Trust and accountability to improve learning outcomes in South African primary education

• In Event: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Accountability and Datafication in Education: Global Perspectives

Proposal

South Africa has a long history of oppression and apartheid which have led to great inequalities, despite South Africa’s classification as an upper-middle income country (World Bank, 2008). Twenty-six years after the fall of apartheid, the systematic racial segregation practiced under apartheid, in conjunction with an overtly white supremacist ideology still has a profound impact on South Africa’s society as well as its education system (Spaull, 2012). Howie (2012) explains how South Africa struggles with a widening performance gap between rich and poor students and high levels of drop out, particularly among black Africans.

Trust and accountability seem to play a key role in this divide and in whether and how key stakeholders address failure and inequalities. Gundlach and Cannon (2010) for example argue that control destroys trust or that control is unnecessary when you trust someone. Others, however, argue that control can build trust when it for example locks people or organizations into a collaborative relationship (McEvily et al, 2003). The choice to trust and cooperate and engage in school accountability is also bound by the institutional context in which people interact, such as the political, legal and economic framework, and informal rules, socially accepted norms and patterns of behaviour in a country (Zaheer et al. 1998; Lyon et al, 2015, p.7). These institutions influence how people interact both consciously and unconsciously; they provide meaning to the circumstances before a relationship is built and they influence the patterns of how people interact when they start to actively establish a relationship (Van der Voort (2017). Interpersonal relations of accountability and trust are thus embedded in an institutional context, both temporally, socially, and institutionally.

This paper will present findings from eight case studies in low and high performing schools in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal where we interviewed school staff and their district evaluators and advisors to understand the interaction between trust and accountability to improve learning outcomes in South Africa, and their links to broader cultural, social, economic and political dynamics in South Africa. Our findings highlight how the overall lack of trust in South Africa’s education system and institutions constrains the development and implementation of an effective accountability system as teachers and principals are wary of any kind of control or monitoring. Furthermore, the enforcement of bureaucratic accountability and control (e.g. in checking implementation of prescribed lesson plans) takes away teachers’ agency and professionalism to teach towards specific needs of their learners or actively contribute to improvement (Ehren et al, under review).

Authors

• Melanie Ehren, University College London

• Jacqueline Baxter, Open University

• Andrew Paterson, JET Education Services