Systemic School Improvement Interventions in South Africa: Some Practical Lessons from Development Practitioners

Godwin Khosa (Ed.)

Description

Looking at two smaller-scale systemic school improvement projects implemented in selected district circuits in the North West and Eastern Cape by partnerships between government, JET Education Services, and private sector organisations, this book captures and reflects on the experiences of the practitioners involved.The Systemic School Improvement Model developed by JET to address an identified range of interconnected challenges at district, school, classroom and household level, is made up of seven components. In reflecting on what worked and what did not in the implementation of these different components, the different chapters set out some of the practical lessons learnt, which could be used to improve the design and implementation of similar education improvement projects.Many of the lessons in this field that remain under-recorded to date relate to the step-by-step processes followed, the relationship dynamics encountered at different levels of the education system, and the local realities confronting schools and districts in South Africa’s rural areas. Drawing on field data that is often not available to researchers, the book endeavours to address this gap and record these lessons.It is not intended to provide an academic review of the systemic school improvement projects. It is presented rather to offer other development practitioners working to improve the quality of education in South African schools, an understanding of the some of the real practical and logistical challenges that arise and how these may be resolved to take further school improvement projects forward at a wider district, provincial and national scale.

Informations

• Publié par: African Minds
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781920677374
• Langue: English

Extrait

SYSTEMIC SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT INTERVENTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA:

SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONERS

Edited byGodwin Khosa

Published in 2013 by African Minds for JET Education Services, th 5 Floor Forum 1, Braampark, 33 Hoofd Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa www.jet.org.za

African Minds 4 Eccleston Place, Somerset West, Cape Town, South Africa www.africanminds.org.za

ISBN 9781920677374

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 4.0 International License JET Education Services 2013

Copy editor Leigh Darroll Coordinator Maureen Mosselson Photographs Hannelie Coetzee

CONTENTS

Foreword SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1: The Systemic School Improvement Model Godwin Khosa

SECTION 2: LESSONS LEARNT IN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 2:JET’s Approach to Teacher Development Chimwemwe Kamanga

Chapter 3:Teacher Development Interventions in the GET Band Chimwemwe Kamanga

Chapter 4:Standardised Teacher Testing in GET Roelien Herholdt

Chapter 5:Teacher Development Interventions in the FET Band Patience Voller

SECTION 3: FURTHER LESSONS

Chapter 6:Cost (Benefit) Analysis of FET Teacher Development DoubleHugh Marera

Chapter 7:Parental Involvement in Improving Schooling Kedibone Boka

Chapter 8:Lessons on Districtlevel Support and Integration Godwin Khosa, with Dina Mashamaite and Koleka Ntantiso

Chapter 9:Stakeholder Involvement in the BSSIP and COEP Muavia Gallie and Aneesha Mayet

Acronyms & Abbreviations

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III

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA (1918 TO 2013), A GREAT TEACHER:

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

V

FOREWORD

Many practitioners from nongovernmental organisations, academic and government sectors spend a formidable amount of time between and in schools and classrooms in the endeavour to improve education. During and after these experiences, many write about their successes and failures in relation to the intended outputs and outcomes of their efforts. Their writeups are mostly confined to accounting to the funders about the resources invested, inputs made and outputs achieved. These reports about school improvement are therefore mostly theoretical and project managementoriented and do not capture the rich practical lessons that the practitioners gather. In addition, experiences that are not educational in nature but have a bearing on educational processes are often left out of the reports. For instance, the practical experience of how afterschool teacher training is not practical for a significant number of rural teachers who commute over long distances to and from schools is underrecorded, because the reporting of lessons learnt in school improvement interventions has been limited in its perspective.

This book records the experiences of the JET practitioners involved in school improvement. It focuses, in particular, on the systemic improvement test programmes implemented in Mthawelanga circuit in the Eastern Cape and Retladirela circuit in the North West Province. It captures the models and approaches that the two projects adopted, narrates the experiences the project staff encountered in pursuing the partnerships to improve the educational outcomes in the two circuits, sheds light on what works and what does not work in school improvement, confirms and dispels assumptions about the conditions in South African schools and districts, and offers some recommendations on the school improvement journey going forward. It captures the experiences of working with school improvement theory, funders, unions, government officials, school teachers, school communities and learners.

We hope that the book will be useful to others who want to take similar school improvement journeys with schools, circuits and districts, helping them to navigate their way.

For these lessons we thank the two provincial departments of education and the respective districts, circuits and schools for their willingness to work with JET on the trial projects. Alongside the departments, the two teachers’ unions, NAPTOSA and SADTU, played a supportive role in the implementation of the projects, in particular in providing joint oversight at the project steering committee level and guiding the design and implementation of teachers’ knowledge assessments that formed part of the teacher development component. A special gratitude goes to Murray and Roberts, DG Murray Trust, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Impala Bafokeng Trust for having funded the projects. And finally, our thanks to the CEO and his staff for having taken the time to reflect on and record their experiences.

Nathan Johnstone Chairman JET Education Services

VII

SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

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The key message from these projects points to the growing importance of systemic approaches to school improvement. Central to the concept of systemic school improvement is a realisation that sustainable school improvement will happen if school interventions aim to change the schools and the subsystem in which they operate. In South Africa this subsystem is the district level, from which schools receive the key support inputs of curriculum, institutional development and resourcing.

Systemic School Improvement Interventions in South Africa

CHAPTER 1 THE SYSTEMIC SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT MODEL GODWIN KHOSA

1. BACKGROUND The belief that education matters in emancipating people from poverty and its associated social ills, such as exposure to disease and dehumanising activities such as crime, is shared by many countries. However, how to educate nations effectively remains a complex challenge. Many nations have increased spending on education substantially over the past three to four decades, but the quality of educational outcomes has not matched the investments made. In an effort to overcome this problem and improve the quality of public education, South Africa adopted an action plan in 2011 aimed at mobilising the different levels of the system and stakeholders.

Since its founding 20 years ago, JET Education Services (JET) has played a supportive role to government in its quest to improve education. In the past 18 years JET has been directly involved in over 13 school improvement projects that took the form of comprehensive school or systemic improvement projects, or componentspecific projects such as teacher development projects. Comprehensive school improvement projects included support to a range of school functions such as teaching and learning, management and resourcing, while componentspecific projects focused on one of these functions. JET’s involvement in these projects was as lead designer and implementer, project management agency or evaluation agency. It is estimated that these projects involved over 10 000 of the 26 000 government schools nationally. A summary profile of these projects is presented in Table 1.

The key message from these projects points to the growing importance of systemic approaches to school improvement. Central to the concept of systemic school improvement is a realisation that sustainable school improvement will happen if school interventions aim to change the schools and the subsystem in which they operate. In South Africa this subsystem is the district level, from which schools receive the key support inputs of curriculum, institutional development and resourcing.

In their research on school improvement Adelman and Taylor of the University of California Center for Mental Health in Schools present two imperatives to systemic interventions: widespread replication and largescale diffusion of improvement projects. These authors maintain that “most personnel who are expected to act as change agents in districts and schools have relatively little specific training in facilitating major systemic changes” (Adelman and Taylor, n.d.: i).

The features of systemic intervention approaches are outlined overleaf.

The notion of systemic interventions emphasises the complexity of education systems by portraying the interdependencies within the overall system and subsystems. It also provides a holistic view of education systems. Systemic education intervention, therefore, puts high on the list of intervention design principles the need for comprehensiveness and alignment across a series of components all aimed at improving schooling.

Chapter 1: The systemic school improvement model

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