By The People

Their children’s education is a question that consumes the time and money of many parents to a degree that often astonishes and horrifies non-parents. But even non-parents can usually understand why this parental obsession is so important.

It is no exaggeration to say that education is the key to personal freedom and empowerment. A good education provides the freedom to choose a fulfilling job, the freedom to exploit one’s talents to the full, and the freedom to contribute fully to society.

But the state also usually feels that it has a role to play in teaching the up-and-coming workforce, and across the world the respective role of parents and the state in education is a matter of constant debate. In democratic countries, the right of parents to determine many aspects of education tends to be solidly entrenched.

South African law allows for a fairly high level of parental involvement in public schools through governing bodies. The South African Schools Act requires that governing bodies “promote the best interests of the school and strive to ensure its development through the provision of quality education for all learners at the school”. Among other things, they are entitled to set language policy and admissions policy, set rules on religious observances, determine a code of conduct and select teachers, principals and other staff.

The effect of this law has been mixed, and large discrepancies in the wealth and education of parents have resulted in very different success rates for school governing bodies.

Parents tend to be actively involved with schools when they are highly literate and willing to assert their rights. So in schools where parents are neither of these, parental involvement is often non-existent at best and at its worst, actively destructive. There have, for example, been a few cases where parents have insisted on the appointment of unqualified teachers or the removal of competent ones.

But at the same time, a high level of parental involvement and self-governance is at the core of the success of many of South Africa’s best schools. Parent bodies offer their skills to schools in countless ways, from helping with the accounts, to maintaining buildings, to raising funds. Governing bodies also concern themselves with determining and maintaining the character and ethos of a school.

It is true to say that without this close interaction between parents and the school, many South African schools would find it impossible to continue offering a world-class education.

So a proposed amendment to the South African Schools Act, which will probably come before Parliament next year, is raising the ire of both schools and their governing bodies.

Essentially, it is the skills of teachers and principals that make a school. So the Education Laws Amendment Bill goes straight to the heart of the powers of school governing bodies by threatening to strip them of their free hand in deciding whom to employ.

School governing bodies, opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) and some teacher organisations are gearing up to fight this amendment tooth and nail, and if it is not resolved to the satisfaction of these organisations in Parliament, many are suggesting that it will end up in court.

Under the current law, teachers apply top the provincial education department for vacant posts. But governing bodies short-list the applicants, carry out interviews and make a final choice to recommend to the Department. The department almost invariably ratifies this recommendation.

In terms of the amendment bill, governing bodies will be obliged to submit a list of five candidates to the provincial superintendent-general. The Bill gives the Head of the Provincial Education Department blanket powers to reject a governing body`s recommendation out of these five, and appoint an alternative applicant, without having to give reasons. The provincial education department, rather than the school and its governing body, will become responsible for teacher appointments.

Deputy director-general of education, Duncan Hindle, says that the bill is aimed at ensuring that teachers are deployed “more widely” and “scarce resources are more fairly distributed”. SADTU articulates its objectives more bluntly. According to Jon Lewis, Sadtu’s media officer, the bill is needed to break down racial barriers. “Some school governing bodies have ignored equity - the staff is still white”.

If the Department of Education is concerned about the quality of teaching in some schools, it is not hard to understand why. The reality of South Africa is that there are simply not enough good teachers to go round. The former model C schools can generally offer more amenable working conditions, and often higher salaries, than township schools. So they are better able to attract the good teachers.

Poor township schools get caught up in a cycle of failure. Capable and enthusiastic teachers who are willing to join schools which are accustomed to low pass rates, poor attendance and apathy are few and far between. But the fate of these schools is unlikely to improve until they can find such teachers.

Although pass rates in schools in townships are better than they were during apartheid, the gap between these schools and the former model C schools is still, with some exceptions, enormous.

Without doubt South Africa needs to bring an end to this depressing scenario. But many are questioning whether such heavy-handed intervention in schools that are working well is not just a recipe for uniform mediocrity.

Many of the bill’s opponents believe that the argument about diversity is hiding another agenda. If a more representative spread of teachers across the country were really the objective, they say, there are other mechanisms could be used to better effect.

Former Western Cape MEC for Education, the DA’s Helen Zille, says that while there may be problems with some governing bodies, “You don’t deal with the problem by introducing measures that undermine functional bodies. Some of these bodies have been responsible for the best public schools in the country”.

If it is passed, she says, it will precipitate a flight of middle class parents from the public school system and “we will end up with a two-tier education system: independent schools for the elite and public schools for the poor”.

Zille suggests that the real objective of the amendment bill is not to ensure racial equity but to “drive the government’s redeployment and transformation process on the basis of ANC policies and ideology that have nothing to do with educational criteria”.

The headmaster of Edgemead High School, Malcom Venter, backs her up. In a letter to the Cape Times last month he asserted that the government’s claim to want to address racial imbalances is simply an excuse to mask their real motive - “to give more power to the state and, accordingly, diminish the power of parents”.

The DA argues that if the government really wanted to improve matric pass rates in poor schools, it would be dealing directly with the substandard quality of teaching they offer. Rather than spreading out the good teachers more widely, it would be making more teachers teach better.

Recent research by the HSRC into science and maths pass rates suggests much the same. The HSRC says that in the past ten years, there has been massive state and private sector-funded investment in teacher development and skills upgrading programmes. South African teachers attend more professional development courses than in most other countries. Yet, it says, we are not seeing the expected changes in classrooms.

The HSRC says that “our gaze should shift to the providers of these programmes. Should we ask them to account for the training provided to teachers?”

The National Professional Teachers Association warns that the effect of this proposed legislation could be an exodus of parents from governing bodies. It would take away a key reward that motivated them to take on the heavy responsibilities of serving on those bodies.

“An important part of the Schools Act is that the community participates in selecting teachers it believes will serve the community best”, it says. “The parent body is vitally involved in identifying the personality and the skills that are needed”.

The deadline for public comment on the bill has now passed. But this doesn’t mean there is no more space for contributions. Opposition parties are gathering submissions from schools and the public, and these will be used to guide their arguments once the bill comes before Parliament next year. There will also be the opportunity for formal submissions by interested parties when the Portfolio Committee on Education examines the bill. So concerned parents, teachers and schools have ample opportunity to have their say.

This bill is showing every sign of becoming the sizzling education issue of 2005 . And as the Department of Education has learned to its cost in the past, the power of parents is not to be underestimated.