the District colloquium, Johannesburg
2 October 2006
âDistricts: professional centres of school supportâ
Programme Director: Mr Petje,
Heads of Education
District based officials
President Mbeki related an interesting yet troubling story at a recent
Imbizo meeting in the Eastern Cape. He referred to a letter he was handed by a
person attending the Imbizo. The letter concerned a ten-year campaign that the
individual had waged in an effort to get political action on a dangerous road
near a school. Over the ten years of the man's fight for attention, several
children a month were killed on that road. Finally the man got his letter to
the president, a letter he had sent to every sphere of government, to MPs and
MPLs. The matter was handed to the premier of the province, simple road humps
were built, and children's lives are safer.
The story illustrates a worrying tendency of unresponsiveness to challenges
faced by the people, a poor appreciation that we are in office to serve and
that a response to development would not take ten years if we acted with
vigour.
Good Morning. Thank you for being here. I began with that story because to
some degree it characterises some of the challenges that bring us here today,
challenges of inertia, an unwillingness to respond, neglect of our communities,
especially the most marginalised, and an avoidance of quick action if the issue
is not part our immediate strategic plan.
Gathered in this room today are the spheres of education governance,
national, provincial, and district. Our constitution refers to spheres; it
mandates them to act co-operatively but also assigns three important attributes
that define their role and hopefully their functions. They are distinct,
interdependent, and interrelated. The constitution goes even further in that it
sets out the character of each sphere in great detail and provides guidelines
on how the spheres should execute their specific powers and mandates.
Many constitutional experts have commented on the smooth manner in which the
three spheres have operated over the past 10 years. There has been little use
of the constitutional power of intervention, one province, briefly, a few
municipalities and the recent support programme at Home Affairs as a national
example.
This is an impressive record for a young constitutional democracy and it
confirms that we do have that legal basis for complex collaborative
arrangements and that these can be used for strengthening development.
This meeting is not a constitutional conference, but the workings of
governance structures in South Africa are important examples on which we as a
sector should base some of our review and planning.
Co-operation and collaboration should be utilised more effectively to secure
action on our mandate of delivering quality education for all the children in
our country.
The following detailed examples of our challenges present four stark
illustrations of the reasons for our meeting.
This meeting is intended to inform and agitate. For some of you it will seem
irrelevant, because the challenges do not appear in your district. I remind you
though, that we are interrelated, so you need to collaborate with others to
help them.
Illustration one is an extract from Prof. James Moulder's Facing the
Educational Crisis, a book published in 1992. He writes as follows on literacy
and numeracy:
âPrimary schooling is the high road to literacy and numeracy and to the
elimination of the shameful fact that half of South Africa's adults cannot do a
job that requires one to read, write or count. We cannot have democratic
institutions. And we cannot redistribute power in any significant way.â
Illustration two was referred to in my 2005 matric results announcement
speech.
I indicated then that that we have 79 districts in our country, 6 perform
very well, 60 are average performers that can do much better, and 13 are doing
little to serve education in South Africa and should be under firm provincial
supervision.
The top six districts are known to you all: Breede River/Overberg, Northern
Metropole, South Cape/Karoo, West Coast/Winelands (Western Cape); Namakwa, and
Siyanda (Northern Cape). There are apparently also four districts in Gauteng
and two in the Free State that are top performers.
Performing well has been taken to mean a matric pass rate of 80% and above.
It is important to stress that even in the best performing districts there are
failing schools and more needs to be done by the leadership to determine ways
of assisting such schools.
The reference above to provincial supervision or administration is a policy
matter we may need to attend to seriously. Many systems in the world have the
policy of placing failing schools under the curator ship of a support team to
work with the school and governing body to lift the school/s out of mediocrity
to excellence.
Illustration three speaks to the lack of clarity over the roles,
responsibilities and functions of districts.
The district system in our sector does not work maximally because it has
somewhat of an arbitrary character in the organizational structure of
education.
Districts are a vital and necessary part of our system but they have to be
appropriately supported by legislation and other mechanisms. At the moment
there is a great deal of diversity in structure form and ability.
We must address this if districts are to be the quality professional support
offices that our education system urgently needs.
Districts must be assigned proper powers, budgets that they manage with
clearly set obligations, and a core of professional staff to ensure they
provide professional support effectively.
To play such a role, districts must be staffed by persons who understand and
know education policy, and understand what it takes to make education work.
District officials should know our curriculum and its core objects and
principles; they should be experts on assessment, on teacher development needs
and on school resource planning and allocation.
In a nutshell, districts should have the ability to support quality teaching
and learning in our schools.
I close with illustration four, which is based on a range of experiences I
have had in the past two years.
Teachers tell me they are often not supported when they require curriculum
advice or are given advice that does not support good teaching. Some teachers
complain of poor service in our district offices.
Further anecdotes relate to more than five different research studies and
three international tests that place South Africa at the bottom in academic
learning. Our children read, write, and count badly.
Many of our districts have not devised strategies or plans to overcome these
poor ratings.
In fact, I suspect district and regional offices do not know the learning
status of their schools. They focus on matric like us and not on learning from
grade R to 12.
I hope that this meeting will begin the process of our getting learning
right by supporting districts to become structures with clear roles and
functions adequately resourced and professionally capable of executing our
mandate of quality learning for all the children of our country.
Issued by: Department of Education
2 October 2006
