APPENDIX I: Declaration to consent of the school principal 2 169
5.4 School choice 119
A winning streak requires renewal and rebuilding. In the schools fresh blood (new qualified and innovative staff) is required to bring new ideas especially in the management phase so that the schools can reorient their school vision and mission to the current educational trends. As momentum runs down, people and buildings begin to look run down (Kanter, 2004).
A positive emotional climate of high expectations reinforces self-confidence. Winners’
behaviours and attitudes – including abundant communication, thorough preparation using detailed metrics, mutual respect and deep knowledge of one another’s strengths, the desire to work together and help one another succeed and empowering environment of shared leadership - reinforce confidence in one another. Organisational culture and routines supporting accountability, collaboration and initiative reinforces confidence in the system. Strong networks providing encouragement, resources and information reinforce external confidence (Kanter, 2004). In schools which are high achieving in academics they exhibit winners’ behaviours and attitudes including abundant communication, through preparations using detailed metrics, mutual respect and deep knowledge of one another’s strengths, the desire to work together and help one another succeed and empowering environment of shared leadership – reinforce confidence in one another. All is done to ensure that the high academic achievement is maintained.
From the observations I made to arrest school decline, the government should avail funds to schools to renovate the classrooms, build more classrooms, build laboratories and better staff houses with running water and electricity to motivate and retain qualified teachers especially in rural schools.
school choice like the pass rate of the school and the financial consideration of the amount of fees charged at the school. Even the distance that is involved from home to the school also affects the choice of the school. (Mr Gushungo)
In addition, Mrs Chirandu, the Head of Department of History in Tagwinya High School, also understood school choice as:
School choice is the selection of a school amongst others by interested stakeholders (parents or students). There are factors that can affect school choice like distance; most of the schools here are day schools so parents consider distance from their home areas. They also focus on the schools which have the fees or tuitions that they can afford. At times they also consider the type of the curriculum offered at the school then try and foster what they would want their children to be. Some parents would move their children from schools that concentrate on Arts subjects then they feel Science and Commercial subjects are more profitable these days. So subject choice also affects school choice.
(Mrs Chirandu)
Furthermore, Mrs Chitate, the Deputy Principal of the same school, said:
This one is multi-facetted; school choice may mean the opportunity to choose a school where one would want to attain their educational career. School choice also means that choice one makes on grade A schools the private schools, grade B which are government, council schools, boarding school or church schools when choosing a school to attain their education. (Mrs Chitate)
In agreement, Mr Chipiri, a parent from Umambo High School, shared the same sentiments of school choice as the above participants:
School choice is the ability of a parent to choose amongst the variety of schools that are there in a country to choose which one to send his/her child to. There are limitations to one’s choice. The most important thing that determines school choice is affordability. In our area there are some schools that require more or high fees as compared to others. So your choice will be affected by your pocket
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because you cannot send your child to a certain school because of the fees they charge. (Mr Chipiri)
Also, Mrs Nzira, a parent from the Tagwinya High School, highlighted the following:
School choice is whereby a parent or a child prefers a school over another because of reasons especially considering pass rates, infrastructure, quality of education that determine school choice. (Mrs Nzira)
Public schools have played and will continue to play the key role in ensuring that all Zimbabwean learners have access to schooling. According to Ilon (1992), Zimbabwe is a country where a variety of schooling options exist, “choice” actually exist. There are “independent”
schools or “high fee-paying” schools. In addition, Ilon (1992) notes that more accessible to the general population are the mission schools. After independence, Zimbabwe integrated former white and former black government schools into one system. Such schools were formerly grouped by group “A” schools and group “B” schools - white schools and black schools respectively. The above shows the variety of options available to Zimbabwean parents from private schools, government schools and mission schools.
Furthermore, according to Ilon (1992), poor parents do not face a “menu of options” and have little choice but to send their children to the local, poorer quality, community or government school. Little doubt, they would choose the higher-quality private school if it were a bona fide option. Over the last couple of decades society, including the society of Zimbabwe has placed more and more emphasis on the academic achievement of its citizens. This shows that school choice is as limited by the financial backgrounds of parents.
In support of school choice, Kanter (2004) notes that success means that people or teams or organisations survive long enough to need maintenances and repairs – in other words, re- investment. Winners undergo natural aging processes as people get older, slow down, leave.
Their facilities, tools and bags of tricks get older, deteriorate, run-down. Winners also face natural limits – the organisational equivalent of “shelf-life” and “shelf-space” (Kanter, 2004, p.73). This shows that if high performing schools like School A want to maintain its first choice with students and parents it has to re-invest through improving school infrastructure like
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classrooms, teachers houses to retain the best teaching staff and laboratories for both computers and science subjects which will be well-equipped.
According to Kanter (2004), some winners’ advantage reach limits, as all seats in the stadium are filled or as product markets become saturated. It is also hard to win forever because of the paradox of success. Success creates its own problems that make it hard to sustain. Even without regulation reducing winners’ advantages, winners often face circumstances in which their competition gets tougher. She notes that success also produces its own competition. Innovators have the field to themselves until others catch on, jump in, or change the way they play. Success creates attractive markets, encourages imitations and brings out the toughest competitions (ibid, 2004). This is true in schools it is very hard for schools to remain achieving high academic achievement due to various reasons like change of leadership and management, staff loss due to death, retirement or transfers to other schools, change of the curriculum and change in the quality of learners each year.
From the observations made, a school like Umambo High School can be a school of choice for most Zimbabwean parents. The school looked up to date in terms of all the things I have mentioned. The school infrastructure looked well-maintained, school furniture was available to all students and computers and the internet was available which shows technological advancement on part of the school since computers and the internet are essentials for modern teaching and learning to be effective. The inclusion of sports like basketball shows improvement in the sporting part not only offering the traditional sports like soccer and netball. The school has overall been performing well shown by the latest shield it scooped for the best A level results in the district. The school also offers a wide curriculum for their A level which includes Science subjects like Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology and Physics; Commercial subjects like the Management of Business, Accounting and Economics; Arts subjects like Geography, Divinity, Shona and Literature. The school is definitely a school of choice for many parents in the district, many students would wish to enroll there for their advanced level.
School choice is the ability and freedom of both parents and pupils to choose a school amongst schools in a country to obtain their educational needs depending on the factors they consider such as pass rates, facilities, subjects offered and the nature of the school and affordability. This is supported by literature and the participants’ responses. Also, Kanter’s (2004) theory supports
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choice when she notes people want to be associated with successful schools so the high academic performing schools are a choice of many and as for declining schools, people are running away from them. The observations made also supports this when it is shown that parents and pupils prefer a school of choice to have good infrastructure and well maintained buildings and classrooms.