Culture and Politics.... tidbits I've gleaned

On Fridays we meet with the District Senior Manager to review our progress, discuss our observations - and most importantly learn from his experiences in education in Limpopo.  We had visited three schools during the week and talked about the distances the children walked to the schools. Some of the schools were quite small - and without running water.

We learned that over the years the government has built some larger schools with good facilities - and that people move to other areas for a variety of reasons resulting in under-utilized facilities in some areas and crowded ones in other areas.  When schools are built, they are likely to be on the veld rather than near the mountains - easier to build in the flat areas.  But then there are those people who like living near the mountains.

There are many small villages and the concept is to provide local schools.  One reason for this is cultural - the chief of the village does not want his people attending the school in the village of another chief.  And with semi-permanent homes - often built with found materials - it's sometimes observed that a clan will move to another area - so a school is needed in a different place.  And the move may also be precipitated by economic development from the government - such as subsidized housing in a new area.  Although the official teacher/student ratio is 1 to 32, in many schools it's much higher - due to the movement of the families.

When the political scene changes so do the schools - and lots of other areas.  In this case there's an entirely new curriculum coming in - and the teachers are attending in-service training to learn about it.  The apparent reason for this change is the poor performance on national exams - so an entire new approach has been created - including new instructional materials.  The changes began a couple of years ago when the coming into power of a new political group.  We've learned that large changes to policy are often the result of these political changes.  And changes are often the result of promises made by the political parties during the campaigns.

So how does this tie to our work?  We are developing a framework for professional development for teachers to enable them to teach the new curriculum.  The new curriculum will require some different ways of teaching - more interaction and less rote teaching.  So this framework will help the department of education structure their professional development programs for next year to provide support to the teachers.