Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.
The basic education department wants to increase the number of schools managed by education districts – a move envisaged to severely affect service delivery by an already struggling system.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has proposed that education districts should take charge of between 250 to 400 schools, up from the 75 to 300 they currently handle.
The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) has warned that the plan will have a negative effect on support provided to teachers and principals, exacerbating existing problems.
“We cannot sacrifice or compromise on quality. We cannot allow a situation where our children are going to get second grade services,” says Sadtu’s general secretary, Mugwena Maluleke.
The officers in the education districts assist principals and teachers to improve the quality of teaching through school visits and classroom observation. The district also holds principals accountable for the performance of their schools.
Based at circuit offices, subject advisers provide advice and guidance to teachers about the curriculum. Circuit offices are situated in districts and are demarcated by the provincial education MEC.
There are 81 education districts in South Africa. The Eastern Cape plans to reduce its districts from 23 to 12 and Limpopo wants to increase theirs from five to 10.
According to Motshekga’s recently gazetted amended policy on the organisation, roles and responsibilities of education districts, a district should have between 10 to 15 education circuits. In the past, an education district comprised between five and 10 circuits.
Sadtu does not believe the increase will translate into a commensurate increase in capacity at the circuit offices. “The minister of finance indicated that government must cut 25 000 workers in the public service. There’s no new money and no additional staff will be employed,” says Maluleke.
When read in the context of one of the main difficulties faced by district offices, according to the amended policy, it’s worrying. The document states that some districts were responsible for too many education institutions and, as a result, could not provide effective services.
“Some district offices do not have the necessary capacity to handle their current administrative management and professional responsibilities. Service delivery by many districts, especially with respect to curriculum support, therefore falls far short of what education institutions and the public expect,” the document states.
It said that the main purpose of the national policy was to provide a framework that would assist provincial education departments to “demarcate, structure and staff their district offices effectively” so that all education institutions receive the services they need to improve education provision and quality.
“Until now, no official national policy has guided provincial education departments as to what an education office should be or do.”
Anil Kanjee, a research professor at the Tshwane University of Technology’s school of education, stresses the importance of increasing capacity. “If you increase the number of schools then you must increase the resources and the number of officials, including subject advisers, as well as their knowledge and skills, to be able to effectively support learning and teaching.”
“Many district officials themselves don’t have adequate capacity or skills to provide effective support to teachers to improve learning and teaching,” he says.
Meanwhile, Mathanzima Mweli, the department’s director general, admitted that there was no money to “reorganise” the districts. “There’s no new money coming into the system in the next 10 to 20 years for this exercise. That’s the challenge so when you reorganise, you will have to reorganise within the available resources. Treasury is very clear that there’s no new money coming in.”
He said the department was going to try to persuade provincial executive councils to allocate more money towards reorganising districts and making districts more functional.
Mweli said there was no scientific evidence to back up the claim that allocating education districts more schools to manage would negatively affect their service delivery.
“It depends on the resourcing. If for a group of schools in a district you provide enough subject advisers and circuit managers and enough resources, regardless of the number of schools they will still do better than a district that has a smaller number of schools but which does not have the requisite resources.”