Tool to evaluate problem areas

social responsibility in schools in a practical way”.

Pennington is also CEO of SA, The Good News, a website dedicated to socioeconomic development in SA.

While researching the problems at public schools, it occurred to Pennington to ask three fundamental questions: does effective learning and teaching take place in the school (the instructional aspect); does the school have the resources it needs to enable a learning environment (the infrastructural aspect); and how well is the school managed (the regulatory aspect)?

“I then developed a process that could be used to develop a simple baseline evaluation tool from the three perspectives mentioned above — the process takes one day and can be used by a person who does not necessarily have a background in education — and formed TogetherSchools, a Section 21 (nonprofit) company. We use quantitative and qualitative techniques to help corporate assess what schools need.”

TogetherSchools is now being managed by the previous head of Redhill School, Lynn Rivett-Carnac. She says that when companies got involved in science and maths training at schools, they often missed basic and pressing issues requiring attention if there is to be any chance for success in any area at any level.

“You can’t achieve results in a school that’s not safe, where facilities are unhygienic, or where nutrition is poor. It’s that simple.”

With the fundamentals answered, an analysis can be done. However, Pennington says, the analysis is not intended to catch every deep-seated problem at every school.

“There are thousands of dysfunctional schools in SA, so our priority at TogetherSchools is to create a model that will give a quick overall picture of the state of a school and can be used by people who are not education specialists.”