2.2 Literature review
2.2.5 Leadership role in school ethos
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have the potential to draw business organisations to be part of the school either by offering sponsors as well as bringing in parents and the community to know the school more.
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The notion of effective schooling is also supported by the 2025 Schooling Action Plan for Improving Basic Education. This schooling plan is intending to instil confidence in the citizens that the South African government has a plan to deal with poor quality schooling and that effective school culture can be established and entrenched (Department of Basic Education, 2010).
A study by Ramovha (2009) showed late arrival of learners was not tolerated as there was a disciplinary committee which deals with learners who contravene the school code of conduct.
The South African Schools Act 84 of 1986 (Republic of South Africa, 1996b) mandates school governing bodies to adopt a code of conduct for learners as a way of establishing a disciplined and purposeful school environment, dedicated to improving the quality of the learning process in a disciplined environment. According to Rossouw (2012), a disciplined environment refers to an environment free of any disruptive behaviour, which mostly relates to action or behaviour by learners that may negatively affect their education or that may interfere adversely with the atmosphere conducive to learning in the school or classroom.
When learners come late to school, firstly they lose quality education and they become counter-productive and secondly they disturb the lessons when they enter the class. As learners are allowed to attend school of their choice coming from different demographic areas, each school has its rules and policies that govern its smooth running, which among any culture is punctuality. So it is important that culture of punctuality is managed in each school and that should be taught to learners until they reach their adulthood.
In support of the above claims is the study by Moforah and Schulze (2012) conducted in thirty rural villages and townships in the North-West province to identify influence on the job satisfaction of previously disadvantaged principals. This study found among other findings such as organisational efficiency factors that affected the day-to- day running of the schools relating to problems with a number of learners who were ill-disciplined demonstrated by their repeated late arrival at class. Sedibe (2006) states that the attributes to school culture is the bringing about of the conditions and disciplines of compulsory schooling that allow learners and teachers regular attendance, punctuality and acceptance of authority. Grant, Jasson and Lawrence (2010) in a study conducted at eighteen KwaZulu-Natal schools found that the social context has a fundamental role to play. They contend that many schools located in disadvantaged communities have inherited a legacy of dysfunctionality, yet some have succeeded in achieving their core responsibilities of teaching and learning despite the odds.
These scholars claim that the dysfunctionality in many of the schools, post-1994, has
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continued despite government’s attempts to restore a culture of teaching and learning. The success of those schools that succeed despite the negative broader community contextual conditions that exist is described by Grant et al. (2010) as being able to produce a context and sense of pride in neatness, good attendance, punctuality, and efficient use of insufficient resources. The school that shows pride in its self will create the climate of welcoming from the gate and the community of the school goes the extra mile to ensure that school is clean and taken care of despite the shortage of support staff. In such school ethos when the school time commences everybody knows what to do and where teaching and learning is taken very seriously by both learners and teachers. Teacher quality is measured by certification, teaching experience level of preparation, and academic background, is an indicator of student achievement (Darling-Hammond, 2010).
Other significant findings emanating from the study by Ramovha (2009) are: the lack of adequate classrooms to develop the culture of teaching and learning, the late delivery of learners’ support materials and the shortage of mathematics and physical science teachers.
Some schools receive the resources from the department but what they receive is only provided at the commencement of the year or even at the end of each year. Things like exercise books and pens are received at the beginning of the year but during the year such resources are finished and the school then suffers to ensure that teaching and learning continues normally. Mji and Makgato (2006) assert that the basic education needs, outdated teaching practices and lack of basic content knowledge and teaching and learning materials have resulted in poor teaching standards in schools. They further emphasise that the poor standards have been exacerbated by among other things like, a large number of under- qualified or unqualified teachers who teach in overcrowded and non-equipped classrooms.
Similar studies have supported these claims that the reasons for the poor performance of South African learners in mathematics include the poor socio-economic background of learners (little incentive to study at home), lack of appropriate learner support materials, general poverty of school environment, general poor quality of teachers and teaching (including poor subject knowledge and poor motivation), language of instruction (often not the same as learners’ mother tongue) and an inadequate study orientation (Ndlovu, 2011; Van der Walt, Maree & Ellis, 2008).
In the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality 111 study by Spaull (2012), textbooks are classified as essential classroom resources on the basis that effective teaching and learning cannot take place without them. They provide a minimum
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standards of educational environment to which all learners are entitled. South African schools perform worse than any of the African countries in terms of educational outcomes in literacy and numeracy (Spaull, 2012). In considering the impact of textbook availability Spaull (2012) finds that learners with their own reading textbooks perform significantly better than learners who have to share their textbooks with more than one other learner. In line with the findings of Ramovha (2009) was the textbook crisis in the Limpompo province where learners’ right to education was somehow compromised by the Education Department in 2012. Learner support materials were not delivered to schools up until the Non- profit organisation, Section 27 intervened and had to take government to court. The broad educational programme of the school is the curriculum and it automatically builds the culture of every school. If the delivery of curriculum is compromised because of logistical challenges it implies that the ethos of that school would diminish.
As my study explores the school ethos as influenced by school categorisation, the next section reviews literature on school categorisations.