Toward an Equitable and Sustainable Model of Education Reform in South Africa

• In Event: Refusing Systemic Inequality: Curriculum as Disruptive-Productive Device for Equity Aspirations

Abstract

One of the toughest challenges that faced the post-apartheid government in South Africa was on how to transform the education system. The education and schooling system largely, still mirrors the old racial and segregationist contours of the pre-democratic era.
Several attempts have been made to understand the nature and quality of school education over the last two decades. These attempts vary and include a focus on curriculum where on-going curriculum reviews and changes to the school curriculum was explored as a way of improving the quality of school education and the performance of learners (Chisholm 2003, Jansen 1998); a leadership and management perspective that explores good governance and leadership qualities (Heystek & Emekako, 2020); a policy perspective that attempted to provide a policy context that could lead to learner performance enhancement (Bloch 2009, Jansen 2005); a teacher development perspective that focused on improving the quality of teaching and learning experience (Jansen 2004); and an infrastructure and resource perspective to create a conducive learning environment (Harley & Wedekind, 2004). Despite these explorations and interventions, little improvement has been noted in learner performance (Bloch 2009).
This paper reflects on the South African education system and ask why, after 27 years of a democratic dispensation, the unevenness and inequalities persist. This is by no means to suggest that all these schools are the same and have not improved over the last two decades. Research on resilient schools (Christie 2003) has indicated clearly that there are schools with the bare minimum of resources and infrastructure that have performed at high levels but as a percentage of schools nationally these schools are disproportionally underrepresented.
In the second part of the paper I propose an asset-based approach to improving the quality of education which suggests that the education authorities should start where schools are and veer away from top-down approaches to transforming their schools. More specifically, “positive deviance” (PD) which is a branch resorting under an asset-based approach to improvement will be advocated. Positive deviance in this paper will be conceptually linked with the notion of “resilient schools” and how this understanding of learner and school improvement could deepen our understanding and provide a new angle to improving the quality of education in South Africa.
Bloch G (2009). The Toxic Mix: What’s wrong with South Africa’s schools and how to fix it (1st ed.). Cape Town: Tafelberg.
Chisholm L (2003). The state of curriculum reform in South Africa: The issue of Curriculum 2005. In Daniel, J., Habib, A. and Southall, R. (Eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003-2004. Pretoria: HSRC Press, pp. 268-289.
Heystek, J. & Emekako, R. (2020), "Leadership and motivation for improved academic performance in schools in low socio-economic contexts", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 34 No. 9, pp. 1403-1415. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-10-2019-0378
Jansen J (1998). Why OBE will fail? Occasional paper, University of Durban-Westville, Durban.
Jansen J (2004). Autonomy and accountability in the regulation of the teaching profession: A South African case study. Research Papers in Education, 19(1): 51-66.

Author

• Sylvan Everton Blignaut, Nelson Mandela University