The South African Schools Act (1996)
is a landmark measure which, on the face of it, fulfils the dreams of
generations of anti-apartheid activists: it establishes a unitary
education system under a single national ministry of education; it
abolishes corporal punishment; it makes schooling compulsory and
specifically rules out inability to pay fees as a reason for excluding
any child from school; it abolishes Model C schools and puts ail
schools on an equal funding basis - at last the pernicious disparities
between what was spent on black, brown and white children wife be
ended. All of which sounds wonderful, which is presumably why the
Democratic Party reversed its opposition to the bill in committee to
give it support in the end.
Yet the fact is that the new Act represents a virtual legislative coup
by education committee chairman, Blade Nzimande.
When the education minister, Professor Sibusio Bengu, began to draft
his Bill he was strongly cautioned by a team of foreign educational
consultants that he must, at all costs, avoid radical "levelling-down"
solutions: the greatest disaster would be to make state schools a
byword for uniform mediocrity, for this would trigger an unstoppable
movement towards private schooling by all who could afford it. The
state system, thus bereft of its best teachers and pupils, would then
go into a decline which would be very hard to halt. As a result Bengu
consulted widely and carefully crafted a Bill which took into account
the interests of a wide range of stakeholders.
Nzimande effectively tore up this draft and substituted his own so
that in committee the National Party and DP were actually arguing to
defend Bengu's original Bill against an ANC majority which followed its
South African Communist Party chairman rather than the minister.
Nzimande's strong leveller instincts were, however, carefully dressed
in terms of the sort of principles which made opposition very difficult
to sustain. Whether the Act will be as successful in halting the
predicted bolt towards the private sector remains to be seen.
As usual, an Inordinate amount of attention was paid by all sides to
the small percentage of schools that are designated as Model C, with
much angry rhetoric swapped over such side issues as the apparent
disappearance of the prefect system. Far more significant for the
future of the country is the state of the old black Department of
Education and Training schools where, inevitably, the overwhelming
majority of the country's children will be found both now and in the
future.
The problem of
governance
Critical to such schools is the question of governance. The legacy of
apartheid lies heavy upon them In the shape of such basic problems as
under funding, a shortage of classrooms with consequent overcrowding,
textbook shortages, inadequate and ill repaired facilities, a lack of
qualified teachers and so on. But the most crucial problems of all in
such schools today relate to questions of discipline and authority. In
effect, the 1976 Soweto rising inaugurated a 20 year crisis of
authority which shows no sign of ending. Teachers and principals were
frequently perceived as government stooges, not worthy of respect; some
were attacked and killed, many others intimidated and more still simply
pushed aside and ignored. Township schools were racked by continual
boycotts and stayaways. Parents frequently despaired of such schools
and sent their children away to the [rather less disturbed] schools in
the so-called homelands.
The devastating effects of this period are still with us. The schools'
governing bodies, the school boards - comprising parents, teachers and
the principal - have seldom had much success in restoring authority and
discipline in schools. The author, a black parent herself, can attest
to the state of near despair felt by many black parents over the
education on offer to their children in most township schools. In many
such schools political struggles continue between the radical South
African Democratic Teachers' Union and its older rivals such as the
Transvaal United African Teachers' Association and the Natal African
Teachers Union, with the Congress of South African Students and other
ANC aligned youth associations also often a force. Sometimes political
parties themselves get involved. SADTU sometimes campaigned for the
abolition of principals, and school inspectors were frequently chased
away. Most parents quickly drop from view when such battles
start.
A more general problem, however, is that of teacher de-motivation. The
authority of school principals has eroded to the point where teachers
generally decide for themselves when to attend classes - which are
frequently skipped altogether. Teachers often spend lengthy periods
sitting outside, reading and writing their private assignments, and
some even frequent the city and shebeens during school hours. [Some
school principals are guilty of similar truancy.] Pupils -the new
politically correct term is "learners" - have only the rudiments of
self discipline to fall back on and a Lord of the Flies world can
easily develop. Not only is there no culture of learning in such
schools but in many there is a positive culture of non-learning. (The
author can gauge the results from her own nine year old, educated to
date in Model C and private schools. At Grade II his general scholastic
level is superior to that of Standard 5 pupils in Soweto.)
A new framework
The Schools Act attempts to provide a new framework of governance,
abolishing the old and generally unlamented school boards. The boards,
intended to function between the schools and the provincial department
of education, consisted of up to 12 members elected for a period of
three years, and normally included parents-though not any of the other
stakeholders in education such as industry, the churches or the wider
community. Probably no system of school governance would have been
equal to the fierce political turbulence of the 1980s but the boards
were in any case too weak, with power to administer funds for building
and equipment maintenance but with no real control over how a school
worked, teacher appointments or internal discipline.
Not surprisingly, the boards were seldom able to attract substantial
people willing to exercise such limited powers on an unpaid basis, and
at the majority of black schools governing bodies existed in name
only.
The new Schools Act retains the centralist bias of the old system in
that such key questions as drawing up curricula and syllabi, the
overall allocation of resources and the last word over teacher
appointments remain firmly with the national and provincial
governments. Under them every public school is endowed with a two tier
governing structure, a parent-teacher association for primary schools
and parent-teacher-student association for secondary schools, with a
management executive consisting of the school principal, his deputies
and heads of department, implementing the PTA-PTSA decisions.
Under the Act the PTSAs have authority over finance, discipline,
maintenance and teacher appointments. Their roles and powers include
among others the following:
- Policy formulation
- Ensuring more equitable utilisation of existing resources
- Provision [via community fund raising] of such facilities as
gymnasia
- Determination of curricula, time schedules, admissions, language
and religious policies.
- Drawing up a constitution, and the mission statement of the
school
- Keeping school records
- Preparing annual budgets.
Are parents up to it?
The Act implicitly recognises that the exercise of such functions may
be beyond many PTAs-PTSAs and therefore provides for an ambitious
capacity-building programme in which members will receive training in
democratic decision making/ financial management, conflict management;
communication skills, how to identify school needs, and so on. A second
tier of training will be provided for management executives [school
development, staff management, team and leadership skills etc] and a
third for the school students representative councils. There is even
provision for training within the wider community in parental skills,
parental involvement in school affairs and so forth. R8 million of
Reconstruction and Development Programme money has been committed in
Gauteng alone so that this training effort - to be handled by
non-governmental organisations over four years -can be launched in
1997, with similar efforts mounted elsewhere.
What is one to make of
this?
No one doubts that parental involvement is both desirable and
necessary. A good example of what it can achieve may be seen at
Katlehong High School where the principal, Mr Mamadi, sits on the PTSA
with 12 parents, six teachers and six learners. It helps no little that
11 of the twelve parents have themselves passed matric and the twelfth
has a degree.
The PTSA has been active in fund raising, in interviewing and
appointing teachers, drawing up a school budget, conflict resolution,
and it has formulated a school mission statement. !t has attempted to
gain maximum parental involvement: parents are now compelled to collect
their children's quarterly reports in person and sign for them. This
not only means parents cannot claim ignorance of their children's
performance but, since report day is timed to coincide with a general
parents' meeting, it has increased attendance at those meetings- Its
most tangible achievement has been its successful fund raising from
parents to renovate the school buildings, with doors and windows
replaced, walls painted, and so on. Not surprisingly, Mamadi is
optimistic about the future.
Others are more sceptical. Ms Sheila Mabuza, the principal of Andrew
Chakane Junior School in Diepkloof-Soweto, is able to point to such
PTSA successes as a school cleaning campaign, a Bible day and so on,
but she is concerned that the PTSAs will face many of the same
difficulties as the old school boards, especially since most schools
will have to depend on parents of low educational level, often lacking
in knowledge and confidence. And like the boards, the PTSAs will have
unpaid members serving for only three year terms.
Political problems
remain
Moreover, the PTSAs and PTAs have far less power than it may seem on
every significant matter - on the curriculum, language, religion,
teacher appointments, admissions, money and just about everything else,
the education department has the final say. Indeed, even the
composition of a PTA or PTSA has to be agreed by a member of the
provincial government. In practice the PTAs and PTSAs will, in the
main, be mere forums and all real power will be either in the hands of
the education department or the management executive.
A key question throughout the school system is how fees are to be
charged and collected. Given that schools are specifically forbidden to
refuse to take children whose parents do not pay fees, it is easy to
imagine that payment of such fees might become as sporadic as, for
example, payment of TV licenses.
But there are more fundamental problems too. Change in township
schools has been largely student driven over the past two decades and
the whole idea of PTSAs - that is, of including learners on the
governing body, stems very much from ANC circles and in many parents'
ears, has a partisan ring to it. It is by no means certain that the
whole notion of according students such authority will be accepted. In
effect, what has hitherto been seen as a partisan framework now needs
to be accepted as non-partisan and "normal". Or again, the Act says
that parents may be a majority on PTSAs but this question too will be a
major battleground. Unions like TUATA and NATU are unhappy that
students should have a voice in the appointment of teachers, but SADTU
is more concerned that teacher appointments might be subject to a
parental majority on PTSAs: the union wants to see a majority for
teachers and students on PTSAs in the hope that this will give
appointment power to a "progressive" bloc which it would hope to
control. The ideological battle in the schools is, in a word, far from
over.
Questions of authority
remain
But most of all, of course, there is a great danger that the cart is
being put before the horse. The crying need is for better education in
the classroom - and the Act is more concerned about teaching
"leadership skills" to all sorts of people outside the classroom than
with that.
The idea of PTSA 'empowerment training' is at one or two levels of
abstraction too high to deal with the utterly basic question of whether
a particular student, teacher or principal is actually in his office or
classroom, doing his or her job. Traditional school principals - men of
the stamp of Albert Luthuli as headmaster of Adams College - knew that
there was no substitute for MBWA -management by walking about - and
that most schools lived and died by whether they had a good or bad
principal. There is no remedy for the fundamental questions of
authority, order and discipline within schools outlined at the
beginning of this article, save through resort to the strong
reinforcement of the authority of the school inspectorate and school
principals.
It is all a little reminiscent of rent and rates boycotts: we can
spend enormous amounts of time anguishing over such things in forums
but we all know that it is only when the penalties for non-payment tare
made clear and implemented that things will really improve. This is
true everywhere else in the world and South Africa is hardly likely to
be an exception.
It is the same in the classroom. Forums, political correctness and the
teaching of "leadership skills" to parents, SRCs and teachers are all
well and fine, but it is only when we see less politics and more
inspectors In the schools that things will really improve, inspectors
need to enforce accountability for truancy, absenteeism and delinquent
behaviour before things will really improve, if heads have to roll, so
be it.
Some would say this is a tough attitude, but it would be regarded as
normal in other countries and after what township inhabitants have been
through in the last 20 years, a demand that pupils behave and teachers
teach seems mild indeed. In any case, can we be tough enough in
providing for the education of our and the nation's children? What we
are talking about, after all, to use a phrase famous in educational
circles, is 'all our futures'.