CHAPTER 5: PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS
5.5 CASE STUDY NO.4: MR MARULE (HEAD OF DEPARTMENT –
5.5.4 Research findings
5.5.4.1 Management of learner-teacher support material
At Mamokgadi there are a lot of old textbooks whose pages are loose, and they are kept in classrooms which are no longer in use. Learner-teacher support material that is useful to learning and teaching is stored in offices that used to be for heads of departments, during the olden days when the staff establish- ment of the school qualified them. Mr Marule used to occupy one of them. The learner-teacher support material retrieval policy of the school is ineffective.
Learners who do not return books when the academic year ends do not pay for them either and they will still be given new ones when a new academic year starts. Mr Marule commented that:
“It is not wise to demand money for the payment of such books from a child whose parents are depending on social grants only. Our duty is to educate the children to be independent of their parents, and to be economically able to make a living. Perhaps they will come and donate for the school when they are able to earn a living. As of now, it will be improper to make his or her parents or guardians to pay.”
Learner-teacher support material has been delivered on time (a year in ad- vance), and Mr Marule has this to say:
“It was only this year 2012 that textbooks for all subjects in Grade 10 on curriculum assessment policy statement (CAPS), the new approach to curriculum, have been delayed. We hope that what we have been teaching them without these textbooks, will not disadvantage learners for promotions. As for all grades, learner-teacher support material were delivered a year in advance.”
5.5.4.2 Lesson planning and presentation
Mr Marule still uses the old Curriculum 2005 templates for lesson preparations.
They still have provisions like specific outcomes (SOs), critical outcomes (COs), programme and phase organisers, among others. Asked whether he knew that the approach had since been revised, he said:
“These things change time and again. I don’t know how many times I have been told that the new templates for lesson preparations are available, but I have been waiting to be given them by the curriculum specialists. Every time they forget to give me copies of them. I am only left with two years to retire. These curriculum changes, are too much for me to take.”
In social sciences, Mr Marule uses old common papers to drill learners in Grades 8 and 9. He does so in history and geography for Grades 10, 11 and 12.
From 2007 to 2012, six years in succession, Mr Marule’s pass percentages for history and geography have been between 45% and 53%. The Principal has suggested that history should be phased out and that life science be brought into the curriculum of the school in Grades 10 to 12. Mr Marule commented this way:
“The Principal wants to get rid of me through rationalisation and re- deployment (R&R). The moment History is phase out, I will be left with geography only. Remember I am the head in this department because of history. Therefore, if it is phased out, I will be redeployed to another schoo,l where it is offered. At my age, where will I go?”
As the only head of the department at the school, Mr Marule has been requested by the Principal to take care of moderation of subjects like languages and life orientation. Although workload is too much for him, he has never visited any teacher in class. Teachers of languages and life orientation, come to him for his signatures, as evidence of moderation, days or even hours before sub- mitting for district moderations. He does not quality assure tasks before they are administered and after they have been administered, he does not verify as to whether they have been marked with the aid of the memorandums. The district curriculum specialists have complained about school based assessment (SBA) moderation at Mamokgadi but there is no change. The circuit manager has since stepped in to help with a team of circuit curriculum specialists. They came to school to indicate what it means to moderate school based assessment, but Mr Marule has not changed.
5.5.4.3 Resources and teacher support
Mamokgadi used to have resources available during the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, these resources are now lying in unused classes and only a hunter can go for them. For those resources that the teachers would want to use, they are kept in the staff rooms. When circuit officials come for lists of resources that the school would want to acquire, teachers request Mr Marule to write these lists for them. One of the teachers stated:
“Mr Marule has been here since the establishment of the school. He knows what the school has and what it does not have. So, as Head of the Department, he should write these lists on behalf of the staff.”
Once new resources are bought, they are kept in the offices which were used as heads of the departments offices, and Mr Marule takes charge of them. No inventory list is kept for them, and there is no proper control over their use.
5.5.4.4 Teacher-learner ratio
Mamokgadi has 198 learners with six (6) teachers and therefore the ratio is one teacher is responsible for thirty-three (33) learners. The workload for all these teachers is too much. An English teacher teaches that language to the whole school, and so on. All learners at Mamokgadi do English first additional lang- uage (FAL), Sepedi home language (HL) and life orientation (LO). All teachers at the school teach at least one subject in Grade 12, and Mr Marule is teaching two (2) content subjects, namely history and geography.
5.5.4.5 In-service training and teacher support
The Principal does qualify to be taken to maths, science and technology centre for three (3) months by the Provincial Department of Education, but the circuit manager has refused to allow this to happen. She has this to say:
“If Mr Mhlari goes for three months to in-service training centre, who will remain teaching maths and maths literacy at the school? Above all, who will remain managing the whole school? Mr Marule is old, he cannot effectively manage the humanities department, what about the whole school? I cannot allow this to happen.”
Mr Marule himself acknowledged that he hardly attends workshops organised by the circuit/district/provincial officials. Attending a workshop at Mamokgadi it means that learners will not be taught for all the days that the teacher is attending. The Principal has encouraged all educators to combine learners, when one teacher is not available, but no one takes this seriously. The teachers at Mamokgadi are engaged from morning to afternoon, so there is no time for doing administration work.
5.5.4.6 Educational excursions
Learners of Mamokgadi are taught within the walls of their school. There are no educational excursions. The school seldom complains of lack of funding. The only times they are prepared to pay for transport, are during career exhibitions.
In this case, the circuit manager strongly advised the Principals of all second- ary schools to expose learners to careers by allowing and even paying transport fares for them. Some of the money is used to ferry Grade 12 learners for final oral moderations, which are sometimes held at circuit offices and some larger secondary schools. The only times Mr Marule remembers the learners being taken for educational excursions during 1996 when the history and Geography learners visited the then “Eastern Transvaal”. That took place in May of 1996, and in August the same year, they visited “planetarium” in Witwatersrand (Wits) University. He remembered these tours this way:
“During the Eastern Transvaal excursion, we were accommodated at Manyeleti Game Reserve for three nights, and we would visit every day a place of interest that was in our time-table. In Wits University, we went in the morning and came back in the evening of the same day. These educational tours were fruitful for learners and for us as teachers.”