As a SGB member, from the time I have been here, I was led to believe that when it comes to the teachers and the curriculum the SGB has no jurisdiction.
In terms of Skutnabb-Kangas & Garcia‟s (1995:237) characterization of active parental participation and support, these authors stress that “parents should be well informed at all times” and, as was captured earlier in the analysis, “parents must be organized to direct the school‟s educational and language policy” and that “they should hold administrators and staff responsible to carry out their wishes on ways in which their children are educated”. However, it was the contention of Agent L that the principal of Bo Peep Primary had not consulted with the SGB or the wider parent body on the school‟s language policy. Agent L also contended that the principal had limited the role played by the SGB by excluding it from becoming involved in curricular and policy issues. This position is further reinforced by the following responses from Agent L:
Initially when we were appointed as the SGB, we were …honest opinion now, we were like puppets. It took 6 months before I as chairman could understand this…you see when I say puppet I mean we were being manipulated by the principal.
The parents got a say, you heard me earlier on, but right now the principal is running the school here, obviously when it comes to the SGB reporting, she just makes us aware of what we need to know.
I have been stopped, by saying that I am not involved in the curriculum, when I say I, the SGB has nothing to do with the curriculum.
As SGB, the document says we have power, personally I am telling you our powers are restricted, our level of input is restricted, but I did pursue it. Even after your last interview I had strong feelings of insisting that any correspondence goes two ways English and Zulu from the school over here.
From the above responses the power tensions between Agent L as SGB chairperson and his principal are very evident with Agent L opposed to the circumscription of his power by the principal. It was evident that the principal set the agenda for the SGB but Agent L
refused to contend with playing a puppet role as he put it. However, the greater power that the principal appeared to wield allowed her to dominate the SGB and dictate the areas and level of participation of the SGB in school matters. Agent L‟s experiences of having his powers as SGB chairperson circumscribed by the principal are consistent with research findings (van Wyk 2004, Creese & Earley 1999) on school governance.
Research on school governance conducted in South Africa (van Wyk 2004) and abroad (Creese & Earley 1999) revealed that the principal often dominated the SGB and that the principal was essentially in charge, with the governors having little impact upon the school‟s direction. Commenting on the relationship between the principal of his/her school and the SGB, an educator in van Wyk‟s (2004: 53) study responded: “She dominates the SGB – she is the key player. She wants things done her own way, she does not take the school‟s interest into consideration.”
To confirm Agent L‟s contention that the SGB and the parents had not been consulted on curricular and policy issues, an African educator had been employed to teach isiZulu at Bo Peep Primary but the SGB was not involved in appointing the teacher. The following response reflects this:
To be honest she was appointed but she did not go through an interview process, it was just one person that came from another school that had isiZulu knowledge, I am not sure whether the teacher was given to us by the department. We didn‟t interview her and we didn‟t employ her, when I say employ her, we didn‟t physically go through the process of employing her.
The principal of Bo Peep Primary confirmed that parents were not consulted about the African teacher‟s appointment saying “we are trying it for the first time now in 2006. We rarely have our meetings but we are still doing it as second additional. If we want to move it to first additional then definitely we would have to talk about it.” On the issue of language policy revision, the principal indicated that she would like to move isiZulu from second additional to first additional language depending on the parents. She asserted,
“It‟s not the principal or the teachers that decide on the language policy of the school, according to the Schools Act it has to be something that comes from the parents.” When
questioned about whether the members of the SGB are aware of their role in terms of policy and curricular revision, the principal indicated that various policies including the language policy had already been in place by the time the current SGB was elected and therefore there was no need for the current SGB to deliberate on these policies. She added the following:
So now when we are going to have this question about introducing isiZulu as a first additional language, so now definitely we have to go to the GB and maybe to the general parents body. We have to do that.
If you are going to change policy you can‟t just do it with the GB. So that is why now it will be a whole new GB that I would have to train and make them aware of their role and their function and what their powers are and so on. So that is going to be a whole new thing.
The above response suggests the fluid nature of power. The principal‟s comment acknowledges the need for parents to share in the decision-making regarding language policy transformation where before they were excluded from this process and her affirmation that parents have “powers” indicates possible power shifts from the principal to the SGB in the future.
The position at the school of Agent S was very similar. Agent S stated that she had no knowledge of how her school‟s language policy was developed. It was her view that parents and educators at her school were not involved in developing the school‟s language policy. When asked if her school had a language policy, she remarked that the first time she had seen one was when the researcher showed her the policy given to him by the school principal. She added: “I spoke to a colleague this morning, she hasn‟t seen a language policy.” She also confirmed that she had been a form teacher at the school all the time but had no knowledge of a notice being sent out to parents inviting them to a meeting to discuss the language policy of the school or to develop a language policy for the school.
In addition, Agent S did not appear to have had the necessary power or influence to initiate a revision of the existing language policy of her school. This is borne out by the
following response to the question of whether she had made any attempts to initiate a revision of the school‟s language policy in the last two years:
Well I never had the opportunity to. There wasn‟t a forum to which I