The dual economy of schooling and teacher morale in South Africa

Abstract

Low teacher morale, coupled with extremely poor schooling outcomes for students as measured on standardized tests have increasingly been reported in the media in South Africa. As elsewhere, there is growing demand for the reorganisation of teachers' work in order to enhance school performance. The paper investigates the ways in which current market‐led government policies have sustained past inequalities between schools and between teachers. Drawing on Savage's notion of assets, the analysis focuses on how the material and organisational conditions of teachers' work combine to affect teachers' morale. The analysis is based on available sets of data on inequalities – at the societal level, at the level of the homes and communities of the children that attend school, at the level of schooling system and at the level of teachers. It proposes a conceptual typology in relation to the four levels of data we provide, which shows interesting differential effects on teachers' morale and the transformation of teachers' work in South Africa. We argue that the relations between enduring economic inequalities in South Africa, an underspecified new curriculum and the bureaucratization of teachers' work have created an intractable pattern of accumulation of educational disparity among teachers in South Africa. Teacher morale needs to be considered in the context of these structural conditions.

Keywords:

• teachers work
• South African teachers
• accountability
• labour process
• poverty
• education inequality

Notes

1. For a detailed analysis of teacher workload see Chisholm et al. 2005.

2. In the South African context, Stein and Slominsky (2006) show how reading aloud practices between low‐income and high‐income parents and their children differ; the former focusing on factual recall and sounding out words, the latter emphasizing the meaning and interpretation of the text and reading for enjoyment. The crucial point is that all children learn in school, but some children need more time to learn, given what competencies, skills and general orientations they bring from the home.

3. Savage's notion of assets intends to show how different conditions (economic, social and political) give teachers less or more powers in relation to other categories of labour. These powers include forms of solidarity and other strategies that teachers select in order to protect themselves. In her work, Robertson (2000) speaks of new teachers' identities that have emerged in relation to teacher's differential capacities to realize their assets.

4. This follows a racial pattern as only 12% of white teachers have fewer than four years of training, against 44% for African teachers (Gustafsson and Patel 2008, 5).

5. Teachers between the age of 21 and 30 constitute 5.4% of teachers in the public system; teachers between the age of 31 and 40 constitute 42.5% of teachers in the public system. Teachers above the age of 40 form 51.2% of the profession (HSRC 2008, 4).

6. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the school fee policy allows schools to subvert the post‐allocation system and to pay state‐employed teachers additional amounts.

7. Gustafsson and Patel (2006, 72) report that in extreme cases the ratio stands on 573 learners to one administrator.