4.5 Contextual realities informing SMT monitoring strategies
4.5.2 Human resources capacity
The data has shown that one of the contextual issues that influenced the choice of monitoring strategies was the availability or the dearth of human resources. The model that is used by provincial Department of Education to allocate teaching posts to the schools can be a major drawback which may result in the placement of fewer teachers to the schools with lower enrolments (KZN DoE, 2015). Such a model was developed by the then Department of Education at a national level. Based on this model, the final educator post establishment of Samela Primary for 2015 was five educators including the principal. The Grade R educator was the sixth in the school establishment and had an advantage of teaching only Grade R.
Page | 71 The documents submitted in order to verify the situation tallied with the situation in Samela (KZN DoE, 2015). All teachers, except Grade R teacher, had to teach multi-grade classes.
The situation was even worse for the only HOD allocated to the school. According to this post establishment a single HOD at Samela Primary was expected to supervise all three class phases in the school; the Foundation Phase, Intermediate Phase and Senior Phase. The major challenge of such an arrangement is that the situation was seemingly setting up the HOD for failure since HODs had not been prepared for such adverse conditions. Often the HODs are prepared to manage one phase, in the case of a primary school, and one department in the case of a secondary school. These concerns were raised by the participants towards the end of the interview when they were asked to share their views about anything that concerned them.
Mrs Miya raised the issue of frequent introduction changes in the curriculum while teachers have not been prepared to implement those changes. Bhengu, Naicker and Mthiyane (2013) acknowledge the similar concerns. Mrs Miya had this to say:
The other big problem is Grade R which is a new grade in the Department of Basic Education and it has different approaches of teaching. Everything for them is different from the rest of the Foundation Phase. Now I am monitoring something I am not even sure of. Therefore, it is not easy to follow them. How can I monitor teaching and learning in a class I cannot even teach?
The complaint emanated from insufficient training of the HODs in order to be conversant with multiphase monitoring plus the inclusion of Grade R as part of the Foundation Phase.
Normally, an HOD is skilled to be in charge of one known Phase or Department but in this instance, it was not the case. Firstly, the HOD was in charge of all phases in the school.
Secondly, Grade R was introduced as part of mainstream schooling when she was already part of the SMT. A huge percentage of the HODs had not been trained on dealing with Grade R teaching and learning. The training of the SMT members to cope with such a situation only came in isolated doses and the challenges of the process are huge enough to warrant a study on their own.
The other challenge was the teaching of more than one class by one teacher under the same roof, often referred to as multi-grade classes. Such a condition made a bad situation even worse for both the subject teachers and the SMT members. The weaknesses of multi-grade classes were shared:
If you look at our timetable of the multi-grade class of Grade 5 and Grade 6 you would think it is perfect. But if you look at it closely you will notice weaknesses. In a
Page | 72 one-hour period meant for Maths, only thirty minutes will be used for teaching each class. Where is the other thirty minutes? For sure term one work will not be covered in one term (Mrs Thwala).
In such a context only half the term’s work could be completed in a term. In a year only half of the work would be covered. Implicitly, one year’s work requires two years to complete.
This scenario is already an indictment to effective teaching and learning. Such a state of affairs is obviously abnormal but since such classes were recognised due to the circumstances, then SMT members had a challenge of setting new sets of teaching and monitoring standards for multi-grade classrooms. For instance, in order to tackle the challenge of multi-grade classes, Mrs Thwala proposed aligning ATPs of multi-grade class to be carried through lesson plans addressing common themes. For instance, if during a certain week percentages were to be taught in Grade 4, then a similar Grade 5 theme was brought forward to that week; even though content levels differed. Mrs Thwala shared her advice to other teachers of such classes by saying:
If there are fractions this term in Grade 4 and in Grade 5 percentages are in the following term, I will bring Grade 5 percentages to this term; so that I will be able to introduce fractions in Grade 4. Meantime for Grade 5 it is a revision lesson in preparation for percentages.
This was done in order to ease teaching and indirectly monitoring of multi-grade teaching.
However, such decisions contradict the policy guidelines of the Department of Education such as one annual teaching plan for each grade countrywide. Moreover, the approach of Mrs Thwala did not guarantee content completion as prescribed in Grade 4 and Grade 5 classes respectively. Nevertheless, what the data is telling us is that there were contextual factors that considered in designing the monitoring of teaching tools. The participants appeared to have a set of rules that are applied in multi-grade classes but not in others. Lagging behind was tolerated in such classes while another set of rules was applied in single grade classes. When Mrs Thwala was asked about what they did to address the situation of classes lagging behind.
She responded by saying that:
We try to assist the educator (who is not teaching a multi-grade class) and ask what has kept her behind because she is not multi-grading, like us.
The above comment suggests that falling behind was tolerable in multi-grade classes but not in others. As a result no mention of catch-up classes was mentioned by any of the participants, particularly in classes below Grade 10. Morning and afternoon classes were arranged more often for Grade 12 only. However, if catch-up classes were not arranged in
Page | 73 lower classes, the learners would cumulatively lag behind until they rich externally examined Grade 12 class. Only then were the teachers circumstantially obliged to conduct the so-called
‘extra-classes’. The major question that cropped up in such a context of tensions was on the steps that the participants followed if a teacher was teaching the ATP.
If he is lagging behind, I then confront, not the teacher, but the HOD to address the issue because he is the one who is close to the teacher than the principal (Mr Kubheka).
As argued earlier, it is evident that most if not all the participants seemed to lack the guts to address the culprits of non-compliance.