I welcome Lebusa Monyooe’s critical engagement last week with The School Inspector website I launched recently (www.theschoolinspector.co.za) but strongly dispute the central thesis of his argument that a “restorative” approach is required rather than one of “censure” (“The inspector who fails the grade“, Mail & Guardian, September 23).
This is precisely the argument that teacher unions have advanced over the years to water down attempts by successive education ministers to introduce firm accountability measures, and the performance of our education system continues to suffer as a result. The results of the recent Annual National Assessments are a sorry testament to this, and some honest dialogue is now required.
In saying this, I do need to correct a perception that pervades Monyooe’s article: the view that The School Inspector website is solely a space for the public to “ventilate its views and anger about education”, a sort of “Hello Peter” for education. On the website itself and in the M&G I stressed that I invite comments about both good and bad practices, schools that are doing well and schools that need to get better (“Time for schools to be marked“, M&G, September 2).
Contrary to what may have been expected, I can happily report that at this stage the positive comments hugely outnumber the negative ones. As I have noted in The Inspector’s Logbook on the site, there are clearly many schools that are held in high esteem by their communities and they want the public to know this. I therefore dispute the notion that the website is founded on retributive justice; positive affirmation is a major component of it.
Indeed there is public humiliation where this is deserved (and I cannot apologise for this), but there is equally acclamation where this is justified (as it clearly is in many schools). I suggest therefore that this is precisely a part of the restorative dialogue that Monyooe calls for. And I also stress this is not just about teachers: it is about parents and pupils, and about district and regional managers.
Like the national department’s quality learning and teaching campaign (QLTC), it calls upon everyone to play their part and to be accountable for this. This is hardly “backward-looking”, or likely to “inflame the already explosive relationships between teachers, communities and department”, because the QLTC already constitutes a pact between these very parties. Incidentally, I am intrigued by his characterisation of these relationships as “explosive”. If indeed they are (which in most cases I doubt), science would tell us that a vent (like The School Inspector website) is a necessary device.
The comments on the site are based on public views. Monyooe questions the quality of this public knowledge and calls for “empirical evidence”. For the professional researcher that he is, this may be understandable, but it worries me a lot. Surely the lived experience of parents and pupils, participants reflecting on their daily life at schools, is inherently empirical? It may not be statistical but it has to be valid and plausible. If one individual has a skewed view of matters, another 10 will surely correct this, and the “dominant view” will assert itself, which we should be willing to accept. The history of the internet has shown that popular participation generally gets things right. And it has also shown that when people want to get access to the internet, they contrive ways to do so.
In the same way I am concerned about Monyooe’s disdainful distinction between “public chaff” and “facts”. Surely we must have some faith in the collective views of the citizenry, since this is at the core of democracy? My years in education have shown me that most parents do know what a good school is and want their children at such a school, and I think we should have greater respect for their opinions than Monyooe seems to have. Instead of seeing the site as a “dangerous attack on the rights of the citizenry”, I ask him to recognise it as part of the “creative and practical” solution he seeks. After all, the right to criticise is also a fundamental part of our Constitution.
Writing in the City Press last weekend, Professor Servaas van der Berg noted that about two-thirds of children are not performing at levels considered adequate for their grade and suggested there should be “appropriate indignation or anger at schools that are failing them”.
The School Inspector website is an opportunity for communities to do so, as well as an opportunity for successful schools to be recognised. Unless we know what is wrong, we are unlikely to fix it.
Duncan Hindle is The School Inspector (see www.theschoolinspector.co.za). He was director general of education from 2005 to 2005 and is a former president of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union