Phys-ed needs a healthier presence in our schooling system

ON JULY 17, the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Fikile Mbalula, included the following extract in his speech during the budget vote debate:

“Our consistent call to have physical education de-linked from the subject life orientation, and made a stand-alone subject has been ignored and disregarded.

“We strongly and firmly believe that physical education is key to ensuring that sport at schools becomes an integral part of the curriculum.

“We believe that there should be dedicated teachers for physical education. It remains our call that the Department of Basic Education should ensure that there is adequate availability of skilled physical education educators in all schools and a dedicated period for physical education, outside of life orientation, on which learners must be assessed, with particular focus being on schools in rural areas.”

Although rhetoric calls such as these have been circulated since the release of the White Paper on sport in 1995, this is a welcome comment from the minister.

The minister is, however, the political face of education, sadly the curriculum framers are not responding to this window of opportunity. A brief historical critical overview of physical education might move the curriculum shapers to react to the minister’s remarks.

The situation of physical education teaching in South Africa has reached a point beyond crisis. There are historical reasons for this situation that are largely ignored by policy shapers.

Physical education was introduced in 1892 with all the trappings of colonial and eugenic practices. During the 20th century, specialist training was introduced that benefited only a minority.

The introduction of separate education curricula led to an unequal education system. Therefore by 1948 when the Nationalist Party wrenched itself into control, the Healdtown Training School had a standard six entry level for its specialist physical education courses, the Wesley Training School had a standard eight and the Cape Town Teachers’ Training College had matric. The then ruling party made specialist physical education training the privilege of a certain sector of the community and stopped the Healdtown course, presumably due to the low enrolment. This unequal distribution of physical education specialist teacher training remained intact until 1994. Sadly, the new regime did little to remedy this situation since 1994.

Physical education was grouped into life orientation and became a meaningless part of the curriculum with the introduction of outcomes-based education (OBE) in 1996. Curriculum advisers went to great lengths to explain the value and purpose of physical education. Many specialist teachers took severance packages.

The result was bad practice, and in most cases no practice at all. Many government initiatives tried to intervene but neglected to focus on the curriculum. Of course, poor curriculum development goes hand in hand with bad teacher training and poor curriculum delivery in the class- room (or sportsfield or gym). It is welcoming to see that the sports minister urges his department to work with the Department of Basic Education to train teachers. It appears that there is political support for the subject. Although official political support is very important for good curriculum delivery, it is not the only important factor.

One important factor is research on curriculum innovation. The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (Caps) for physical education is a weak attempt at curriculum delivery. Given this historical scenario of physical education history, the situation is a tragedy.

Clearly no decent research was done on the physical education component that forms part of life orientation in the FET Caps document. The intended curriculum is wholly out of alignment with the enacted one in the classroom and the assessed one. This misalignment may be understood by using Basil Bernstein’s understanding of how curriculum is recontextualised and was explored by Barry Firth in a Master’s thesis.

Basically, curriculum gets recontextualised at the level of intense contestation between the Official Recontextualising Field (ORF) (the state) and the Professional Recontextualising Field (PRF) (researchers, universities and organs in civil society). If one of the fields is too strong, a poor curriculum will result.

This negates a claim made by the Western Cape that it “took curriculum needs of schools into account when it determined post allocation for schools” (Cape Times, July 28), for physical education at least.

So the question is how can curriculum provision (which is at the heart of schooling) for physical education be improved. The PRF needs to be strengthened. This can be done by forming a SA Society for Physical Education Teaching that holds conferences and issues an academic journal that interrogates present curriculum practices rigorously and vigorously.

Dr Cleophas is a senior lecturer in sport science at Stellenbosh University, specialising in sport history and physical education.