Willie Chinyamurindi & Zikhona Dlaza
Cape Town - This week sees coastal schools starting the 2023 academic year.
The euphoria that accompanies this is just palpable.
The start of the academic year is unprecedented, a moment weighted with far-reaching consequences for the future.
The optimism on the ground is that the future can be bright through the lens of this cohort starting the 2023 academic year.
This futuristic thinking offers a way of momentary escape from the menacing challenges before us, such as the energy crisis.
We can borrow a leaf from the numbers being released, including the aspirational narratives of provincial governments.
The effort here has been to tell a story of readiness and address those who may doubt the status quo in the education fraternity.
For instance, in the Western Cape, about 1.2 million learners are estimated to join about 35 872 teachers starting the 2023 academic year.
In the Eastern Cape, commenting on the provincial readiness for the academic year, MEC Fundile Gade was buoyant.
The rollout plan of the province has seen to the distribution of about 98.9% of the textbooks to schools as they start the academic year.
Conversely, in the Northern Cape the Education Department lauded their efforts to ensure that 99% of their Grade R, 1, and 8 learners were successfully placed.
The KwaZulu-Natal provincial Education Department, in its race against time, hopes to have filled vacant posts before the start of the academic year amid its post-flood recovery efforts in assisting damaged schools.
Yet, despite all the numbers being paraded and the wonderful feelgood stories, citizens expect that the main lesson and a priority for the 2023 academic year should be the expectation of continued higher standards for the education system.
We take it as a done deal that our leaders are aware of the catalogue of challenges that characterised 2022.
In starting a new page in 2023, we should exorcise from our vocabulary and experience the flood of bad experiences that hindered the delivery of quality education.
Unabated bad experiences can stall our efforts towards this expected higher standard in 2023.
In research we have conducted in the past year, using the schooling system as a context of analysis, we note some concerns, especially around actors and the dynamic capabilities in the schooling system.
Our concern centres on teachers and administrators as essential to effective and efficient education delivery. Further, using the psychology of working theory, the education system would do well to pay attention to teacher professional development, given its link to individual, organisational and national priorities.
It’s also about addressing the context in which teachers work. We borrow pointers from our research as we start the 2023 academic year.
First, we note the need to pay attention to teachers’ working conditions within the schooling system.
Notably, such a focus links with calls made in the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development by the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Higher Education and Training.
The call here is for the establishment of professional learning communities of practice that can affect teacher professional development. Addressing the work conditions for teachers is a usual precursor to such a professional learning community of practice.
Linked to this, there is also the need for an unbridled and vociferous defence of the teaching profession.
Teachers are not misfits in society or dumping bags expected to work wonders with our children.
Teaching as a profession is intricate and involves the challenging work of developing future citizens. Teachers exist as necessary to the development of the country’s human quotient.
Such a quotient finds expression in the development of learners’ cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal facets.
An utterly depressing feeling is realising how, in some cases, teachers are often reduced to the periphery and their efforts go unappreciated.
Unsurprisingly, we have a high labour turnover within the teaching profession. We need to prioritise a discussion around teachers’ working conditions, to help make the profession attractive.
Second, there is a need for an inward-looking focus that pays attention to making sure that the business side of the education system runs well.
Yes, we have all the models and strategies to ensure that learners receive quality education and curriculum reform.
However, we need an equal match to this in making sure that we also address loopholes around education management and governance.
In 2019, Equal Education released a report that bemoaned how tender corruption was detrimental to the education system in South Africa.
The onus here needs to be placed on those tasked as vanguards of ensuring that the business of education takes place.
It is inexcusable that the entire education system is at the mercy of rogue elements who are in the minority, but who are pouring out suffering to the majority.
The 2019 Equal Education report notes the prevalence of corruption, maladministration, malpractice, and fraud.
The actions of the bad apples within the system should not render the entire barrel rotten. Efforts here should be on improving procurement issues, especially tendering process transparency.
We also need a finely tuned antenna in the form of community support for the education system.
An utterly depressing state of reality is the high dropout rate among learners.
A few studies from the South African Journal of Education offer insight into the school dropout phenomenon.
For instance, it was found that girls are more likely to drop out than their male counterparts. Further, the dropout rate appears higher in rural areas than in urban centres.
Compounding all this, the absence of social amenities and an increase in alcohol and drug abuse is flagged as a potential cause of the rise in school dropouts.
Communities must stop looking the other way at the challenges around them, especially those that affect the education system.
A duty here exists to hold each other accountable and to accept the responsibility of care.
We should keep standards high; so much depends on our collective effort.
Willie Chinyamurindi is a University of Fort Hare professor, and Zikhona Dlaza is a final-year PhD candidate at the same university. This reflection is based on their current research on decent work amongst teachers in rural schools in the Eastern Cape Province. Both contributors write in their personal capacity.
Cape Times