School capture is rife
WE MAY think state capture is over and the price to pay now is 15% VAT. However, who knows how many children died of starvation because of state capture, and can that type of loss be quantified?
There are different types of capture in our society – I recently learnt about school capture by school governing body members and the price paid by children.
This is one story and may not necessarily reflect what goes on in schools that have yet to be captured or where integrity is maintained.
My kid asked me a few months ago what CEO meant – because a pupil had told others in their class that his dad was the CEO of the school.
My reply was that his dad was either a CEO of a private company, or chairperson of the school governing body (SGB), and that the child did not know how to express his dad’s position.
I received my answer at the school’s annual awards ceremony – he was probably both as his child received the awards which could be prone to subjective decisionmaking. The silence after his receipt of one of the awards was deafening – it seemed I was not the only parent who was stunned.
Upon querying the criteria for that award, I was informed that objective criteria did exist. However, when I asked for the list of these criteria, it was not forthcoming.
Undoubtedly we all want our kids to perform well and achieve highly, but it is infuriating when objectivity is not applied, and there is no transparency.
It seems that ex-Model C schools are of the view that they do not need to conform to the principles of Batho Pele.
It is ironic that the school breaks the rights of the pupil that it is meant to uphold.
We recently had a meeting with the school management, and the chairperson of the SGB who had been invited by the principal was in attendance. During the interview he was clearly on the defensive for the school.
The next day our child was taunted by the child of the chairperson of the SGB and given an excellent summary of the discussion held at the meeting. To say we were disgusted would be expressing our anger mildly. It is quite clear that there is a lack of integrity, objectivity and professionalism and the SGB is dysfunctional.
The principal’s response to this breach in confidentiality was “I have investigated the matter and dealt with the situation”.