4.2 Impact of schooling on students’ academic performance
4.2.2 Resourcing of schools: “ You're not prepared enough”
68
school ahead of the competition. This suggests that this orientation had become part of the teachers and principals’ dispositions and habitus. For these students, studying and achieving meant nothing less than a distinction, which was part of the embodied practice of the school (Bourdieu, 1990). In addition, setting high standards for students’ academic achievement meant that students took their studies seriously and “put more effort... dedication towards their studies”. This supports the argument that teachers who are passionate about their work understand that it is their responsibility to encourage students to actively engage in their learning and become dedicated to their intellectual development (Mart, 2013; Czerniewics
& Brown, 2014). From this, it could be deduced that there was a concerted drive to push learners out of their habitus towards a new habitus of a better life.
69
was on the year plan. The computers were stolen. There were no practical’s so our school work was based on theory and we never had the proper bases of it”.
Ephraim: “Secondary and primary education obviously is of under resourced schools, poor teaching, poor learning, and no access to libraries. You're not prepared enough to writing Grade 12 exams and you do not have the textbooks.
Since the school does not have all the resources to give all learners print outs.
It was a very big problem, even when those print outs were done and teacher would print pages from a textbook especially for Geography. It becomes a problem because sometimes the pages are printed in black and white but it’s not very clear such as the diagram in a textbook. I’ll take that textbook go home and write everything from that text book from the first page until the last page”.
The above excerpts suggest that participants experienced inadequate access to the necessary educational resources in their schools, which was a key challenge manifesting as a barrier to learning. According to Summer and Sandile, there were no laboratory in their schools. In other words, none of the participants were equipped with relevant skills required to pursue courses in advanced science in higher education. This posed a threat to their successful learning, as science subjects were taught based on theory only, with little or no practical investigations involved to consolidate and make real those understandings. None of the participants attended a school that performed practical investigations in the subjects that required such. This was largely because their schools were “not well resourced or had science labs but they were not functional”. Therefore, in these situations, teachers often resorted to teaching “only the theory section associated with the practical’s”. For instance, the teacher would focus on “using the textbook, past papers and that is how we were prepared for the exam”. Makgato (2007) and Dhururmrja (2013) contend that practical investigations are important for simplifying and strengthening the learning of scientific concepts. In addition, practical investigations enhance interest in science, improve learners’
investigative skills and knowledge, and makes the subject relevant (Makgato, 2007;
Dhururmrja, 2013). In a broader scheme of things, this equips learners with skills required to participate in and contribute to science and solve problems facing society (Department of Basic Education, 2011).
70
However, for these participants, often science subjects were teacher-centred, taught through a talk-and-chalk method, which would potentially lead to declining interest, leading to students performing poorly in these subjects (Onwu, 1999; Lebata, 2014). Based on this observation, Chetty (2014) asserts that in poorly resourced schools, there is a deepening social stratification, which is gradually diminishing the prospects of learners accessing and participating in higher education. In fact, Chetty (2014, p. 92) argues, obtaining matric
“credentials are simply an endurance test [with] …no [prospect] of receiving a critical education”. Thus, for many black learners from socio-economically deprived contexts, achieving academically and succeeding in life is a utopian possibility.
Ephraim’s high school was “under resourced” and there was “no access to libraries”. This situation is problematic as libraries play an important role in development literacy skills in learners (Chakanika et al., 2012). For instance, the importance of a school library lies in the fact that it “…is a learning laboratory that provides opportunities for pupils to develop information skills and developing commitment to informal decision-making” (Chakanika et al., 2012, p. 12). Because Ephraim’s school did not have a library, including textbooks, this suggests that learners were often inadequately prepared for Grade 12 and higher education.
Often, learners had to “share one book sometimes amongst five students and you only get this book once a month”.
According to Ephraim, his school did not have textbooks, despite the promise of adequate provisioning promised by the Department of Education (Department of Basic Education, 2014), which had a negative effect on student learning, given the fact that learners had to share a textbook (Onwu, 1999). For Chetty (2014), schools characterised by the absence of basic schooling resources, evident in the participants’ narratives above, such as lack of committed teachers, libraries, textbooks, and laboratories have catastrophic consequences for the role of education in the lives of students. For instance, from Bourdieu’s (1986) perspective, this may lead to inadequate transference of cultural capital and social ‘stock’ or resources, which children obtain from accessing basic schooling resources. Therefore, schooling often reproduces and reinforces the marginalisation of and class inequalities among learners (Bourdieu, 1990).
71