Chapter Two: A review of literature
2.10 A focus on school improvement within the South African context
There are various components within the school system that contribute to success at schools.
These components include (a) the school management and organisation, (b) the teachers, (c) the community and parents, (d) and the provincial and district education departments. All these components play a significant role in the running of a school to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved. Within South Africa, there has been a focus on whole school and systemic school improvement (Taylor & Prinsloo, 2005). An attempt is being made to intervene at every level with an aim to bring about school improvement.
The school principal is said to be accountable for the successful management and organisation of a school. The principal is required to manage the school in such a way as to bring about change and transformation (Van Der Linde, 2006). The principal of a school should aim to work collaboratively with his or her staff members so that they can bring about improved learner performance. The principal sets the tone and determines the direction that the school takes; the principal also builds relationships and develops the school organisation as a whole (Schleicher, 2012).
Whether or not a school is effective is determined by the management of the school (Botha, 2010); the successful management of schools leads to school improvement and schools being effective. The evidence from the evaluation that was carried out with the Quality Learning Project indicates that increasing the school‟s capacity to manage their school results in an improvement in teaching and learning (Taylor & Prinsloo, 2005). The school principal should ensure that the school is regulative; managers, teachers and learners should work together to ensure that the school as a whole functions well by managing their time well (Taylor, 2009).
One of the main issues with South African schools is that they lack regulative order; this in turn leads to a learning environment that is poor and in which learners are less regulative in their approach to learning (Taylor, 2009).
The school principal is not the only individual that is responsible for the effective management of schools. There are also external players such as the education district office and the provincial education department that have a pivotal role to play. The provincial Department of Education in South Africa has formulated various policies regarding education together with the curricula that schools should follow. However, Chinsamy (2002) notes that the policies which are formulated by the provincial Department of Education are not being put into practice by schools and therefore transformation and school improvement in South
Africa has stagnated. He goes on to say that the reason for the lack of improvement and effectiveness within schools in South Africa lies with the district education offices, which are responsible for supporting and facilitating change within schools so that improvement within schools can be achieved (Chinsamy, 2002). Additionally, Taylor and Prinsloo (2005) note that under certain conditions enhancing the district offices leads to more effective school management, which ultimately leads to enhanced teaching and learning within schools.
Creemers et al. (2007) note that for school improvement to take place schools need an external form of pressure to initiate the process of improvement and change. The external goals that are set up by the provincial education departments and the local district office contribute to the pressure that is placed on schools to improve (Creemers et al., 2007). Taylor and Prinsloo (2005) indicate that the findings from Quality Learning Project showed no visible gains in mathematics in grades nine and eleven. The reason for this, as stated by Taylor and Prinsloo (2005), is that the spotlight was on matric results and thus schools were pressured to perform and achieve excellent matric results. There was, however, no pressure placed on schools to perform in lower grades, thus these grades were ignored and failed to perform.
Another factor which contributes to school improvement and which can be regarded as the most influential factor is teachers (Hattie, 2009) and their teaching styles (Lingard et al., 2003). Teachers are the group of individuals that are involved in the delivery of knowledge to learners, thus their work with learners in the classroom can therefore be regarded as a detrimental factor in school improvement (Creemers et al., 2007; Taylor, 2008). Teachers are said to perform their best when they are adequately qualified and when they receive the support that they require from their school management teams (Khosa, n.d.). Khosa (n.d.) notes that in South Africa teachers do not have sufficient knowledge of the content that they teach and they fail to complete the prescribed curriculum. In addition, they do not receive the support that they require from their district offices. This serves as evidence that when schools do not receive pressure from the external provincial and local governments to perform they ultimately fail to perform (Creemers et al., 2007).
As teachers have direct contact with learners in the classroom their approach to teaching and the teaching styles that they adopt can have an effect on school improvement (Botha, 2010).
When teachers use a learner centred approach to teaching rather than a curriculum centred
approach, they are able to focus on the needs of learners so that their individual needs are met, leaving no learner behind (Hattie, 2009; Schleicher, 2012).
Contextual factors also contribute to school improvement (Botha, 2010). The backgrounds from which learners come have an influence on their academic performance (Christie, 2008).
Whether learners come from impoverished homes or elite homes can have a significant impact on their performance at school (Christie, 2008). Additionally, one‟s economic status determines the type of school that a learner attends, with elite learners attending schools that are of a good quality with adequate resources and well trained teachers (Harris, 2010). The same cannot be said, however, for impoverished learners (Christie, 2008).
This brings us to another factor that has an influence on the performance of learners and ultimately determines improvement within schools. The resources that schools have or lack can have a significant effect on the outcomes that are obtained in terms of learner performance (Christie, 2008). The lack of resources in public schools in South Africa hinders the effectiveness of schools and reduces their potential to reach their goal of school improvement (Botha, 2010). Yet Taylor (2008) notes that there are schools within South Africa that perform well despite their restrictions on resources, with a total of seven per cent of schools being rated as top performing schools, and fourteen per cent of schools being rated as moderately performing schools. These schools do not let their history and their financial setbacks hold them back. This does not mean that additional resources would not assist them in bringing about enhanced performance in schools; rather the point is that other schools, too, could potentially perform better with the resources that they already have (Taylor, 2008).
While setbacks such as poverty and other psychosocial issues have an influence on the outcomes of students, some schools in South Africa have found a way to work around these issues so that school improvement and effective education can take place (Manyano Community Schools Conference, 2010). These schools have decided not to let these setbacks affect the outcomes that they obtain, but rather to work around them by using an integrated approach to school improvement to ensure that all factors that have an impact on school improvement have been addressed (Manyano Community Schools Conference, 2010). Such schools can prove to be of great benefit and require further investigation to determine how they attain effective school improvement. From such schools, we can determine what works and what doesn‟t to bring about school improvement.
Harris (2010) states that schools in the most disadvantaged contexts can improve. She goes on further to state that in order for such schools to improve they need to acknowledge their context: specifically, the needs of their school and the needs of the community (Harris, 2010).
Harris (2010) notes that there needs to be an integrated approach to school improvement, one that (a) takes note of the uniqueness and the context in which the school is placed, (b) encourages networking between schools, whereby schools can learn from each other and support each other, and (c) follows a strategic school improvement approach to ensure that the resources that are required for a school are obtained.