Four years ago, former education minister Naledi Pandor publicly identified problems that South Africa’s then 79 school districts were encountering when it came to providing support to schools.
Now the department of basic education says it intends resolving problems besetting management and curriculum support services in the 81 school district offices by 2015.
Districts are critical in the provision of quality education because of their close proximity to schools. But most of them are in too parlous a state to render meaningful service to schools.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced plans to bolster districts during a Council of Education Ministers’ meeting recently. She said that in strengthening the districts, attention should be paid to the skills development of district officials and there should also be a focus on expenditure patterns, including monitoring of spending, particularly on important items and activities.
Education observers pointed out that the current state of districts is characterised by confusion and incoherent organisational structure and that officials are ill-equipped to provide quality professional support to schools.
Pandor, who spoke at a district colloquium in Johannesburg four years ago, pointed out then that of the 79 districts, six performed very well, 60 were average performers that could do much better and 13 were doing little to serve education and should be under firm provincial watch.
Answering questions from the Teacher, department of basic education spokesperson Granville Whittle said the focus on strengthening districts was given impetus by Motshekga’s newly unveiled 2014-2025 blueprint to overhaul the education system.
He said the envisaged changes are linked to problems experienced by districts. They include clearly defining the support that districts should be obliged to provide and clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the professional staff.
However, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa’s education expert, Russell Wildeman, said he doubted whether the plans would ever be implemented given the department’s history. He said the plan to revitalise districts was just another “positive but symbolic commitment about something that won’t happen”.
“I have severe reservations about this happening. The national department has never really been keen to decentralise power to provinces, which have been shorn of a quality and redress mandate. Provinces have been reduced to mere administrative centres that lack flexibility and manoeuvrability,” said Wildeman.
Reaction from the three main teacher unions was subdued. While they support the plans in principle, they expressed disappointment about the time it would take the department to fix the districts, given the pivotal role they play in supporting schools.
Chris Klopper of the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie said bolstering districts represents a positive development, which the union supports. However, “we feel 2015 is way too far [ahead] and [we] would have liked it [the time span] to be shorter, given the important role districts play in our education,” he said.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union’s Mugwena Maluleke said the union supports the move within the context of the 2014-2025 action plan, which clearly specifies timelines and has measurable milestones that must be achieved.
“But the problem is that provinces are autonomous from the national department and can use the budget to meet their own priorities. We saw this happen with teacher development where most of them refused to implement it.
“Education is a national priority. The department should ring-fence a certain amount in the budget towards achieving specific goals,” said Mugwena.
The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa’s president, Ezra Ramasehla, sees the problem as political. He said the failure of districts has to do with the fact that the “majority of people employed at districts do not have the requisite expertise because they were brought in through a redeployment policy of the ruling party and its alliance partners.”