4.3 PARTICIPANTS’ VIEWS ON THE IMBEWU PROJECT
4.3.1 The Participants' involvement in the IP Training Programme
4.3.1.1 The most beneficial aspects of the Imbewu Training
In the questionnaire, participants were asked “Which of the Imbewu ‘functions’
(modules) were the most beneficial?” Participants were invited to indicate as many of the modules as they wanted and, in the following question, were asked to motivate their answers. The question was designed to establish perceptions about the value of the training. Amongst the questions I was interested in were: did participants think that the training would improve their skills? help to create a more efficient school?
Improve teacher and principal performance? Contribute to transforming the school?
The table below presents the responses of the principals and SGB members on the EMD modules (modules 1-4 in Table 4.3.1) in which they were trained together.
Table 4.3.1(b) The number of principals and SGB members (expressed as a %) who indicated which were the most beneficial aspects of Imbewu Training. (Multiple responses were permitted)
Aspects of Training Principals (n=33)
SGB members (n=8)
Planning for whole school development 18 (55%) 1 (12.5%) Financial management and control 18 (55%) 2 (25.0%) Developing systems and processes for
human resources productivity
12 (36%) 1 (12.5%)
Developing and managing relationships with the community
11 (33%) 5 (62.5%)
It can be expected that the extent to which the role players benefited from the training on the various modules would have had an effect on the success of the IP implementation
The table shows that in those aspects of management where principals and SGB members were trained together, principals seem to have benefited most except for management of relationships between the school and the community. If indeed principals benefited most, this would be expected to have contributed to the success of the IP in those particular areas of management. This is because the principal is, for a greater part, more important as a change agent than the SGB. The fact that the principals did not, according to the table, gain maximum benefit regarding relationships with the community is telling. It confirms that the democratization aspects of the transformation agenda were not all warmly supported by principals and that, specifically, principals did not welcome the need to work with SGBs who were often poorly informed about school matters yet had the power to influence school affairs. Put differently, principals were not happy to relinquish the powers they hitherto had had to make decisions nor were they convinced of the need to consult widely. The percentage may have reflected a negative attitude towards that particular aspect of change.
As the table shows, for all modules the differences between principals and SGBs are high. The percentages are higher for the principals in the first three modules (which they obviously found to be relatively useful) but not the last module (which involves developing democratic school governance and would have meant having to negotiate issues with the SGB which in turn would have meant a departure from earlier styles of autocratic management used by the principals). The higher percentages in the first three (school improvement) modules may be due to the fact that the principal is accountable for everything that happens in the school and has an investment in improving the quality of education in his/her school.
With regard to developing and managing relationships with the community the percentage for SGB members is almost double that of the principals. As mentioned in chapter 1, previously there were school committees who were not accorded the
dispensation the role that the SGBs have to play is specified through the SASA which has given them more power and responsibility. This was their first experience that they participated in the training and had begun to understand their role in the governance of the school and the relationship between the school and the community.
They thus put more value on this aspect of the training. Understandably, principals were less enthusiastic about this aspect of the course as they did not want to have to consult SGBs which entailed more time and effort in an already difficult job.
Table 4.3.1(c) The number of principals, teachers and SGB members (measured in %) who identified various IP modules as beneficial (multiple responses were permitted).
Aspects of Training Principals (n=33)
Teachers (n=119)
SGBs (n=8) Managing change 16 (48%) 59 (49.6%) 1(12.5%) Vision crafting for school development 14 (42%) 58 (48.7%) 2 (25 %) Manging relationshis with school 8 (24%) 16 (13.4%) 4 (50%) Transforming teaching and learning 5 (15%) 52 (43.7%) 1 (12.5%) Managing material and physical resources 4 (12 %) 22 (18.5%) 1(12.5%)
Table 4.3.1 (c) shows that the percentages of principals (48%) and teachers (49.6%) who found training in managing change beneficial are relatively high while that of SGB members (12.5%) it is much lower. ‘Managing change’ was a module that had immediate, practical application that was much more relevant for teachers and principals than for SGB members who are not involved in the day to day management of schools. In fact, the modules that received the highest endorsement from teachers and principals were those that engaged with immediate practical problems. The least support from principals was for the transformation module (‘Transforming teaching and learning processes‘) because they are ambivalent about the more radical changes envisaged by ‘transformation’. On the other hand, teachers who tend to be younger than principals, who may have been imbued with the political visions articulated in anti- apartheid struggles and have more to gain from transformation (which will give teachers a greater say in the running of the school) found this module beneficial.
Less than half of the principals (42%) and of teachers (48.7%) found the training on vision crafting to be beneficial. While the 25% of SGB members who found vision crafting most beneficial is lower than for principals and teachers the difference is lower than it is with regard to the management of change. Vision crafting is a process in which all the stakeholders were to be equally involved and as indicated above, this may be because their role in the school has become more important and it was probably the first time that they had been trained and begun to understand their role in the governance of the school and in functions like vision crafting. The vision crafting module succeeded in bringing the role players together and getting them to determine what was the common need at a particular point in time which in many schools was visible through the building structures that were set up during the IP period. However, this particular activity did not seem to have survived even the three year period of the project.
The difference in the percentage of principals (24%) and teachers (13.4%) with regard to managing relationships within the school is understandable when one considers that although teachers are integral in the maintenance of relationships in the school, the principal is the most accountable for the smooth running of the school and for developing and maintaining relationships. The percentage of SGB members (50%) is higher than for the other two groups. This could be caused by their new prescribed role in the governance of the school which brought them closer to the teachers, the principal and the learners, that is, increased their involvement in the relationships within the school. Training in this area therefore should have made more impact on them than for principals and teachers who were being trained in areas that they were used to and grappled with on a daily basis.
Only a very small percentage of principals (15%) said they found transforming teaching and learning most beneficial compared with 43.7% of the teachers and 12.5% of the SGB members. One explanation for this discrepancy is that principals are not particularly supportive of a transformation agenda whereas the (younger) teachers are.
Another possible explanation is that teachers grapple with real teaching and learning in the classroom situation on a daily basis while principals have to facilitate and manage teaching and learning on supervisory level and not on a daily basis. Therefore, any training in improving teaching and learning is more likely to benefit those who deal with it directly (teachers) than those who simply manage and facilitate it. An analysis of the data from
interviews in chapter 5 will shed more light on the views of the principals about this aspect of the training.
The small percentages of principals (12%), teachers (18.5%) and SGB members (12.5%) who said they found the training on managing material and physical resources beneficial are almost equal although the percentage for teachers (18.5%) is slightly higher. This suggests low levels of engagement or interest in these resources which may be explained by the fact that such resources are already in a poor state of repair and the resources necessary to fix them are not available. It is the parents who are primarily responsible for fund-raising to cover such costs and in poor schools parents have little capacity to do this.
The relatively low response rate concerning the beneficial impact of the modules raises questions about the delivery of the modules as well as the quality of the training or the follow-up support that was supposed to be provided to the respondents in their work places. It also causes concern about the quality of the trainers. It suggests that the training would have been one of the major weaknesses of the IP that limited its success and impact.
According to the respondents, trainers were selected mainly from amongst the department officials and lecturers from former colleges of education. These had to be trained themselves before training the teachers. The extent to which such training could have enabled them to handle the training of principals, teachers and SGBs is a matter of serious concern about the training. In fact, when some principals were asked to comment generally, some mentioned that some of the trainers obviously focused on theory, not on practice, as they had never been principals themselves. It is therefore possible that the modules were not well taught resulting in limited benefit for the participants and ultimately to limited success of the IP implementation in general. This concurs with the findings by Mestry (2004: 127) from the focused interviews that he conducted with SGBs, principals and teachers, that:
The SGBs are not effectively trained to manage the school’s finances efficiently. Some of the principals objected to the cascading model of training and found the contents of the workshops to be too theoretical. There are some trainers who do not have a sound financial background.
This was apparently the case with the IP regarding the cascading model that the project adopted. The ECSECC (2001: 43) makes the observation that “Even the
cascading training model did not work as expected because information was distorted as it was cascading to colleagues”. One would expect this to be worse in the former Transkei where conditions were described as poorer than in other areas of the EC province (ECSECC, 2001). One SGB member trained from each school would be expected to train other parent members yet most of these members had limited schooling. One would expect this cascading training to be weak and ineffective and therefore lead to poor understanding of the content of the IP and finally undermine its implementation. This was evident in the responses of the SGB members’ attitude when asked for interviewing. Most said very little and some seemed reluctant to speak as if they were being asked to spy on their principals.