Programme Director
President of South African Teachers' Union (SAOU), Dr Jopie Breed
SAOU members
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen,
It gives me much pleasure to address the 16th SAOU School Principal Symposium. Thank you warmly for inviting us.
On 11 August 2011, I saw a disturbing editorial in The Star, on riots in Britain. The newspaper called it 'a timely riot'. It said the protest was not political. “The rioters had no agenda”.
It blamed the unrest on 'a disaffected criminal fringe made up of people who felt they have no stake in society'. It concluded the burning and looting in the erstwhile colonial empire highlighted 'the dangers posed by economic inequality and a troubled education system.'
Two questions sprung to mind: How does society produce "a disaffected criminal fringe, made up of people who felt they have no stake in society?" and, "does this ring alarm bells for the SAOU Principal Symposium?"
This report came in a year we chose to focus on creating a delivery-driven education system that will help improve quality.
On the same day, 11 August, I attended a conference of primary school principals in Mpumalanga, the lowest performing province. The interaction was framed around the 2011 results of Annual National Assessments (ANA) and an analysis from Basic Education and provincial officials.
Such analysis suggested strongly that invariably principals in the sampled schools left the process of managing ANA almost entirely to Head of Departments (HODs) and teachers.
The analysis concluded that most of the principals could only give generic answers to questions on whether there were specific interventions made to address learning deficiencies that were revealed by the ANA, or not.
These developments bring into sharp focus the work we do as educators, school managers, policy-makers and education authorities. The challenge is for us to say how best to stop the production of disgruntled communities “made up of people who felt they have no stake in society”?
Many would say the best way to tackle social and economic problems would be by providing quality education for all. I spoke at length about quality when I addressed the SAOU Congress two months ago.
Then I said we’re on track to achieve quality in education. Today’s key message is that we can deliver quality education by changing the way we work. It can’t be business as usual.
And thus I chose for today to focus mainly on a pillar of the system without which we cannot have quality education. It comprises school principals and school leadership teams. It is at this level that we need a paradigm shift to ensure schools are transformed into pockets of excellence.
I told SAOU members in June that it is through careful implementation of the Action Plan to 2014: Towards the Realisation of Schooling 2025, that we intend to improve schooling. With the full cooperation of provincial education departments and other role-players, the Action Plan should direct our work towards more focus on quality teaching.
I also reported to you that we have made great strides in reviewing the curriculum and finalising the new Curriculum & Assessment Policy Statements. We said for reasons of quality enhancement, we launched the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU).
NEEDU will provide an independent evaluation of the state of education and the status of teaching and learning in schools.
In June we said there can be no quality in education without quality educators. That’s why we launched a Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development. It will help in achieving Output 1 of our Delivery Agreement – improving teacher capacity and practices.
As principals, affiliated to a professional entity like SAOU, key among questions you must ask should be: ‘How best to respond to the notion of “a troubled education system” and research studies on the state of education in South Africa?’
You should be able to say, ‘what is your role as principals in all this?’ And, ‘what is it that you’re going to do differently, to advance the objectives of the New Growth Path?’
In July, government and social partners signed a National Skills Accord as one of the first outcomes of social dialogue on the New Growth Path (Accord 1: National Skills Accord, July 2011). Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA) was represented by General-Secretary Dennis George. Representatives committed to a “partnership and to combining our efforts in order to strengthen skills development as a crucial pillar of the New Growth Path” (Ibid).
Expanding skills as a platform for creating five million new jobs will not happen without school principals.
In the nine years to 2020, the education system will churn out thousands of learners yearning for more skills and more jobs. The economy will battle to absorb hundreds of young people schools could not retain at least up to Grade 12. In an endorsement of the National Skills Accord, Ms Lulama Nare, a community representative, reminds us that:
“Our economy rewards people with high skills, excluding vast numbers of our population. We must bridge that gap and ensure people have adequate skills to generate livelihoods.”
Of course, if this was apartheid South Africa, we would not worry about equal education and skills development. In 1945 JN Le Roux of the National Party said: “We should not give the natives any academic education. If we do, who is going to do the manual labour in the community?”
The representatives who met to discuss partnerships for achieving five million new jobs, by 2020, identified as one critical challenge: “The need to improve the quality of basic education.”
This was premised on the understanding that: “Performance in the schooling system is at the heart of building the skills base for economic growth and development and ensuring that the society is able to achieve our equity and development goals.”
They signed Accord two on Basic Education and Partnerships with Schools. We must ensure all educators know the contents of this Basic Education Accord, especially school principals.
The Accord commits all parties to endorse a campaign to adopt poorly-performing schools and to “assist such schools to develop proper governance, high standards of teaching, basic school-level discipline and an adequate supply of essentials.”
We can’t do this if one principal was to tell FEDUSA that “you can keep your accord and let me keep my school!”
Our role, with our partners, is “to strengthen basic education in the country as a platform for creating five million new jobs by 2020” (Accord 2).
We need principals for development. They’ll keep us firmly on a path to quality education, ensuring we do not populate the world with “rioters”, with “no agenda”.
This is how best to relate to the Symposium’s theme – “Quality school leadership, a prerequisite for quality education”.
Without quality school leadership, you can forget about quality education, about laying the foundation for skills development, about providing a platform for job-creation.
Quality education is unthinkable without “quality school leadership”.
Commenting on the Basic Education Accord, FEDUSA’s General Secretary, Mr Dennis George, proposed a viable path towards quality learning and teaching:
“We must identify the rotten apples within the system. Ineffective and lazy teachers, corrupt training providers and poorly performing structures must be identified and dealt with.”
We do have challenges. When we talk quality, we do so aware of the need to improve teachers’ working conditions. Our problems have a history. So, they must be appraised in context.
During a visit to South Africa, Robert McNamara, ex-president of the World Bank, said about the state of education in apartheid South Africa in 1982: “I have seen very few countries in the world that have such inadequate educational conditions. I was shocked at what I saw in some of the rural areas and homelands. Education is of fundamental importance. There is no social, political, or economic problem you can solve without adequate education.”
We would not have come this far without partnerships, thus the logic of the Basic Education and the National Skills accords. We value our social partners.
Relationships with social partners are informed by the quest to provide education of progressively high quality to all learners.
This symposium comes at the most opportune time after the release of the ANA results. They confirmed that many learners lack basic literacy skills, including, correct grammar, spelling of commonly used words and basic prepositions. In numeracy, learners were unable to work with two digit numbers.
We know that poverty impacts on learner performance. The results showed another dimension. There are schools in Quintile five whose results are as bad as some in the schools in Quintiles one and two.
The principal is the nerve centre for school improvement. When leadership is strong, even the most challenged schools thrive. But when it is weak, schools fail.
Quality school leaders encourage a focus on improving classroom practices of teachers. Indeed there are virtually no documented instances of troubled schools being turned around without intervention by a strategic leader.
The role of school leaders has changed radically with countries transforming education systems. This is in keeping with the dictates of the 21st Century and its rapid innovations.
We’re moving towards strengthening school leadership and accountability. Among other things, all principals and deputies will be required to enter into performance contracts.
Our department has identified differentiated development needs and interventions for principals and other school leaders, including on-the-job skilling and improving recruitment and selection procedures.
More often, it is principals with dubious or virtually no management and financial skills who render schools ineffective.
In the interest of quality school leadership, we’ve developed two key programmes – the National induction programme for newly-appointed school principals and the National coaching and mentoring programme for school principals.
I challenge SAOU to work even harder to enhance competencies of principals.
Lastly, allow me to remind the Symposium of this commitment we made when we signed the Basic Education Accord: “All parties agree to work together to change the mindset among teachers, learners and parents in order to rebuild dysfunctional parts of the basic education system and ensure quality education delivery for learners, particularly in poorly-performing schools.”
Keep up the good work, and thank you for giving me time to talk with you.
