Poor support from district and regional structures is being blamed for sinking teacher morale and falling matric pass rates in a neglected area of the North West province.
The Bophirima region, close to the border of the Northern Cape, encompasses 472 schools. While nearby regions such as Vryburg and Bojanala are averaging a success rate of about 70% in their matric results, Bophirima’s results are on a downward slope, slumping to 56,8% last year.
Brian Setswambung, regional spokesperson for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, places the blame for the schools’ struggles squarely on inept regional leadership and poor planning in the education administration.
Those employed in circuit offices are key links between more remote structures, such as provincial education departments and individual schools. They shoulder responsibilities for the schools’ functioning, including the delivery of textbooks, maintenance and upgrading of infrastructure, developing codes of conduct, and the schools’ finances.
One example of how Bophirima schools are being let down, says Setswambung, is that ‘every year [these] schools battle to get textbooks on time”, resulting in little effective learning taking place.
He also highlights the late payment of temporary teachers as another sore point undermining schooling. ‘Temporary teachers have not received a cent for the past three months and this affects their morale to teach properly and effectively,” says Setswambung.
Teachers echo Setswambung’s views. Modise Seohela, principal of Mothelesi Secondary School in Shaleng village, says he has lost confidence in the ability of the education authorities to deliver in the region.
‘When you visit their offices, you do not get a sense that they have a strategy in place; the situation just looks chaotic,” he says.
Mothelesi Secondary has been declared a ‘trapped” school — a departmental term for high schools that fail to produce a matric pass rate of above 45%.
Seohela says this is because of the education department’s neglect: ‘Every year we are made to fill in forms about our school’s needs, but we have not received any of those things we recorded.
For example, I requested an additional [teaching] post as we were understaffed when we introduced a Grade 12 class in 2003. They did not provide us with one.” Nor did the department provide the professional support coordinators the school needed to make the transition smoothly. Failures, says Seohela, were the result.
The principal of Mothibe Secondary School, Mosemanegape Dioka, is equally frustrated by the neglect of his school. His main concern is the shortage of classrooms after a storm damaged school buildings three years ago.
‘I have written so many times to the local offices informing [the local circuit offices] about our predicament. I even took pictures of the affected classrooms, but there has not been any positive development since then,” Dioka says.
Two officials at district level approached for comment by the Teacher said they ‘are not allowed to speak to the media”. But the North West education department’s deputy director of communications, Patricia Boikanyo, was prepared to go on the record about the poor service delivery from the districts and regional education structures.
The problem starts, says Boikanyo, with a ‘shortage of staff in the region. People are not willing to work in this region because of the distance they have to travel every weekend [to get] back home.”
However, ‘some staff members have agreed to be deployed to the region and the situation is under control”, she says.
A lack of education-department vehicles is another factor that makes it difficult for circuit managers to visit schools regularly. The schools in the region are ‘so scattered that one has to travel about 150km to a school on a single trip”, says Boikanyo. ‘The region will receive more pool vehicles from the 100 bought in [March] to eradicate this problem before the end of April [this year].”
While Boikanyo maintains that textbook delivery is not a problem in the province, she does concede that temporary teachers often experience delays in being paid — but blames this on the department not being able to process payment if the educator is not yet on the Persal payment system.
Boikanyo is upbeat that service delivery in the region will be improved with the recent appointment of a regional manager and an increase in the number of circuit officers ‘who will monitor schools on a regular basis to check the situation”. But schools who have long endured the department’s neglect will take some convincing that positive change is on the way.”
Slow wheels of bureaucracy grind education down
Thandeka Vikilahle is one of the 15 education-development officers (EDOs) serving the Libode Mega-District outside of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. A former teacher at Phangindlela Junior Secondary School, writes Thabo Mohlala, Vikilahle enjoys her work and ‘is very committed to helping improving education in the region”.
EDOs’ responsibilities are about attending to the nuts and bolts of the functioning of schools. They range from supporting school-management teams (SMTs) with vital administration and helping build teamwork between SMTs, department heads and the broader school community to training school governing bodies (SGBs) how to make laws and policies come to life for the benefit of schools.
Vikilahle believes communities have always wanted to be part of school governance and that SGBs are ideal organs through which to enlist their participation.
‘Although some of them [SGBs] are still lacking in many respects, they really play a crucial role in the running and management of schools, particularly the financial aspects of things.” It is part of her responsibility, she says, to provide induction training to new SGB members so that they understand their roles, adding that ‘we put a high premium on financial-management skills”.
Vikilahle says that each of the 15 EDOs in her district has ‘no less than 20 schools” out of the 400 in the district under its care. ‘In terms of our schedule, we are supposed to visit schools four times a week, with one day dedicated to administrative duties.” Vikilahle says EDOs meet once a month to discuss action plans for the subsequent month.
‘When we are out at school, we have tools to help us determine and monitor the functionality of schools, [such as] the conduct of educators and learners, and the availability of learning materials and furniture. We then draw up a report, which we submit to our district managers.”
This, however, is where the serious problems come in. ‘Look, things don’t always happen at the pace you would want them to, and this at times can be very frustrating. I am not pointing a finger at anyone here, but there is no denying the negative effect this tends to have on us and the educators out there”.
A further frustration is that ‘we are supposed to be operating from our own offices nearer the schools, not here in town [Mthatha]. But we can’t because there is no space.” She says the time they waste in travelling is taxing and also affects their efficiency. But, says Vikilahle, at least they’ve all been given new cars.
In her view, the most acute problem in the schools she serves is a lack of furniture. But she also expresses her frustration about problems with the feeding scheme. She says that, over and above the current problems associated with tendering, some companies contracted to distribute food arrive late at schools or don’t pitch up at all. Poor infrastructure in the area is a big part of the problem. ‘We have already raised the issue of poor conditions of access roads to schools with the local government.”
Vikilahle says that having a budget under the control of the districts has made their lives much easier. ‘Last year, for instance, we had R1,7-million in our kitty. At least with this money we are able to make meaningful interventions at a number of needy schools.” She says the money is mostly channelled to priority areas such as sanitation, water and security.
Vikilahle and her equally enthusiastic colleagues are clearly prepared to roll up their sleeves. But the slow wheels of bureaucracy are what can really grind them down.