outcomes Based Education was a monumental, sweeping curriculum change rather than simply a reformulation of syllabi requiring upgrades. It was developed during the 1990s and expanded with the New Millennium. It relied on assessment statements that forced convergence of thought on a single, clearly defined answer as means to avoid discrimination between races, cultures and classes. In practice, creative answers were often seen as controversial because they sometimes deviated from the official statement of outcome. One either knew the answer or didn’t. For teachers with a lively imagination, their profession became a highly-regulated, debilitating endeavour.

My wife and I visited New Zealand in 2005 for a principals’ conference, and I arranged an interview with senior officials in the capital Wellington. I heard many cautions about outcomes based education, including pointers about the increased administrative burden it brought, entrenchment of linear, convergent thinking, and much more.

Despite the caveats, this became the new great way forward, with a tendency to relapse into monumental administrative overload. Only the end-product of a section within a syllabus was widely seen to have value, and methods of teaching and learning lapsed in importance. The route to the end product was of little consequence, as long as it could be classified under banal labels such as ‘practical’, ‘knowledge’ or ‘question and answer’.  

As the familiar teacher-centred approaches of the past were rejected in favour of radical new freedoms for the learners, confusion reigned and there was loss of discipline in many schools. The transformation was too rapid, confusing and bluntly implemented. Teacher morale took a pounding.

The fundamental literacies of languages and number deteriorated further to become matters of secondary importance. Yet these critical, symbolic domains of learning still inevitably constituted the means by which all other meanings of the ‘empirics’, ‘aesthetics’, and synoptic ‘subjects’ were conveyed.

A confusion of policies

Teachers already struggling with quite simple teaching methods in the midst of harsh conditions were overwhelmed by the constant shift in a confusion of policies and requirements as these evolved, transformed and sometimes disappeared without trace. Since for six years I offered training within the SETA system, I became aware that in the early stages the officials administering the system were often far less informed about its nuances that we who were already widely experienced educators.

Now, in the second decade of the new millennium, the government is trying to rectify matters through the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). This document could remedy some of the more obvious deficiencies of the past, but it has brought yet another set of requirements to be negotiated, digested and implemented by teachers. The sometimes weak 2014 results are blamed partly on CAPS. It is fingered as something imposed without adequate preparation.

One longs for a time when the National Education Departments will have approved, settled curricula, with syllabi within it nuanced and modified only as is necessary. That would avoid the morale-destroying massive curricular revolutions that make teachers feel that everything done before was a mistake and waste of time.

Edgewood

Typically, we who served at Edgewood were committed professionals who made their vocation a central part of their lives. But however we express it, we tended to be shielded from the most debilitating experiences.

To lecture and teach was a rare privilege, something to be nurtured, nourished and valued beyond most other things in life. We were there to serve the children of this country, not ourselves. And many of us worked steadily towards a non-racial society free of prejudice. For a few of us, salaries were things you received at the end of the month with gratitude, because such an astonishingly special profession went with it.

But we, and many other educationists working ceaselessly in privileged environments were not heroes; just professionals doing a reasonable job.

The real heroes

To put things in perspective, more worthy than any of us at Edgewood are the teachers who served truly impoverished communities with commitment and resolve, under the difficult conditions brought about by apartheid. Some endured unmotivated and faltering leadership, others worked in decrepit crumbling buildings. Yet others suffered from the generational transmission of illiteracy from poverty-stricken parents with no resources to offer their children, while others interacted with parents who had no interest whatsoever in their offspring’s education. The teachers who wrestled in the front line with these problems and never gave up are the real heroes. 

Deep-seated flaws

In thinking through some of the errors of the past, we need to engage with systemic (and systematic) thinking, especially with some of the so-called ‘archetypes’ or fatal flaws that have dogged the emerging structure. As pointed out, many can be traced back to the burst of euphoria and emotion, not rationality that emerged after 1994. 

Negative perceptions

It is clear from the plethora of articles, reports, and anecdotes that have emerged during the past couple of decades that there were, and still are, many in service within education who remain a source of shame to their colleagues. Many are apparently comfortable with an existence in which they remain uncommitted, lazy, unimaginative and poorly trained. Some are content with their now comparatively indulged and protected lives. Indeed, these factors have been identified and stated publicly by senior officials within a week of the time of writing.

Although it is understandable that some might relapse into unproductive comfort, in a sense it is a betrayal of trust in a country that has come a long way towards an equalisation of educational opportunity. The syndrome has been destructive of our nation’s most precious possession, our youth. The 2005 Human Sciences Research Council report Educator workload in South Africa (Chisholm, L., et al.) paints a picture of teachers’ effort tailing off during the working week, with some teachers only spending 46% of their time actually teaching, and some as low as 10%.

Other time is given to administration, union meetings, and so on. In some schools, one understands, unprofessional behaviour has been identified by education authorities. Currently, cheating has held back the dissemination of results, with 58 matriculation exam centres indicted in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. At the time of writing, 5 300 matriculants (1% of candidates) were being investigated for cheating (Mercury, 9 January). Government is to be commended for investigating and declaring the figures so openly.

We have seen a drop in pass rates of the 2014 matriculants for mathematics, science and second language. There are especially dismal performances in some cases, with the products of the formal state education system in South Africa rated low in Africa and the World. Teacher absenteeism and general non-commitment to the bigger vision is sometimes blamed (Mail and Guardian, 8 July 2011). Where, then, is the much-vaunted ‘ubuntu’ towards our youth?’

Teacher training

Teacher training has also been fraught with difficulties. A great loss of teachers to the system occurred in the early years, when many left after the installation of a new government in 1994 brought perceptions of ‘reverse’ racial discrimination and stalled careers. Since that time there have been periods when far more teachers have left the profession than entered it. The integration of colleges of education and teacher training colleges into universities has also, arguably, lowered the standard of teaching, as the unique focus on education and teaching rather than content knowledge was lost by this move.

The way forward

The following suggestions are made in an effort to move a faltering system forward.

1.    Principals.

Give sound, informed, committed, ethical and inspiring leadership, with the pupils and their parents placed centrally before any other considerations. Principals need to confer on the concept of professionalism and then lead the way in demonstrating it in practice. Your role is too crucial to the success of our country. There can be no Plan B.

 

2.    Teachers

Re-commit to professionalism, with the pupils and students at the centre of your professional lives. Being professional implies valuing one’s  knowledge and experience, focusing on service before self-interest, following a meaningful Code of Conduct, building on initial training by pursuing one’s  own scheme of further service training, and submitting to moderation by a professional council of peers. One might also pursue lifelong learning and a course in cognitive enhancement.

 

3.    If a teacher has the capacity, they might retrain for the critical subjects the country needs, such as mathematics, sciences and language of the economy.

 

4.    All educators must display professional conduct in the discharge of their duties. They must at least:

·         Have a commitment that pursues service and not a comfortable existence.

·         Be punctual.

·         Master the curriculum components, or syllabi, that they must teach.

·         Prepare and teach a range of lessons, including approaches that depend on at least learner-centred question and answer and discussion, the use of group work and individual assignments, as applicable.

·         Treat children with absolute propriety and respect, while ensuring a disciplined environment.

·         Simplify their administration yet maintain quality, and make basic teaching the priority.

·         Follow one’s individual conscience rather than the crowd.

·         Evaluate and assess learners’ work systematically and meticulously.

 

5.    Teacher Unions

Unions should support and indeed lead a move to promote teaching as a full-blooded profession in which service to the pupils and their parents is given equal weight to concerns with salaries and service conditions. Expressed differently, union officials need to see the promotion of teachers’ duties and responsibilities as equal in importance to the support for teacher rights.

 

6.    Business should have a far more powerful say in education, giving government a lead as to what attributes and skills are required for success in industry and business, from time to time. Business should be cultivated as an ally of government in the fight for a sound education system, and not a hindrance or even oppositional force.

 

7.    Every student in South African schools should at some time engage with a course in entrepreneurship, including how to run a small business and how to fit into a variety of enterprises.

 

8.    A system should be put into place to hold teachers accountable for their personal performance. In fact, if all government officials had to place their children in state schools, it would hold them more accountable too.

 

9.    Greater devolution of authority should be permitted. There is as much intelligence nestled in peripheral areas as there is at the centre; and there could be more creative thinking and positive ownership besides.

 

A better future

 

I remain intensely interested in education in South Africa, hence the disappointment inherent in this piece of writing. I will not accept that, while we have made enormous strides in developing a non-racial system (a desperately difficult task in the presence of so many contested political interests), we have regressed or at least shown little progress in some core areas. I expected better.

 

Were my wife’s and my long careers in education wasted? No. And there is no bitterness. Through teaching, my wife and I have left useful ideas with numerous school and college students as well as our Zulu family. Tens of thousands of other committed educators and educationists of all races have done the same; and no doubt done it far better than we.

 

Correcting matters is a national endeavour. Or else, we sink as a nation. Effective teaching is the core requirement of the entire educational edifice. All else is subservient to it. The teachers of this country hold the future in their hands. It’s time they began to lead the way to a better future for all South Africans. But they needs the tools and support to do it.