The struggles of public schools

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday July 11, 2022 06:00

Public schools compared to their counterparts in the private sector continue to experience a plethora of key challenges inhibiting provision of quality education to children under their care.

The column is shouldering the burden of highlighting key challenges bedevilling the public education system while also suggesting possible solutions and interventions.

It must be noted that the challenges cannot be expected to go away on their own unless pushed by new rigorous and coherent approaches. Presently the system continues to adopt a series of distinct initiatives that have limited relationship to one another and this is surely not producing desired student outcomes. The suspicion is that the initiatives are not sufficiently addressing the big elephant in the room. What are then the key challenges suffocating the public education delivery system? Hitherto, researchers have identified impediments as poor institutional management, weak external oversight, a dysfunctional curriculum and knowledge-based rather than skills assessment.

The recommended intervention is the adoption, as a matter of urgency, of a fearless and comprehensive turnaround strategy intended to deliver significant gains in student outcomes within two academic years. School turnaround is a tried and tested strategy drawing inspiration from research and best practices and seeks to pursue new, promising ways of accelerating teaching and learning improvements. Turnaround is not a compliance exercise designed to be an easy fit into the status quo.

It rocks the boat, challenges the way of doing business and requires the system to function differently and execute few key initiatives that yield powerful results. It challenges allocation and utilisation of physical and financial resources, deployment and utilisation of human resources among others. In the context of the public education system, the new initiatives should focus on an overhaul of the curriculum, training of school managers, teachers and sub and regional officials.

Investment in the professional development of teachers and school principals is vitally important for purposes of upgrading pedagogical standards and as well as raising the quality of governance.

The role of school principals in setting the right tone cannot be over emphasised. Effective school leaders communicate clear and high expectations of performance and hold teachers accountable for what is happening in their classrooms. In so far as governance is concerned, the system should not struggle to part ways with leaders failing to inspire their teachers to give their best to students. In addition, the system should engage and employ tried and tested subject specific instructional experts to model both novice and struggling teachers.

Regional leaders must be schooled on the basic tenets of turnaround for purposes of effective monitoring of the implementation of the programme. Lastly, it is also important to expedite curriculum reforms, the biggest elephant in the room. Addressing the school culture should go hand in hand with the trimming of the overloaded curriculum. Training school teachers and managers to better deliver an outmoded and irrelevant curriculum does not seem to be working well.