Leadership gap trips up Eastern Cape education
Poor leadership and a lack of parental involvement are among the leading factors contributing to dismal Eastern Cape basic education outcomes, a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) study shows.
The council studied the Eastern Cape and Western Cape to determine why the former was one of the worst performers regarding results and the latter among the top achievers.
In the 2016 matric results announced in January, the Western Cape recorded an 88% pass rate, placing it among the best provinces, while the Eastern Cape was bottom of the class at just more than 63%.
The Eastern Cape also had the five worst-performing districts, which each obtained a pass rate of less than 50%.
The country’s overall pass rate was 72.5%.
Council lead researcher Brian Levy said leadership was lacking in the Eastern Cape in the government, the community and among parents.
Levy is also the academic director of the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice at the University of Cape Town.
The Western Cape had a clear hierarchical authority, tightly managed financial and human resources, continuous performance management, monitored school improvement plans and implementation tools — budgeting, staffing and procurement, he said.
In the Eastern Cape, the education department was characterised by a rapid turnover of political and bureaucratic leadership. Political influence networks undercut the hierarchy.
The research notes that the Western Cape had less historical legacy to overcome, an advantage for the province.
While the Western Cape had no bantustan legacy, two-thirds of the Eastern Cape population were in patrimonial bantustans (Transkei and Ciskei), the research reads. As a result, the Eastern Cape is home to some of the country’s poorest schools.
About 60% of pupils are enrolled in poor schools — Limpopo has the highest number of poor schools, followed by the Eastern Cape.
The Western Cape has the fewest schools in the poorest category, with only about 9% of its schools in this ranking.
In SA, as elsewhere, access to education has increased but quality remains low, in part because of weaknesses in governance, the council says.
The quality of the basic education system has often come under fire, despite the large government expenditure on it.
Spending on basic education in 2017 will be more than R240bn, or 17.5% of the consolidated budget, according to the budget review submitted to Parliament in February. In 2018-19, it will increase to just more than R261bn and to about R280bn in 2019-20.
Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan said in the budget speech that, despite progress in education, more than half of all children in Grade 5 could not read adequately.