When underachievement haunts a school system

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday October 13, 2025 06:00

They wonder why the culture of underachievement persists in spite of the presence of strategy. If it exists, then questions could be raised about the efficacy, relevance, and validity of the strategy. Ordinarily, signs of the existence of a strategy should be clear to all and sundry and easy to read among the members of a school community and parents working closely with the school. Such a question is usually rhetorical in nature, expressing doubt. Indeed, there could be an element of doubt about the presence of a strategy if different actors in the same school react differently to the question and provide conflicting views.

A simple, unambiguous answer can settle the question. Any member of staff, when confronted with the question, regardless of position in the school, should be able to articulate and express in unambiguous terms what the strategy of the school is and elaborate on its components. A strategy should be the one denominator that brings a sense of togetherness and unity of purpose among members of staff. In many schools that are merely struggling to survive, a strategy, if any, could exist in the minds of a few privileged and influential members of the school system, while the majority, often occupying less influential positions, know very little or nothing about a school’s strategy.

To buttress this point on the existence or otherwise of a strategy to guide the operations of members of a school community, distinguished school turnaround scholars Elizabeth City and Rachel Curtis had this to say “to the extent that there is a strategy, does it primarily exist in the hands of a few of the most senior members of the system, or do staff members and partners understand it and have they internalised it and use it to guide actions? At the heart of the strategy of a school, there is a question of ownership. Who owns the strategy? Has it been shared with relevant implementors? Strategies developed from above should be shared at the right platforms if they are to stand any chance of success”.

Many members of staff of struggling schools fail to find one another or flock together as a unit on account of the lack of a strategy. Nothing can work well for the good of a school when members of the school community and its closest partners feel alienated and distant from the strategy that is supposed to govern and lead their actions. In their desperation for a quick fix, a leader of underachieving schools often feels obliged and pressured by community expectations to generate several initiatives which, in their view, would change the performance trajectories of their institutions.

The burning desire to address the issue of performance urgently could lead to a hasty microwave cooking of a series of initiatives, which may lead to ‘reform fatigue’ among the implementing troops. Reform fatigue is a condition that occurs when an organisation gets weary and tired of a series of endless initiatives. The problem does not only lie with the quantity of the initiatives produced but also in their quality.

Initiatives hurriedly cooked could be poorly thought out and out of touch with reality. A strategy that seems to lack a sharp focus, coherence, and synergy cannot succeed in rallying the frontline troops together around the cause of raising student learning outcomes. Frontline troops are more comfortable with rallying behind a strategy that they had participated in its construction.

A top-down approach to issues of strategy is bound to produce some pockets of resistance. Schools can create conditions for academic success if school leaders develop a collaborative approach to issues of development and execution of strategy. Otherwise, it is unfortunate to have a situation where the leaders elect to monopolise the wisdom of developing and executing strategies that frontline troops do not know of. Usually, a sign of disaffection with the leadership is often demonstrated when the rank and file disown their schools and dismiss any initiative as belonging to the leader and not theirs.

A strategy stands a chance of success and general acceptance among a school learning community if it is relevant and focused on addressing key pressing challenges associated with instructional practices, learner support, and teacher development.

The three components summarise the essence of a school. Some initiatives or strategies fail to see the light of day because they are peripheral to the core business of a school. If a strategy is irrelevant or not urgent, it runs the risk of facing total rejection and condemnation.

Frontline troops also resist initiatives that they think have been adopted at the behest of external pressures or unsolicited assistance. An underachieving sector that is struggling to find its own bearing or stand on its feet runs the risk of attracting unsolicited assistance from either genuinely caring friends of the sector or self-serving entities. It is important to assess and scrutinise with great care the nature of the assistance put on the table by external actors.

External pressures, if freely entertained, can offer assistance that may not necessarily address key issues inhibiting the provision of quality education. In the final analysis, a strategy should not exist for its own sake. It should be a means to an end. The object of a strategy is to get deep into issues of raising to a higher pedestal instructional (teacher) pedagogical expertise, student assessment, and teacher capacity building programmes.