Motshidisi Tsuke wakes up every morning to teach the tired and hungry-looking children at a farm school on the security-tight farm of Barnsvlei in the Free State.
After travelling 60km to school, Tsuke has to wait with the learners for the farmer to open the main gate ‘at his convenience” to gain access to the dilapidated oneroomed school. In addition to teaching 17 children, all in different grades – from grades 1 to 6 – Tsuke also heads the school.
The name of the school, Itemogeleng, meaning ‘See for yourselves”, may as well be changed to ‘Do it for yourselves”. Itemogeleng gets little from the farmer, parents or the Free State department of education (FSDE). It has no running water, has a poorly constructed fence and has only one staff member. It had to close its doors when Tsuke took ill for two months.
Tsuke says a feeding scheme comes only once a month and the learning material that she requisitioned from the FSDE at the beginning of this year has yet to arrive.
She says she has been introduced to outcomes-based education (OBE) but it just does not work in her multi-grade classroom.
As isolated as Tsuke may feel, she’s in good company. The principal of Amelia Farmschool, Ivy Paulus-Peete, also has much to say about the unsuitability of OBE methodology in her multi-grade school. Located outside Kroonstad, here the 32 learners are all crammed into two classrooms – a brick room and a shack – with two teachers and a principal. Running water, electricity and proper ablution blocks are only imagined privileges. ‘We also do not have a suitable fence, which is a problem because whenever we start planting our garden, it is destroyed by cows,” says Paulus-Peete.
The farmer shows no interest and the FSDE also ignores them.
It would be easier if she had some form of support and commitment from parents but ‘children are always dropping out of school and their parents are not cooperative,” she says. ‘After school and during school holidays, children become underpaid farm labourers and there is no concern shown by their parents or the farmer.”
The FSDE’s strategy to solving problems at these schools is simple: close them.
This is part of its ongoing programme called Green Patches, which has seen the closure of about 100 schools each year since 1996, according to the recently released South African Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) report on Human Rights Violations in Farming Communities. The Green Patches programme includes the centralisation and upgrading of schools, creating school-based accommodation and furthering teacher development. The FSDE is unable, however, to clarify how long Itemogeleng and Amelia farm schools will continue in their present sorry states.
Bob Tladi of the FSDE believes this is a win-win solution. Even the issue of children growing up away from their families is seen as a plus: ‘Their parents earn very little. The parents have said that this will benefit their children because they can study without any disturbances, like having to work for the farmers as well or doing household chores,” Tladi says.
The lot of farm school teachers will also improve, as they will be placed at the new schools. ‘There will be no retrenchments, teacher dismissals or anything like that,” says Tladi.
The FSDE was commended in the HRC report for dealing innovatively with farm school access to education . Another province praised in the report is Gauteng: the Gauteng Department of Education has succeeded in negotiating legal contracts – required by the South African Schools Act (Sasa) – regulating issues such as rental and access with about 60% of affected farmers.
In some instances, farmers have gone as far as offering land for the extension of schools. As part of its 2002 to 2005 rural farm school strategy, however, the GDE ultimately intends transferring farm schools on to state land.
The sticking point of establishing legal agreements with farmers, though, is still a difficult issue for many provinces. The HRC report found that farmers often had insufficient understanding of the relevant legislation in the Sasa. Some farmers see the agreement as a way to make money. They want to be paid based on the size of the school building and property, while the education departments’ payment is based on calculations per learner enrolled at the school.
But despite areas of progress, the HRC identified a number of obstacles to basic education that continue to plague the farm school sector. In the Northern Cape, for example, children travel between 6km and 35km just to get to school. Others of school-going age remain at home to care for their siblings while their parents work. Those who do go to school work during school holidays and assist their parents by working on the farms.
Attendance – both by learners and teachers – was found to be poor.
But the worst off in this generally embattled sector are children with special needs – their education seems to be at the very bottom of a daunting pile of issues. For example, there are no programmes to address the education needs of children with foetal alcohol syndrome, states the report. Other vulnerable groups, such as the country’s older and uneducated citizens, are also neglected: ‘Adult Basic Education and Training does not take place, or where it is in place, the curriculum is generally not suited to the needs of farming communities.”
Information that could have provided a more in-depth picture of developments in the farm school sector has been withheld from the Teacher for nearly a year by the national Department of Education (DoE).
Numerous requests for a research report commissioned by the DoE, entitled Report on Management and Governance of Rural and Farm schools, have been denied.
Duncan Hindle, deputy director general for general education, responded late last month: ‘I have just been speaking to the director general [Thami Mseleku] about this and he said the report has to be updated.”