CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
7.5 Recommendations
7.5.1 Recommendations to the Department of Education
At the heart of complaints by these rural secondary school principals is the marginalisation of rural schools and communities. This marginalisation takes many forms; one of them involves being ignored by officials such as SEMs and auxiliary services such as health services, because of distances and unfavourable road conditions. Another is that policies show little insight into the conditions and needs of rural schools and communities. Principals say they are not consulted when policies are made, and rural realities are not brought to the fore. The principals refute the Education Department's claims (according to principals) that such representation occurs through teacher unions, because the interests and perspectives of educators are not the interests and perspectives of school managers.
Government policies, since the beginning of democracy in 1994, have sought to provide guidelines and frameworks that create space at the local level for schools to develop in ways that also fit with local needs and resources. Even so, the principals in Sea Lake district feel that those policies take little cognisance of rural schools and rural communities. Further, the department often translates the policies into processes and requirements that are insensitive to rural schools and communities. (For example, most educators travel long distances to and from school, and are dependent on group transport arrangements; parents and SGB
members often have neither telephones or cars and cannot easily find out about or attend a department workshop organised a few days hence). Rural schools such as in Sea Lake district comprise a large percentage of South African schools.
The situation needs to be addressed, and to do it the government needs to find better ways of consulting rural communities and schools as part of formulating policies and planning services. It needs to consult school principals as well as teacher unions. Teacher unions, first and foremost, fight for interests of educators. Principals, however, sit in a particular location between the department, educators and school communities, in one sense representatives of the department, in another representatives of educators, in a third representatives of communities. Unions are not likely to adequately represent principals' aspirations and interests in their engagements with the Education Department. In countries such as Denmark principals have their own associations through which the Education Department communicates with them, and through which principals are involved in policy development (Ministry of Education and Research, 1992). Such a framework in South Africa could facilitate the meaningful participation of principals in policy formulation.
The Department has to find a way of accommodating the diversity of communities in South Africa. To pretend that urban and rural communities are homogeneous enough that they can be treated the same way - even in broad terms - is a mistake. In school management and policy, as in curriculum, diversity has to be acknowledged, understood and celebrated as part of a unified, national education system. The Department has to find better ways of framing legislation that takes into account different realities in South Africa, with special reference to socio-cultural dynamics, economies and needs in rural as well as urban South Africa.
The policy on pregnant girls offers an example at the operational level. The Education Department needs to balance its concerns for human rights and transformation with sensitivity and caution in rural communities. A girl's rights to education have to be balanced with her rights to medical attention if necessary, and the responsibilities of schools have to be clearer. One solution is to provide schools and communities with the necessary infrastructure and expertise to ensure girls' safety during pregnancy. This might include training educators so that they can assist pregnant girls if complications arise, or making available ambulances and clinics. Notwithstanding the fact that many rural schools are very conservative when it comes to this issue, many of them took conciliatory stances and suggested practical and constructive solutions. Inaccessibility of health facilities for rural communities is a reality and poses a threat to learners who fall pregnant and hence to the liability of schools. It is crucial that visible support in this regard should come from the department before it blames educators for failing to provide health-related assistance when it is required.
The department needs to provide educators with deeper, intensive training in Outcomes Based Education, the sooner the better. Training programmes that have been offered, often on an ad hoc basis, are not working. That training should address not only issues of teaching style, but also fundamental ontological and epistemological issues that require thorough mental preparations on the part of educators. Such issues require deeper and more carefully considered training programmes for educators and principals. One principal captured this issue thus:
One or two or three days workshop, and hope to un-do entrenched attitudes that have been inculcated through a rigorous training spanning three to fours years, is just not on.
Educators generally share their principals' position on OBE training. For example, when one educator was asked to elaborate on why she felt OBE was problematic for her and others in the community, she said:
We were trained for a week, yet we received 3-4 years of training as educators, how come we are expected to understand OBE after only one
week's training?
Rural schools principals have, despite numerous challenges in running schools, building and equipping classrooms, expanding curriculum offerings and taking initiatives on HIV/AIDS, identified serious defects in the department's conception of development. The department, for example, categorises schools as either developed or not developed, based on buildings and equipment, then funds each school on a sliding scale in which developed schools receive less. Rural schools want a broader definition of development, one that enables them to develop in their own ways. They question also the dichotomous categorisation of developed and not developed, arguing that development, like learning, has no ending.