Where Light Shines Through: Tales of Can-Do Teachers in South Africa's No-Fee Public Schools

By Kimon Phitidis

Government spends the biggest slice of its budget on education, yet the systemic challenge of delivering quality education persists. While gains have been made, two generations after democracy many young adults with a matric certificate have little meaningful opportunity after school. Where Light Shines Through is a quest to find classrooms where fissures of light shine through the darkness of the narrative of public education. It reveals 'can-do' teachers who are excelling despite the odds. While our media continues to be saturated with stories of state capture and corruption, this book turns our gaze away from those that are in power towards those that are in service. Phitidis considers what we can learn from these teachers to influence how we attract, select, train, deploy and retain teachers to build the quality of the schooling sector and the public sector more broadly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookstorm
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781928333166

Book preview

WHERE LIGHT SHINES THROUGH

Tales of Can-Do Teachers in South Africa’s

No-Fee Public Schools

KIMON PHITIDIS

FOR LUCA AND THALIA;

Wishing you a lifetime of can-do teachers

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

VIKTOR FRANKL, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

DR SEUSS, OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.

HOWARD ZINN

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

STANLEY KUBRICK

This book has been published with the generous support of:

The contents of this book do not necessarily represent the views of the funder.

Author’s note:

To maintain their anonymity, in some instances I have changed the names of people mentioned as well as some of the context of how they are mentioned.

© Text: Kimon Phitidis, 2020

© Photographs: Kimon Phitidis, 2020 (unless otherwise indicated)

© Portraits and symbols: Artists as indicated, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holder.

ISBN: 978-1-928333-15-9

e-ISBN: 978-1-928333-16-6

Published by Bookstorm (Pty) Ltd

PO Box 4532

Northcliff 2115

Johannesburg

South Africa

Edited by Wesley Thompson

Proofread by Jennifer Malec

Cover design by mr design

Book design and typesetting by René de Wet

Ebook by Liquid Type Publishing Services

Lines from the poem ‘Mandela and the Rainbow Nation’ reproduced with permission, extracted from Saturday in Africa, African Sun Press

CONTENTS

Prologue

Sparks and deflections

Teachers as the heart of the instructional core

Characterising a can-do teacher

Traits of a can-do teacher

Shining a light: learning from can-do teachers

Telling stories – and truths and fables

TEACHER PROFILES

AGNES MTIMKULU: Striding towards a better life

TEBOGO MSIBI: The wolf leading his pack

ZUKISWA SOGA: The fist who stands firm for the betrayed

THANDEKA SIBIYA: A flower bud who bloomed into an exceptional teacher

HELEN MADIRA: A diagnostic approach to early learning

TRACEY NAIDOO: Shining a light of understanding

WILTON PHILLIPS: A bird’s-eye view beyond small-town expectations

GINA STRAUSS: Smoothing the paths of understanding

AMEERA KHAN: Anchoring children in belief and trust

FAVOUR LITCHFIELD: Fanning the winds of revolution in deaf education

STEPHEN ADAMS: A heart big enough for the job

PERTUNIA LUTHULI: From truant schoolgirl to the beating heart of a thousand hills

AZHAR RAJAH: Scattering seeds of abundance

JENNIFER HARRISON: The infinite benefits of making sense of letters and words

THOKO MAZIBUKO: Wide branches, deep roots

FREDDY MARUBINI: Aiming for the shifting goalposts of the far north

Illuminating our teachers with artist portraits

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

PROLOGUE

This book is a testament to the power of attitude to change the world.

Through a number of stories of exceptional South African teachers, it shows that while our attitude to life is often informed by our lived experience, our attitude nevertheless remains our choice.

It’s our attitude that brings meaning and purpose to life, and a life lived purposefully is a powerful tool with which to bring light to the narrative of darkness that sometimes envelops South African society.

It’s a lofty ambition, to write about all of that.

But this book is also about Agnes Mtimkulu and how her future was foretold; Tebogo Msibi and how he longed to fly; Zukiswa Soga and her formidable fist; Thandeka Sibiya and what she hopes to find in Budapest; Helen Madira and what happened when she opened that door; Tracey Naidoo and the deities that guide her; Wilton Phillips and his bird’s-eye view; Gina Strauss and the faith that drives her; Ameera Khan whose childhood games came to life; Favour Litchfield who longs to be the wind; Stephen Adams and that moment he will always cherish; Pertunia Luthuli and her rectangle of blue; Azhar Rajah who makes much out of nothing; Jennifer Harrison and her will to infinity; Thoko Mazibuko and her unusual inheritance; and Freddy Marubini and his ever-shifting goalposts.

SPARKS AND DEFLECTIONS

"Why are schools not doing what we expect of them? Is it because they won’t or because they can’t? The implications for school improvement are very different, depending on how this question is answered."

(National Education Evaluation and Development Unit, 2013, p.19)

The quote above, from a National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) report, rang out for me from the drone of a 2018 conference with too much content in a vast room packed with too many people. It suggests that won’t do is a question of attitude. Can’t do is a question of aptitude and is easier to remedy through training, support, resourcing and other interventions. It sparked my curiosity. Can do had never been in the toolbox of my professional vocabulary, but that was about to change.

At Social Innovations, we develop programmes to supplement public-school education. Schools are under pressure to cover the core curriculum. Our programmes don’t get in the way. Rather we offer enrichment – such as after-school programmes and libraries – that supplements the academic programme of the schools.

Our programmes are not about turning around poorly functioning schools; that is the work of those who are tasked with implementing system-wide reform with billions of rand to spend. Rather we rely on the strong foundations of functional schools to host programmes funded by those with millions to spend. We don’t need to select top academic schools. But selecting can-do schools that are more likely to deliver on the partnership – and offer the donor a social return on investment – is the make-or-break decision we take. While we have a school-assessment method to guide us, our most reliable tools when visiting schools are gut feel and intuition.

On a winter morning in 2019 I visited Hammarsdale, a hilly, semi-industrial area on the outskirts of Durban, where several retailers have set up distribution centres with government incentives aimed to create jobs in the area following mass industrial retrenchments in recent years. I had been managing an early childhood development programme in the area for several years on behalf of one of these retailers, another was considering funding after-school programmes in primary schools. I visited five schools to assess their suitability to partner with us.

My colleague Thabisa shifted down the gears of her white hatchback to get us up a hill, around a sharp curve and to the gates of the fourth school we were visiting that day. A security guard unlocked the gate, we signed in (perimeter security is an important feature of a functional school) and we drove into the grounds. The principal was not there that day, so we met with the school’s Head of Department for Intermediate Phase (Grades 4 to 6), who invited us into the principal’s office. We remained standing while speaking to her. She seemed anxious and uncomfortable, and constantly avoided eye contact. She then took us to see a Grade 4 class.

The teacher was seated on her table with her legs stretched out before her and her bare feet resting on a learner’s desk. The classroom was hopelessly overcrowded and rowdy with children shouting and laughing and shrieking. A boy threw something at another learner across the classroom, and giggled into his hand as he saw us walk in. The teacher jabbed away at the keys of her cellphone, frowning into the screen, and glanced towards us without greeting as we stood at the door.

She yelled at the learners to quieten down before once again attending to her phone. There was still no greeting. Her boss didn’t flinch. There was none of the ear-splitting sound of chairs being scraped back that I usually hear on such school visits as children stand and chorus, Good morning teachers and visitors. But I got the impression that this nonchalance was normal here. I wasn’t about to recommend this school as a partner for a donor-funded programme. It would be akin to a financial advisor recommending a stock bound to fail.

As we left the grounds, Thabisa asked me, peering into the rearview mirror as she carefully reversed out of the narrow gate, Did you see her cane?

Maybe she uses it to point at the blackboard? I suggested hopefully.

Although Thabisa had grown up in the area and still lived here, her parents had sent her to a town school in Durban.

I don’t think so, she said, that wasn’t a pointing cane.

Maybe her feet were sore? I offered.

Thabisa just looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

You can quickly get a sense of a can-do or a won’t-do school by looking at its grounds, by experiencing the culture that prevails in the classroom, and by feeling if a place is managed with love or indifference. Each school is an institution with its own culture determined by individual attitudes, and it’s the can-do people who I was really interested in learning more about.

At Social Innovations, we work with about 200 public-school teachers in any given year. I have come across won’t-do teachers, but we work with many who are excellent in terms of their integrity, their ambition for their learners and their efforts to deliver results. I understand the power of a can-do teacher to drive the culture of a school; to transform the life of a child.

The NEEDU quote got me thinking: How can we characterise a can-do teacher? What inspires and motivates her? What is her attitude to her life and work? What brings meaning and purpose to her life? Most importantly, what can we learn from her that may improve the public-schooling system?

At the same time that Thabisa and I navigated our way through the hills, valleys and curves of Hammarsdale in the little white hatchback, I felt weighed down by the avalanche of news that continued to pour out of the seams of rot in local, provincial and national government exposed by the media and civil society organisations.

Corruption, ineptitude, callousness, political manoeuvring and the self-serving actions of politicians and so many public officials have stolen away time, money, energy and creative thinking that could have gone into improving our education, healthcare, economy, job creation and tax collection.

As the interminable and necessary commissions of enquiry ground through their work, and as those who have stolen from us continued to walk free, I wanted to find a parallel narrative.

While our media continues to cover corruption and the failures of our political system, this book turns our gaze momentarily away from public officials who are in power towards those who are in service. It allows glimmers of light to shine through the darkness of the narrative of public education and reveals can-do teachers who are excelling despite the odds. It considers what we can learn from these teachers to influence how we attract, select, train, deploy and retain teachers to build the quality of the schooling sector and the public sector more broadly.

All of the people you will read about between these pages are award winners and/or have been recognised as top performers. Fifteen of the teachers profiled in this book have made it to the finals of the annual National Teaching Awards (NTA), an initiative of the Department of Basic Education that recognises the performance of teachers in different categories. One of the teachers was recommended to me by an organisation working towards improving maths and science performance in the public-schooling system. I hope you enjoy meeting them as much as I have.

TEACHERS AS THE HEART OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL CORE

Over the years I have read many books and reports about public education and school reform. What resonates for me is the literature that spotlights the power of the instructional core, which can simply be defined as the relationship between the teacher and the student in the presence of content. The instructional core is where the teachers profiled in this book spend most of their time.

The literature emphasises that "it is the relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content – not the qualities of any one of them by themselves – that determines the nature of instructional practice." [The italics are mine.] (City, Elmore, Fiarman, & Teitel, 2009, p. 23)

How the teacher delivers his or her lesson, and the relationship he or she establishes between him- or herself, the learners and the content of the lesson are the most fundamental building blocks of any education system. With an estimated 500 000 teachers delivering their lessons in 27 000 South African public schools; that’s a lot of building blocks making up a massively unwieldy system. (New Leaders Foundation, 2019)

Over the two years I spent researching this book, I visited 16 of those teachers. I learned that what each one of them does on the periphery of the instructional core – the conversations with learners between lessons; how they approach extramural activities; and how they intervene to support children facing difficult circumstances – is as significant as what they do at the centre of the instructional core. Can-do teachers are motivated by their lived experience and sense of purpose, which warms and energises their work and drives the instructional core.

Pertunia Luthuli of Mcopheleli Primary in KwaZulu-Natal knows this to be true. As we sat in the quiet of the staffroom after school late one afternoon she looked away from me and held back tears as she told me of a difficult childhood. It’s a time she seldom thinks about now, but she reflected about how it has informed her approach to her life and work.

When I look back at what happened to me and what God has done it makes sense. I was like a seed that was growing; there were people around me, but they couldn’t help me, they couldn’t pour water on me so I could grow. Only God did that, and that is why I am here today. He wanted me to deal with the misbehaving, unruly kids, the ones that need love, those who don’t have warmth in their families.

There are many layers that surround and, particularly in Pertunia’s case, sometimes suffocate the instructional core. There is the school, led by the principal and the management team and governed by the School Governing Body (SGB). Then there are circuits, which schools report into; districts, which circuits report into; provinces, which districts report into; and finally, the national Department of Basic Education, which is responsible for implementing national policy and strategy and tasked with linking the delivery of the system with national frameworks such as the Constitution, the South African Schools Act and the National Development Plan.

I spent a day at the instructional core with Gina Strauss from Rouxville Primary as she revised fractions with her Grade 5s. Red curtains covered the bottom half of the windows to soften the brightness of an early summer morning in the Free State. She handed sheets of green A4 paper to pairs of children seated at each desk. The lesson moved at pace as sheets were cut or torn to show the relationship between a whole, a half, a quarter and an eighth. You are clever today, Grade 5s, she told them as they remembered the terminology of fractions. I witnessed a relationship being formed between the teacher, the learners and the content. Gina was smoothing out the paths of understanding to make the maths innate in the minds of these children. That’s her approach to building the integrity of her instructional core. It’s what makes her a can-do teacher.

However, Gina is supported in her efforts by the school’s enabling management and governance structures. Her principal believes in her and showed confidence in Gina by giving her more responsibilities. This was deeply affirming for her.

Gina is also supported in her work by the broader community that the school finds itself in and which Rouxville Primary brings on board to make things work. Although many of the children in this farming community are boarders, the parents are supportive and play an active role in their children’s education, attending school functions and meetings to discuss the progress of their children. The school also works closely with social workers and has formed supportive relationships with the local police station and clinic. The school benefits from being part of a close-knit, rural community.

A year after I spent two days with Gina in Rouxville, I called her to ask about the broader networks of support that the school depends on. She was as enthused as I remembered her, and her experience typifies the benefits of working within a functional, caring and supportive system. Gina told me that Rouxville Primary is part of a cluster of four schools in the Rouxville area that form a Professional Learning Community (PLC).

Maths teachers in this cluster gather a few times a year to share methods, to plan, and to develop lesson plans to teach specific topics. They then observe a teacher delivering the lesson they have developed together and combine their notes to refine the lesson plan. Gina was quick to clarify that they don’t criticise the teacher; rather they criticise and improve the structure and content of the lesson. Teachers also take turns setting test and exam papers.

Gina explained that the professional circle widens when this cluster meets with others from nearby Smithfield and Zastron. Three circuits make up the 63 schools of Xhariep, a small district serving 32 000 learners in mostly remote, rural schools. Gina told me that the maths subject advisor who is based at the district offers guidance and support to her PLC.

The district reports to the Free State Department of Education, responsible for delivering education to more than seven million learners at about 1 200 schools in line with the policy and budget allocation of the national Department of Basic Education. (Free State Department of Education, 2018)

The province convenes training and workshops that further support Gina’s work, and sometimes she is asked to deliver training for young teachers entering the profession.

The provinces are the engines of delivery and implementation in South African education. The importance of system-wide strategy and delivery at the provincial level is illustrated by the fact that when the provincial boundaries between North West and Gauteng were changed in 2005, the 29 schools that were incorporated into Gauteng from the North West showed significant improvement in matric results within five years under a better-functioning provincial administration. (Van der Berg, Spaull, Wills, Gustafsson, & Kotzé, 2016)

Both the Limpopo and Eastern Cape provincial departments of education have been brought under the administration of national government in recent years. Overspending and mismanagement in the Eastern Cape illustrate the extent and consequences of a breakdown in civil service discipline explains the 2013 NEEDU report, a polite way of calling out the criminally negligent management of a provincial system that was intended to deliver schooling to millions of children. (National Education Evaluation and Development Unit, 2013, p.67)

But the final layer that encompasses all – from the instructional core to the school, the community, circuits, districts and provinces – is the national Department of Basic Education, which is the sole employer of all public-school teachers, and responsible for developing curricula.

Imagine what we could achieve in South Africa if we could realise, at scale, at least some of the ambitions of the Intermediate Phase maths curriculum that Gina follows, as drafted by the national department. Children would develop an appreciation for the beauty and elegance of mathematics, and a critical awareness of how mathematical relationships are used in social, environmental, cultural and economic relations. Maths classes would instil in them a spirit of curiosity and a love for mathematics so that they may recognise that mathematics is a creative part of human activity. (Department of Basic Education, 2011, p.8)

These layers all come with their own set of benefits and burdens to teachers, many of whom are doing their best to deliver at the instructional core so that they can direct the children in their care onto a trajectory of opportunity and hope.

SCHOOLING ENTRENCHING INEQUALITY

I wouldn’t want my child – or any child – to be in the class of the Hammarsdale teacher who sat on her table with her feet up as she jabbed at her cellphone, a slender cane close at hand. But many South African children attend such classes every day. The schooling system is where the inequalities of South African society continue to widen with each generation.

South Africa today is the most unequal country in the world. The richest 10% of South Africans lay claim to 65% of national income and 90% of national wealth, reads the opening sentence of South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality, co-edited by Nic Spaull and Jonathan Jansen. (2019, p. 1)

Given the strong and deeply historical links between education and the labour market these inequities are mirrored in the education system. Two decades after apartheid it is still the case that the life chances of the average South African child are determined not by their ability or the result of hard work and determination, but instead by the colour of their skin, the province of their birth and the wealth of their parents. These realities are so deterministic that before a child’s seventh birthday one can predict with some precision whether they will inherit a life of chronic poverty and sustained unemployment or a dignified life and meaningful work. (Spaull & Jansen, 2019, p. 1)

South Africa has two parallel education systems. One is made up of private schools and fee-charging state schools that were mostly state-funded, whites-only schools under apartheid. Three-quarters of South Africa’s children attend schools in the other system, made up of no-fee state schools. All the teachers profiled in this book are from no-fee schools.

Spaull points out the disparities: 3% of South African high schools create more maths and physical sciences distinctions than the remaining 97% put together. Most of the 3% are former whites-only schools that charge significant fees. (Spaull & Jansen, 2019, p. 1)

The generational nature of this inequality is entrenched in the educational foundations of the home, which link directly to a child’s opportunity to achieve at school. Just under half of South African learners come from households where mothers have a post-Grade 12 education. This breaks down to 37% of learners in public, no-fee schools, 62% in public, fee-charging schools and 84% in independent schools. (Reddy et al., 2016)

Freddy Marubini, the star maths teacher at Thengwe High in Tshandama village, Limpopo, understands the value of being born to educated parents. While he is recognised as one of South Africa’s top-performing teachers, he still told me of the life he could have had if things had been different.

If I had a mother who was educated, who encouraged me to study and who advised me about how best to get through school and into a tertiary education, my life would be very different now. I didn’t even know how to study, or that studying was important – there was nobody to tell me that. He compensates for the many parents who are ill-equipped to advise the children in his classes by standing in as a de facto parent in the early morning, the late afternoons and on weekends. He is a teacher and a parent to hundreds of children, 365 days of the year.

In absolute numbers no-fee schools produce a considerable number of high-achieving matrics, writes Spaull, yet this is not surprising when they make up more than 75% of schools. In relative terms the probability of ‘succeeding against the odds’ when attending one of these schools is dismal. (Spaull & Jansen, 2019, p. 3)

I was privileged to spend time with some of the teachers from no-fee schools who are achieving impressive matric results – like Tebogo Msibi, Wilton Phillips, Azhar Rajah and Freddy Marubini. I share their stories in these pages.

HOW IS THIS SYSTEM PERFORMING?

Perhaps South Africa’s biggest achievement in the education sector since democracy has been meeting the goal of access to basic education set out in the Constitution. By 2015, South Africa had achieved almost universal enrolment of 1.2 million Grade 1 children. Between 1996 and 2016 the number of South Africans who completed Grade 12 increased from 3.7 million to 11.6 million. (Soudien & Juan, 2018)

Countries have already made a tremendous start by getting so many children and youth into school, acknowledges a World Bank report that lays out the human cost to countries that continue to host poorly performing systems. Now it’s time to realise education’s promise by accelerating learning. (World Bank, 2018, p. 27)

We have a long way to go. South Africa participates in international assessments that benchmark us against other countries while allowing us to assess our losses or gains over time.

The startling one-line take-out from the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) report is that 78% of South African Grade 4 learners can’t read for meaning in any language. South African Grade 4 reading scores were the lowest of the 50 participating countries. (Howie et al., 2017)

South Africa scored as one of the lowest five performing out of 59 countries in both maths and science in the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Three-fifths of South African learners did not achieve the minimum competency in basic mathematical knowledge required at the Grade 5 level. (Reddy et al., 2016)