SACE - We need your intervention!

I had a conversation with one of my 4th year students in Education Management, who had been employed, with sadness, by a school in Mpumalanga.  This is a student who comes from a poor family, desperately looking for financial assistance as soon as possible, since the family has been 'carrying' this child for the past three years after Matric.

She is but one of the many students I have been experiencing over the past two years since I have taken on a past time lecturing responsibility at one of the universities of technology.  The majority of students at this institution come from a seriously impoverished background, and most of them are the potential first 'degree' achievers in the family.  So, the pathway of these students is totally 'unknown' to them, and therefore they have no sense of what the destination looks like, other than some security that they will get a job.  Despite them being so close to the 'end point', I constantly experiencing my students being offered a job as replacement or temporary teachers.  These students are to the brink of hopefully being graduated as fully qualified teachers, but NO ... the schools who are so dysfunctional and weakly managed are constantly experiencing mobility in their staff (also through absenteeism and extended 'sick leave'), and therefore the need to find 'any teacher' to fill the gap.

My brief experience of this situation is indicating that most of these students (3/4 teachers) never end up qualifying as teachers from these institutions.  At best, they get carried for years at temporary teachers in the system until they are seen as 'long enough in the system to be treated as acceptable teachers', like in the case of the Eastern Cape (see an earlier blog that focused on this issue).  In my case, these students are from Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Kwazulu Natal.

There are two issues related to the experience above, namely (i) the lack of a supply and demand of teachers strategy in the country, and (ii) the need for SACE (South African Council for Educators) to stop this abuse of desperate and poor students (unqualified teachers).  Regarding the first issue, we have been raising this for the past 20 years, but no success in terms of the responses from the planning of education.  All the policies that have been released since 1994, have not responded to the real need of systems planning and dignifying those in the system.  Currently, the 'supply and demand' crisis is managed by no-one, and at best it is tackled by individual schools and institutions.  In particular, the top schools are now managing their own supply under the term, "we are growing our own timber".  Dangerous it might be, especially in a country that is seeking a more integrated approach to staff compliments, it will never materialise.  But how can we blame these individual schools if the 'planners' are not doing their job from a systems perspective?

I therefore turn my attention to the second issue, which is the need for SACE to stop this abusive practice within and especially our rural and poorly performing schools.  Although these schools see it as 'assisting the students with a job' and 'them filling a gap that is existing in their school', the real loser in this act is the families of these students who carried them for more than 75% of their studies, and now loosing out on benefiting from someone who could be paid a full teacher salary.  Also, the loser is the NSFAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme), since this student does not turn out to be a qualified person soon (hoping that after numerous years of part-time 4th year students, they eventually graduate).  Also, the teacher profession, is missing out on the opportunity to have a qualified teacher in the system, if we are just patient enough to allow this student to finish his/her qualifications after one year.  Finally, the biggest loser is the learner corps of our country, since they are now taught by a teacher who is not fully qualified, and will be vulnerable for the rest of his/her life as part-time and/or unqualified teachers because they will be at the mercy of 'those who are prepared to employ them'.

SACE, although this happened now to my 4th year student at the beginning of this year, the amount of students who end up in this 'hole' after they have gone doing their 'practice teaching' during the third quarter of every year is enormous.  I therefore urge you to do something about this practice - safe our final year students from not finishing their studies, when they are offered a part-time job during and after their practice teaching, and therefore a total shift in their priority from 'finishing their final year studies with success' to 'doing the best possible job as a part-time unqualified teacher' in schools who actually only care about 'fixing up their problem' by having a teaching in the class of every learner, rather than leaving these students to finish their studies.

As the professional council of teachers, you need to protect our student-teacher and the profession from this practice.  Your Act is powerful enough to be used to stop this practice.  I trust that you will take this issue seriously, and will tackle it with the attention and focus it deserves.

What kind of Learner is in your head when you do your Planning?

A few days ago, I joined a group of District Management Team (DMT) members, on a walk up the Silvermines mountain range in Cape Town.  This group of people is a highly motivated and committed team in education, based on my engagement with education officials across the country.  What was so remarkable, is the sense that they allowed my in a deliberate way, to influence their thinking and understanding about education, their district, and their work in particular.  The brief was to 'take them to a higher level' in order to ensure greater success for their learners.  I am pleased to say that they must be the only DMT in the country who decided to make 100% success for their learners as their target (goal).  There will therefore be no deliberate planning for some to fail, even if is only 12%, as expressed when they started out the hike.

More specifically, during a conversation with the head of curriculum planning, my question to him was: What kind of learners and/or schools are you planning for?  Meaning, when you do your planning - What kind of learner is in your head when you do your planning?  At first, he responded that "all learners and/or schools are taking into account when he does his planning.  Well, that is actually not true, otherwise one will have to have at least four different kinds of planning - One for Chaotic schools (they have a COMMITMENT problem), another for Dysfunctional schools (they have an adhering to RULES and REGULATIONS problem), and another for Under-performing schools (they have a PEOPLE RELATIONS problem), and finally one for High Performing schools (they have SYSTEMS problems).  If you don't have four separate planning tools, you will end up 'choosing unconsciously' one of these.  Because PLANNING (the way you will do or implement things) only follows DECISION MAKING (what is important and how will you allocate your resources), which in turn will follow THINKING.  So, the question was never, 'What is your planning?, but rather 'What was your thinking?

Although this engagement took place with an education district official, it is equally important for all teachers as to the 'child in their head', since it sets the tone for what they will expect and what they will accept in your classroom.  If you HOPE that all your learners who walk through your door are 'top performers', then you will have very little tolerance and/or patience for those performing below a 'top performer'.  The REALITY is that not all our learners are 'top performers' when they enter our classroom.  But, we have to opportunity, every day, of every week, of every month, of every quarter and of every year, to move them along the pathway towards greatness, and therefore our job is to add value to their lives while being in our presence.

(Source: http://fulfilledcouple.com/blog)

In most of our schools, the 'chaos child' will enter our classroom.  And this is not a reflection of the child's ability, but rather the situation which they were born into, and often is still living in.  It is our privilege, as teachers, to 're-arrange' their live puzzle, since all the piece are there - they just need re-arrangement and good role models (good examples), and caring teachers.  Caring about what they can become, and not judging them based on what they are.

Democracy as a 'one-way' interpretation

As I was watching the news tonight, at the bottom they were scrolling some of the other news of the day.  To my surprise, one of these were the following: KZN teachers will go on strike to demand the reimbursement of money deducted during 2010 strike (the heading might not be 100% correct, but it certainly represents the sentiment in total).

Well, lets give some history to this matter.  Firstly, all workers, including teachers, have a right to strike as a last resort, in order to 'force the hand of the employers' to come to some settlement on matters pertaining to their conditions of service.  This right is enshrined in the Constitution of this country, as well as in the Labour Relations Act.  So, teachers have the right to strike BUT, that same right goes with a responsibility that the employer has the right to withhold payment for the duration of the strike, since no service has been rendered.  This second part of this previous sentence gives or creates the balance between the right of the teachers (employees) and the right of the provincial departments of education (employers), since they are the 'pay masters' and not the national education department.

The pattern in South Africa is - teachers will go on strike, some negotiations will go on to end the strike, and when teachers are back at school the department will inform them of the necessary clause that gives them the right to deduct their pay for no service rendered during the striking days.  Teachers will get upset that they will loose money, and will threaten to go on strike again, if the provincial department dares to deduct their salaries.  Most of the provincial departments will be influenced by this threat, and will then find some LOGISTICAL reasons why it is impossible to process this deduction.  Those provincial departments who have some sort of control systems will go ahead with the deductions, and will then be blamed that the 'EMPLOYER', which will be in this case the National Education Department, for not implementing the regulations in a consistent way.  From a legal point of view, this is an absolute correct approach from teacher representatives.  They are not arguing that the deductions are unlawful, but rather will focus on the 'flawed process' on the side of the employer.

How long will we see this uneven implementation of the right to strike, and the right not to be paid when services were not rendered.  And remember - when we talk about the "non rendering of service", it is in real terms that our teachers are not teaching of students for that period.  So the ones who are suffering are the children, not the adults.  Therefore, if the balance is not restored, then the right to strike is not a SACRIFICE (taking up a principle position, no matter what the personal material/financial implication), but rather a tool to force the hand of the opposition at any given time.  The 'employer of teachers', whether it is the National Education Department, or the collective of the nine Provincial Education Departments, must get their act together in order to restore the balance of power, otherwise the 'Elephant in the room' will continue with its current action pattern.