The Matthew Goniwe School of Leadership and Governance (MGSLG) continues to support the identified under-performing schools in the Gauteng Province. In its intervention tactics the MGSLG decided to capacitate all stakeholders that are involved in the process of managing and supporting schools including School Governing Body (SGB). This intervention process seeks to ensure that schools have the necessary support to enhance their educational outcomes.
In the Gauteng Province, the Education Department joined forces with the Matthew Goniwe School of Leadership and Governance with a mission to support the schooling system to close the gaps and improve the quality of education in the province.
It was in 2000 when the identification of the need for targeted interventions in under-performing schools in South Africa, was initiated. Between 2000s to early 2010s, the process of developing the policies and frameworks to support such interventions was undertaken.
As the South African Schools Act (SASA) provides a comprehensive framework for managing public schools, the Section 58B Schools were later incorporated into this Act. Then between 2011 to 2012 it was the formal adoption and initial implementation of the Section 58B Schools Programme. During this period, the education provincial departments started methodically identifying, intervening, and supporting the under-performing schools. Since then, it has been the scaling up of the programme with more under-performing schools being identified continuously and the implementation of action plans to close the gaps and overcome challenges that were identified based on feedback and outcomes in the implementation process, were being updated and refined.
Since 2021 the MGSLG has been commissioned by Gauteng Department of Education as the only institute that should undertake the support of the under-performing schools. Since then, over the past years MGSLG has been supporting the schools across the province continuously, focusing on educators and learners. However later, it was discovered that it was not enough to support only learners and educators, but to support the School Management Team (SMTs) and School Governing Body (SGB) (Principal, Deputy Principal and SGB) as well, as they are the key drivers in the decision making, to allow for improvement through the implementation of innovative teaching and learning strategies meant to improve school performance
As it has been discovered that in Gauteng there are 56 schools that have been identified as under-performing school, therefore, on the 27 July 2024, MGSLG invited and trained SGB members from across Gauteng Province on Section 58 B Schools Programme. In the main, the Section 58B School programme is meant to enhance the skills and capabilities of Teachers, School Management and School Governing Body, to sustain a long- term improvement; establish a clear accountability mechanism to ensure that the Under-performing schools make measurable progress towards their set goals. The training occurred at Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg.
During the training participants were afforded an opportunity to speak out the reasons why their schools are under-performing. Amongst the reasons that transpired during the training is that : most of the schools have a lack of leadership and this allows stakeholders in schools to do as they wish, there is no order; The policy on progression of learners impact the curriculum as the Department of Education enforces schools to move learners to the next grade even though they have not met the minimum requirements, now as a result schools are having a lot of progressed learners in Grade 12; some of the learners in grade 12 are over age and over age learners creating safety concerns like bullying, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy etc.
Dr. Kenndy Skosana an SGB members from N.N. Ndebele Secondary School in Duduza sharing his perspective he said’’ I have noticed that some of the teachers particularly at the Grade 12 level, have got knowledge and information that is equal to what is in the book, and this is wrong because teaching is not about the book, it’s a skill, it is the know-how and tricks of the game. When you teach in the classroom, you should be more like an influencer, so that learners can see the bigger picture of what you teach them in your own eyes. Teachers should teach learners to understand and be knowledgeable, not to prepare them for writing exams’’
Ms Khosi Ntuli a Senior Project Manager in the School Governance Department within MGSLG
Explaining the MGSLG’s intent by training SGBs in this programme ‘’In terms of the legislation School Governing Body (SGB) is mandated by the South African Schools Act (SASA) which is our bible in the SGBs, to ensure that they govern our schools. However, the challenge that we found is that SGBs are not capacitated in terms of how they should: manage change management, manage the organisational culture, manage the strategic planning session. It is important that they understand that they need to plan and support the schools. We then decide that we should have this workshop to capacitate schools that have been identified as schools that are under-performing.
Then according to the section 58B, schools that are performing below 70% are regarded as under-performing and that is in terms of the new regulation that was passed in 2023. Circular D3 of the 2023 clearly given an indication on how schools are declared as under-performing. We have 56 schools that are under-performing in Gauteng, so we are having this workshop today to ensure that these SGBs are equipped and given skills and knowledge that is required, so that they can then begin to support the curriculum delivery of their schools effectively.
According to Section 58B School Act, there are three different reasons that makes schools to underperform: 1. some of the schools under-perform because of the standard of the learning of learners, that learners are not ready , their understanding is not at the level where they are supposed to be; 2. we also have an issues where the relationship between SMTs and SGBs is imbalanced ; 3. And also the school safety is also an issue that has been identified, because sometimes the school can under-perform based on how they are located. For an example if there are protest and gangsterism, and the infrastructure of the school does not support the safety of the school, teacher will be distracted and struggle to deliver. So today the aim to bring SGBs together, and capacitate them, so that they understand how best they can support schools