SUMMARY,RECCOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION
4.3 Emerging themes from the data
4.3.2 Policy influencing teaching
The HOD-B explained that the Foundations for Learning policy was introduced as results of the systemic evaluation of Numeracy and Literacy which was conducted worldwide. The systemic evaluation results showed that Numeracy and Literacy results were very poor in South Africa and the Foundations for Learning Policy was then developed and gazetted. According to HOD- B, the Foundations for Learning policy was a four year campaign which consequently had subjected the learners to the Annual National Assessment exercise. She provided more explanations by saying that the milestones and the learning outcomes were designed to serve as a benchmark to monitor learners’ progress in the learning of Numeracy and Literacy.
In view of the information presented by the educators and the HODs, it became clear that some of them did not give full details of the policy background but that they did understand the purpose of the Foundations for Learning Policy. All educators that participated in this study believed that it was a policy that gave them some direction in terms of their teaching. This meant that the teachers accepted the Foundations for Learning Policy but some experienced challenges during the implementation process. Some of the challenges that they raised were that the learners still experienced difficulties with regards to their reading, writing and counting skills.
This is despite the fact that the Foundations for Learning policy had been implemented in schools.
attitudes were also used in order to promote the learners to the next grade. This seemed to have decreased interest in reading among the learners in the Foundation Phase.
In response to the problem of learners who seemed to be unable to read, educators had to set aside time that had to be used for teaching reading and counting skills. When educators were asked whether or not the policy had influenced their teaching, they all responded affirmatively.
In School-A for instance, all 4 educators indicated that the Foundations for learning policy was assisting them to achieve their teaching goals. Sharon even remarked that her children performed well in the Annual National Assessments (ANA) which were conducted at the beginning of 2011. She stated that she applied the policy and it had enabled her to teach well. In this regard this is what she said:
The most important reason for producing good results in ANA is that I prepare my learners thoroughly and in accordance with the Foundations for Learning policy document.
The experiences expressed in the above paragraph were shared by other educators as well. In School-B for instance, some of the educators explained that the policy had not been fully implemented, and therefore minimally influenced their teaching. However, Sue and Patience expressed similar sentiments to those of educators from School-A about whether or not Foundations for Learning policy was influencing their teaching. On the same issue, some educators indicated that they experienced difficulties in implementing the Foundations for Learning Policy. Hence, it did not meet their teaching goals. Kim stated that the Foundations for Learning Policy did not meet her set goals as an educator. She explained the following:
I am definitively not achieving my goals with my Grade R class that I am teaching. We start with the basics in Grade R but the requirements are too advanced. In the first term the learners are expected to write numbers and letters. The learners in my class are
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unable even to hold the pencil. Then, how can you expect them to write the letter A? With Grade R’s, this is a definitely, no!
Lucy, another educator from School-B, also indicated that there were difficulties in implementing the Foundations for Learning policy. She highlights the following:
With the Grade Ones that I am teaching, I had lots of problems because we have learners that did not go to Grade R. We also have new children and they are not ready. Their state of readiness takes a long time. In fact one child is still doing readiness work. He cannot even hold the pencil.
According HOD-A, the Foundations for Learning policy was influencing her teaching in her school. The environments where learners came from really affected the educators’ goals in School-A. If learners were able to understand English, teachers could have made remarkable progress within reasonable time. In School-A, educators had to drill the learners on spoken language so that it could be easier for them to understand when the actual concepts in specific learning areas were taught. Similarly, the HOD-B explained that the Foundations For Learning policy was barely meeting the set goals. She said that the reason for this was that the goals also were far-fetched, she stressed that by saying the following:
When they plan the Foundations For Learning, I think they do it nationally, they really do not consider what is happening at grassroots. You will also find that how a school performs depends on the demographics of the school. If you at where our school is situated, the medium of instruction which is English and we are catering for isiZulu speaking learners, that creates a problem.
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She thought that the reason for the Foundations for Learning policy not to be effective in influencing their teaching, was that the policy designers had planned it nationally without taking into consideration local conditions of different schools. This made it difficult for the teachers to achieve the set goals because of the demographics of the school. From the information supplied by the educators from both schools, it seemed that the Foundations for Learning policy benefited some, while others did not, due to multiple difficulties and challenges that they experienced, more especially at the implementation stage.