Public schools exist to cater for all

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday January 30, 2023 06:00

Designed with inclusivity in mind, public schools exist to cater for all eligible students including those with special education needs.

The idea is to guarantee access to school by all while not compromising quality. This means students are supposed to enter the school system and successfully complete the learning race.

However, in practice, an overwhelming number of public schools are on the firing line on account of their notorious distinction of ejecting an overwhelming number of their students into the streets. Efforts to redeem and restore the credibility of the public education by raising the instructional bar and learning outcomes are continuing.

However, hitherto, no breakthrough is in sight. More crises and challenges threatening to further cripple the system continue to pop up now and then. It is clearly evident that a halfhearted approach cannot be expected to deliver durable and everlasting solutions. There is too much noise in the system, which distracts attention from issues that matter.

The system needs a water tight strategy, which can filter the noise and direct energies and resources to classroom issues. Too many things may appear to be requiring fixing but economic imperatives clearly impose limitations on how far the system can go. There is need therefore to get priorities right and determine what can be fixed now and what may be deferred to a later date.

Not all challenges warrant immediate attention and frantic efforts applied to address all issues at one fell swoop are exercises in futility. The system should embark on a sequencing and prioritisation largely predicated on a desire to raise teacher proficiency and student learning outcomes. Any crisis which many not affect teaching and learning can wait.

For instance, the new challenge of shortage of uniform nearly caused panic and fear.

Authorities got it right when they quickly advised that no child should be denied education on account of school uniform. Key issues requiring immediate attention include redefining and clarifying the role of regional and national support, strengthening school governance and accountability, autonomy and decentralisation, among others. External oversight is arguably the weakest link in the system. A school was never designed to exist like an ivory tower. It was supposed to thrive and benefit from an external support system from parents, the central ministry, regions and sub regions.

Parents for their part generally attach a high premium on education and when asked to support their schools financially and otherwise, they do so generously. Besides parents, there are external institutions created to lend support to schools.

The support system is supposed to entail regular quality assurance visits to address identified pedagogical gaps, exchange of best instructional practices, among others. However, research has shown that the support system, which appears good on paper, is wanting. In the study on declining academic achievement levels in Botswana, Professor Jaap Kuiper identified weak external oversight as one of the major road block stifling provision of quality education. The first issue was capacity constraints. The system does not have sufficient number of subject specific education officers tasked with provision instructional expertise and regular professional development of both veteran and novice teachers.

Limited numbers of officers deployed at national and in the outlying districts do not permit regular and sustained visits to schools. Schools yearn for regional visits yet in practice a good number of them run without external support for a prolonged period of time. Kuiper noted that “school management and teachers all state that they would appreciate visits from the Region. They would like Regional and Sub-Regional officers to come and see how the school is doing, provide feedback on this and in general show that they are there to support the efforts of management and teachers.” In their interviews with professor Kuiper, schools indicated that there is very minimal engagement between the region and schools. And at times the engagement centres on superficial matters, which do not have immediate bearing on teaching and learning.

Another big challenge is that whenever they are able to make it to schools, the Sub-Regions due to lack of autonomy, act like post offices receiving queries, requests for finances, textbooks, staff and transport. The Kuiper study observes that once the issues have been registered and relayed to the national office in the capital, it takes a very long time for the issues to be solved. By and large, it seems the external oversight institutions do not have sufficient personnel, money and autonomy to perform their supporting functions as expected. Schools rightly so do not feel the presence of (Sub) Regions in the teaching and learning space.

Schools desire to see regions taking an active role on key matters of pedagogy, student support and teacher development. It is important for the system to redefine the role of external support to ensure it is not reduced to a meaningless compliance exercise preoccupied in the main with miscellaneous issues, which do not deal with the fundamental issue of raising classroom delivery and rolling back the frontiers of academic underachievement. The system should show more commitment to the decentralisation policy. Devolution of powers and responsibilities directly to schools and Sub-Regions would promote ownership while promoting problem solving.

Presently powers over finances, deployment of staff, and procurement of books involve too many players from the region and central ministry. Lack of complete control over finances delays procurement and delivery of critical inputs due to a long winded procurement process, which attract too many players. The powers over hiring and firing also lie outside the school and Sub-Regions. The handling of staff deployment at a central point has its own advantages but it does not provide quick service to the schools.

Lack of control over maters of deployment (hiring and firing) frustrates timely and appropriate deployment and reorganisation of staff. School principals can do better if they like their counterparts in private schools enjoy some degree of autonomy over their schools. Principals are better placed to determine and prioritise the needs of their schools.

The involvement of multiple external players in a school does not give principals full ownership and accountability over what is happening in their schools. This explains why when things go wrong, school principals could easily pass the buck instead of assuming ownership. Addressing issues of underperformance in schools require a new dispensation permitting more air and space to school principals to navigate and manage the affairs of their schools with little or no external involvement. Operational matters should be the preserve of school leaders and do not require additional hands from regions while education officers should focus on in-service training to close pedagogical gaps.