Andy Duffy
The Ministry of Education wants to spend R200-million this year to boost leadership skills in the provinces – a plan that will also give national officials far greater control over the often chaotic management of provincial education.
The plans include setting up a rapid response unit to defuse provincial crises in areas such as funding and personnel – key sources of the turmoil in state education- and upgrading grassroots administration of the poorest performing schools.
The national Department of Education also wants to probe the sorry performance of the school inspector network, and to send new management manuals to governing bodies and principals at 32 000 state schools.
The plans, still awaiting final approval, were drawn up following lengthy negotiations last year with the Department of Finance. They are the first phase of a three-year programme worth potentially up to R1,2-billion, drawn from an education policy reserve.
The proposals represent an attempt to address a prime cause of the problems in state education – managerial incompetence. They also give the national department a far surer grip on provincial education.
They nevertheless fall short of what some officials had been seeking. Initial ideas, discussed with the Department of Finance and provincial education officials, had included the national education department taking effective control over large chunks of provincial education money, to ensure it was spent on policy initiatives such as the new curriculum.
At the moment, the national department has no say over how the provinces spend. About 90% of their budgets is spent on personnel. Spending on the new curriculum, training and school building and maintenance has been minimal as a result.
Department Deputy Director General (systems and planning) Trevor Coombe says the task team that drew up the spending plans had decided to “err on the side of caution in deciding what conditional grants to recommend.
“It is important to recognise the competence of provincial governments in making essential budgetary decisions.” He adds that the department will retain the option of managing other items of provincial spending at national level. The policy reserve proposals include a training component for those teachers charged with implementing the new curriculum.
Half of the R200-million will be spent on a “provincial development project” – upgrading district management in 30 poor performing districts across the country. The number of districts will expand in the second year.
The other R100-million is to be split among a string of management initiatives. A “provincial support unit” will be established in national education department Director General Chabani Manganyi’s office in Pretoria.
The unit will recruit and deploy outside experts to help provincial officials overcome or head off crises. The department began consulting provincial education leaders last month about particular targets for help.
A key element of the department’s quality assurance programme is to find out what is happening with the army of state school inspectors – frequently blamed for poor matric performance. Coombe says the inspectors’ powers need to be reassessed and strengthened.
“They should play a leading role in lifting schools’ performance. The first step is to find out how many there are and what they are doing.”