HOPE FOR THE WEAKEST
Charter schools may narrow the gap between pupils from rich and poor communities. Test scores from the first pilot project in SA show mostly encouraging results
Charter schools – or as they are known in the Western Cape, collaboration schools — give SA’S poorest children a route out of poverty. The schools are run in collaboration with private donors and nonprofit education providers, based on a model that has been gaining ground in the UK, the US and some South American and African countries.
SA has one of the most unequal education systems in the world. Even in the public school system, the gap in learning between those at fee-paying schools and those at no-fee schools is vast. The latter typically serve the lowest 25% of income earners.
Stellenbosch University researcher Nic
Spaull estimates that in maths and science the average grade 9 pupil at a fee-charging public school has two or three more years’ worth of knowledge and learning than a grade 9 pupil at a no-fee public school.
A major challenge facing the state is to ensure that lower-income communities have access to the same quality of teaching and learning as those from more affluent backgrounds. But with an education budget that is failing to keep pace with an influx of 25,000 new learners every year, mainly from Gauteng and the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape education department has been forced to become creative.
“We have to look at ways of doing things differently because we haven’t got enough money,” says the province’s education MEC, Debbie Schäfer.
“The system is under severe strain, with huge class sizes, particularly in poor communities. It’s extremely frustrating because the money (in terms of our equitable share) isn’t following the children.”
In the first pilot of its kind in SA, the province is trying out the charter or contract school model. The aim is to inject additional education management skills and innovation into the public school system through nonprofit partnerships.
If all goes well, it will improve the quality of teaching and learning in no-fee public schools, assisted by top-up funding from private donors.
Already, the project has spent R150m in donor funding over the past two years across 10 no-fee schools.
“It is one of the ways that I truly believe we can narrow the gap between richer and poorer communities,” says Schäfer.
The model is controversial in SA because it amounts to the state contracting the private sector to manage the delivery of public schooling, either from scratch in a new school or in turning around an existing, failing school. But it is based on the premise that the private provider, with more expertise, time, resources and flexibility, will do a better job than the state.
“What the private sector does better than its public equivalent, of course, is to demand accountability for its investment, and this is one of the strongest benefits of collaboration,” says former University of the Free State vice-chancellor professor Jonathan Jansen.
Equal Education, which promotes learning equality, has, however, questioned the province’s authority to establish collaboration schools. It says it will challenge the Western Cape Provincial Schools Education Amendment Bill, which provides for the schools’ creation. The bill conflicts with the SA Schools Act, but Schäfer’s reading of the constitution is that in certain instances involving education, provincial legislation can supersede national legislation.
So far the international experience with contract schools has been mixed, and there are as many supporters as detractors.
According to independent education consultant Jane Hofmeyr, some success has been achieved with the model in the UK, where they are called free schools or academies. The model has also worked in parts of the US, where they are called charter schools, but much depends on the quality of the school operating partner and the state’s regulatory framework.
With support from the international education charity Ark, which operates 36 contract schools in the UK, the Western Cape government has contracted with three local not-for-profit providers or school operating partners (SOPS) — Acorn Education, the Common Good Foundation and the School Turnaround Foundation.
It works like this: the funder (usually a private trust or charity) enters into a memorandum of understanding with the department and signs a contract with an
SOP to manage a school selected by the department. Each SOP also enters into a service-level agreement with the department setting out its performance obligations in terms of the contract.
In all the collaboration schools, the SOP
oversees the management of the school and is afforded 50% of the vote on the school’s governing body. The SOP and the governing body are able to appoint new teachers on contract. This means teachers are selected on the basis of competence and commitment only, not union loyalties or political connections. This is similar to the situation in fee-paying public schools where the governing body appoints and pays for additional teachers.
The job of the SOP is to provide intensive support to teachers and principals through training and building capacity. A range of interventions is being employed — some have introduced a longer working day, others have added extra reading and e-learning maths programmes, and one has employed a full-time social worker for a school.
So far the 2017 test results of the five pilot schools are mostly encouraging.
In the three primary schools that started the project two years ago, the grade 3 language results have improved from 13.4% to 32.9% and the maths results from 29.3% to 53.3%. The grade 6 language results are up from 19% to 23.5% and the maths results from 16.2% to 25.1%.
However, in the two high schools the language results improved from 13.5% to 18.9% but the maths results deteriorated. Schäfer says this was largely because of a devastating fire in Hout Bay and some teething problems at Langa High School. Even so, Langa’s matric pass rate rose from 34% in 2016 to 50% in 2017.
It is striking that the project has only managed to raise most pupils’ marks from “failing miserably” to “doing better, but still failing” after two years. But education experts say it takes considerable time to shift learners’ performance, especially at the weakest schools.
Predictably, it hasn’t been plain sailing for the new programme. Typically, problems have arisen when an eager SOP has tried to crack the whip over teachers already employed at the school. Some may be close to retirement and have no desire to undergo professional development; others may just be “dead wood” with no interest in upping their game.
In new schools that are being run by SOPS from inception, all the teachers are employed by the school governing bodies but in existing, turnaround schools, the governing bodies can’t alter the employment conditions of members of staff who are already there. It means that they are stuck with the laggards until they retire, resign or are managed out.
This suggests that if the department wants faster change in some of its worst schools it is going to have to weed out bad teachers.
“Some of the teachers don’t want to work; but we’ve had good support from parents, who seem to be seeing a difference in their children,” says Schäfer. “I’m not saying [the collaboration model] is the only option or will happen across the entire province, but it does appear to be working, and parents seem to be buying into it.”
Another problem is that there are only a handful of SOPS with sufficient capacity to manage public schools. The initial goal was to enrol 50 schools within five years, but it seems the pilot will be lucky to get to 20.
Hofmeyr feels the contract schooling model holds promise for SA, provided the pilot project is rigorously evaluated.
“The key thing to establish will be the costs and benefits of the pilot and the conditions under which it can work in SA,” she says. “While there have been teething problems, the early test results give us hope, especially given that the turnaround schools that were selected have been notoriously underperforming and are in very depressed areas.”
Jansen feels contract schools should be supported because “they could provide the last chance of giving SA’S most neglected youth in the most dysfunctional schools a clear shot out of poverty”.
If they do so, other provinces would be crazy not to follow the example of the Western Cape.
What it means: Getting the private sector to run poor schools is boosting learners’ results