Under apartheid South Africa was divided into four provinces, the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, and ten homelands. Each of these regions had its own department of education. In addition to these, there were departments for Coloured and Indian people as well as for Africans outside the homelands. Together these formed nineteen departments of education with different policies in a number of areas. After 1994 these departments were dismantled and replaced by one national department of education for South Africa. Each of the nine provinces also has its own department of education.
Before 1994 the area now called the Eastern Cape consisted of schools that were under six different and disparate departments: the department of Education and Training (DET), for Africans outside the homelands, the Cape Education Department (CED) for Whites, the Department of Education and Culture-House of Representatives (DEC-HOR) for Coloureds, the Department of Education and Culture- House of Delegates (DEC-HOD) for Indians, the Ciskei Department of Education (CDE), and the Transkei Department of Education (TDE). Two of these, the Ciskei and Transkei represented the most disadvantaged in virtually every single index of provision and quality. According to Hartshorne (1992: 128) the average size of class in the TBVC (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei) in 1989 was 53.0.
After 1994 the former Departments of Education were dissolved and their functions were taken over by the new Department of Education of the province of the Eastern Cape. The provincial ministry of education is headed by a Member of the Executive
Committee (MEC) for Education. This was led by the Permanent Secretary for Education with deputies and other staff. The new province of the Eastern Cape is divided into seven regions for administrative purposes. Each of the regions is headed by a Regional Director.
The Eastern Cape is composed of at least three geopolitical units that were to form the Eastern Cape Province (Figure 1.1 below) in terms of the 1994 constitution of South Africa. These units are the two former ‘independent’ homelands of Ciskei and Transkei (Figure 1.2 below) that were the creation of the Apartheid regime as well as a small portion of what was the former Republic of South Africa (RSA). Like all former homelands of the former RSA, the Ciskei and Transkei are poverty stricken.
The socio-economic context within which the new ECDE was established was one of rural impoverishment and underdevelopment. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Eastern Cape has been identified as the poorest province in the whole of South Africa.
It has therefore inherited some of the problems that were typical of these apartheid homelands which, according to the Imbewu Project (1999: 21), include “insufficient financial resources, poor school-community relationships, poor learner performance, poor professional attitudes, vandalism and abuse of rights and responsibilities”.
Insufficient financial resources, which according to Walker (1994) are the result of under-funding of education of the apartheid era, have had many repercussions on education in the form of shortage of basic resources such as books, teaching and learning aids. Poor educational facilities and resources in general, particularly in formerly black schools may result in limited use of student-centred teaching strategies and poor student learning.
The shortage of classroom accommodation and other facilities such as libraries and laboratories is a stark reality in the Eastern Cape. It is not a rare sight to see learners being taught outside and being crowded in one classroom on rainy or windy days.
This is why the former State President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, undertook a campaign to solicit financial support from the business communities to build schools in many of the rural areas of South Africa. Lack of accommodation is bound to affect teachers’ ability to perform their work effectively and any school improvement and
Figure 1.1: Map showing the Provinces of South Africa (Source: http://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/FLAGS/za.html)
Figure 1. 2: Map showing the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape (Source: http://www.doorway.co.za/accom.htm)
It also implies that the scope for using learner-centred teaching strategies is limited.
On the other hand, it is important to note that material circumstances do not determine success or failure, school efficiency or inefficiency. The contextual factors are important, but the performance of teachers, principals and SGBs is also independent of these factors.
Poor school-community relationships are linked to the poor educational background of the majority of the population and to the poverty of the region. Most parents in black schools, particularly in the remote rural areas, either have no schooling or have limited schooling to be able to play an effective role in the running of the school and giving all the necessary forms of support to the school. This is disempowering to such parents and renders them unable to play a meaningful role in the running of the school. This is captured by Macleod (1995) in the research that he conducted with teachers where he concludes from the interviews that knowledge and power are constituted as powerful by the teachers he interviewed and asserts that vis-á-vis the parents they (the teachers) saw themselves as powerful as they were knowledgeable and parents were not. This is emphasised by Carter, Harber and Serf’s (2003: 55) observation that without the ability to read, write, count and think, it is impossible to participate effectively in democracy and in society. In addition, many parents are unemployed, making it difficult for them to pay even the lowest school fees set and to support the school financially. In the same study Macleod (1995) also discovered that teachers associated money with power and for this reason one would expect parents who are unemployed and unable to contribute financially to the school to feel inadequate to play an active role in the school. It is not surprising therefore that one of the problems in the Eastern Cape identified in the base study into the conditions of education by the ECDE for the IP was non-participation of parents. This makes the work of principals and teachers in such schools more difficult than in other schools, especially the former Model C schools and some black schools in the urban areas. It also means that for any school improvement initiative to be effective, it should, where possible, focus on improving the school-community relationships. This is the reason why the focus of the IP was rural schools, township schools and farm schools.
Poor professional attitudes and the abuse of rights and responsibilities are closely linked. Professional attitudes determine whether teachers are going to function
effectively concerning their work and in terms of their responsibilities towards the learners. This may be related to what Day (1994); Fullan (1995) and Hansen (1998) call the moral purposes of teachers and teaching. Hopkins (1997: 37) also talks about the moral purpose of educational reform, which he describes as the ‘ruthless and relentless commitment to the learning of children at both individual and the institutional level’. All these need a principal who is not only strong but is also well equipped in terms of the necessary knowledge, management and leadership skills.
Before 1994 in the Eastern Cape in-service training (INSET) for principals and teachers was conducted in teacher centres (East London and Port Elizabeth) and in Transkei it was conducted in the Transkei In-service Training Centre (TRINSET) in Mthatha in the form of workshops or courses. Hopkins et al (1994) have observed that INSET in the form of workshops that take place outside the school, focuses on the individual and offers no support and resources to help the individual in the school situation when he/she encounters problems in putting the newly acquired ideas or skills into practice. From the researcher’s experience and observation as a teacher for thirteen years, there has also been a tendency in the Eastern Cape to focus attention on the Senior Secondary sector. Despite the use of INSET, there has been a general decline in the quality and culture of teaching and learning. According to Christie (1998), this implies a breakdown in the management systems and structures of the schools within which such teaching and learning takes place. Thus, Christie sees the breakdown in management and leadership as the major cause of the breakdown of the culture of teaching and learning. This, therefore, creates a need for any professional development initiative aimed at the restoration of the culture of teaching and learning, that is, transformation, to start with management and leadership in the school.
When the new ECDE was formed in 1994 one of its challenges was to develop a form of in-service for principals and teachers which did not only focus on the individual outside the school but offered follow-up support in the school. According to the report of the ECSECC (2000: 2) during the period 1994-1996 in-service training (INSET) in the Eastern Cape was limited to subject advisors who visited schools and were able to provide limited assistance to teachers in service. No specific reference is made in the report to principals. In general, the report emphasises that staff
53). The report points out that in 1997 INSET joined the Teacher Development section creating more clarity on responsibilities and functions. The report further notes that teachers could not implement policy changes as they were not sufficiently informed and that principals who should have been managers implementing new policies could not, as they had not been taken through the policies. The introduction of the IP, which will be discussed in the following section, was therefore a way of meeting the need for a school-focused INSET for all role-players in the school.
When the IP was conceived in 1997 the average pupil-teacher ratio for the Eastern Cape was 48: 1, but class sizes in excess of 65:1 are still common. Only 20% of the 6126 schools in the province had access to electricity and 81% had no access to water of any kind within walking distance of the school. The classroom construction backlog was in excess of sixteen thousand classrooms. The Eastern Cape is characterised by poor school performance, high failure rate, repetition and drop-out rates, large scale under-age and over-age enrolment, low levels of efficiency and by far the highest demand for teachers in the country. Education in the province was suffering from frustration, loss of confidence, and surrender on the part of many officials in the system, and a crisis of despair (ECSECC, 2000: 5). The following table (1.1) highlights the not so good examination performance in the Eastern Cape and South Africa from 1994 to 2000.
Table 1.1: Matriculation Examination Results, 1994-2000 Candidates Total
pass
% Pass Total fail % fail
Eastern Cape
1994 73728 41881 57 31847 43
1996 66809 32639 49 34170 51
1998 82517 37206 45 45311 55
1999 79749 32029 40 47720 60
2000 74505 37118 50 37387 50
Kwa-Zulu Natal
1994 75409 51005 68 24404 32
1996 86608 53397 62 33211 31
1998 108063 54324 50 53739 50
1999 103104 52306 51 50798 49
2000 96392 55128 57 41264 43
Western Cape
1994 29824 25533 86 4291 14
1996 34830 27940 80 6890 20
1998 38546 30438 79 8108 21
1999 37199 29303 79 7896 21
2000 37818 30489 81 7329 19
National 1994 495408 287343 58 208065 42
1996 518032 278958 54 239074 46
1998 552384 272488 49 279954 51
1999 511159 249831 49 261328 51
2000 489298 283294 58 206004 42
Source: Education Africa Forum, fifth edition, 2001.