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From Preachers to Teachers: New Techniques in KwaZulu Natal
By Edwin Naidu
It has been a long haul, but Cynthia Mpati's dream of producing a better
breed of teacher in KwaZulu Natal is finally bearing fruit. The province,
one of South Africa's poorest in terms of education, is beginning to
fulfill the promises inherent in the end of apartheid.
The demise of apartheid education highlighted decades of inequality
among the four main racial groups in South Africa – black, white,
mixed-race and Asian. The worst off were the black teachers and students,
whose performance reflected the pitiful amounts allocated to them by the
white Government of the day. As a result black schools were beset by
misdirected Government policies, lazy teachers, apathetic pupils and
uninvolved parents. While some urban schools produced above-average
performances, inadequate resources for Bantu (African) Education meant the
overall results were always poor.
Teacher training programs
Annual per-capita government subsidies
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1986
1993
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Whites
$460
$850
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All Blacks
$100
$250
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KwaZulu Natal
$40
N/A
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School Facilities (Dept. of Education data, August 1997)
Of the 32,000 schools in South Africa:
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No water within walking distance
No electricity
No flush toilets
No washing facilities
No classroom learning equipment
Near absence of paper and books
No library
No sports equipment
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25%
57
52
13
73
69
72
45
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Long-term capital needs (consensus of estimates):
57,500 classrooms, $525 million a year for 10 years
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Faced with the dire state of education in KwaZulu Natal, Ms. Mpati
started a three-year program in 1991 through the Umlazi College of Further
Education, a correspondence school for women, to upgrade both the knowledge
and the methods of rural teachers. Educators from rural backgrounds lacked
the skills and the training of their urban counterparts. Lessons were
delivered verbatim from a handbook provided by the Department. It did not
help that their pupils in the crowded classrooms also came from poor
backgrounds and spent the day with almost empty bellies.
Ms. Mpati's programs sought to change that by allowing teachers to get
out of the shells they were consigned to during apartheid. Since most of
the teachers – now students themselves – taught at primary schools, she
looked first at innovative ways to get them to present their lessons.
Making 1 + 1 Mean More Than Just "2"
Take this elementary example: Instead of scribbling down 1 + 1 = 2 on a
chalkboard, Ms. Mpati got her teachers to use marbles to illustrate
addition and subtraction. Science was once restricted to memorizing
textbook terms, delivered in a staccato fashion, but Ms. Mpati encouraged
interaction with the environment: Children were taught the importance of
recycling, and took tours of reservoirs where water is purified.
Now, Ms. Mpati says, thousands of teachers are more confident in the
belief they are turning out better students.
Buoyed by her success with primary-school teachers, Ms. Mpati launched a
program in 1995 for pre-school teachers. "The progress has been
overwhelming," she says. "Teachers who once felt they were going nowhere
are more assertive and tell me not to worry – they are finding solutions
among themselves."
She has focused on teachers of younger children because the lower
schools have remained more deeply trapped by the stagnation created by
"Bantu education." Institutions of higher learning have kept up better
with changing times.
Her approach has been straightforward. "Having grown up in a rural
area, I was interested in making a difference through education," she
says, and she has spent considerable time talking to teachers, hearing
first-hand their frustrations at being trapped in jobs they were not
trained for. "Every time I asked inspectors what was being done to
professionalize them, they would shrug, while school principals would admit
they had teachers who were less than excellent. I used to say to
principals, 'Are you employing them because they have no rights,' and they
would say, 'Yes, because underqualified teachers could be pushed around.'"
Ms. Mpati said her own frustrations working in a school that seemed no
different from apartheid institutions gave rise to her search for an avenue
to improvement. "I had tons of experience as a teacher and teacher
trainer, and was becoming frustrated that the opportunity was not there to
share it. It was a poison to my system."
Focusing on the Beneficiaries: Students and Parents
The seeds for her two programs were sown in 1990 when experts outside of
government began brainstorming about what was needed to meet the
educational challenges. "That made me sit down and come up with a pilot
project in which the curriculum was matched by the needs and challenges of
a higher level of education," she said.
"One of the goals was to ensure that the teacher training involved the
beneficiaries: students and parents. I asked principals what kind of
teachers they wanted on staff, and using their input, devised the
teacher-training course for those employed, predominantly at rural schools,
between five and twenty years," she said.
During apartheid, teachers merely stood in front of a chalkboard and
preached the education gospel from a prescribed set of notes. Pupils were
not encouraged to think independently. But Ms. Mpati encouraged her model
teachers to become more assertive by providing them with better materials,
which stimulated better teaching and hence better learning. The use of
teaching aids like charts and everyday objects displaced the stereotype of
a teacher whose lessons resembled a Sunday sermon.
Her program, somewhat surprisingly blessed by the education
establishment, involves 4,000 uncertified teachers spread throughout rural
KwaZulu Natal, most of whom earned $20 to $100 a month. It starts with a
four-week introductory course at her school in Greyville, opposite a plush
race-course that pulls in the punters regularly. It then continues through
correspondence, meaning that teachers in rural areas can remain with
families while upgrading skills. Another two meetings are held during the
year.
Breaking Through the Establishment's Prejudice
At first Ms. Mpati encountered strong resistance from the provincial
education authorities, mostly men, some of whom were offended because a
woman was telling them how to do their jobs. Eventually the officials
admitted there was merit in her plan.
The next step was to convince the national authorities in Pretoria that
her program would complement their efforts. "The Department of Education
officials seemed shocked that a woman from KwaZulu Natal had come up with
an innovative plan," she recalled. "One gentleman jokingly said they were
not used to having visitors on the 6th floor. I told him, 'The next time I
come here, I will go to the 9th floor,' the offices of the Education
Minister."
Pretoria finally agreed, provided existing policies were not ignored.
But Mr. Mpati, a bit slyly, added a clause in her document giving her the
freedom to add to the program as long as the broad government policies were
adhered to.
Her mission is to replace "spoon feeding" by training teachers to who
challenge pupils. One of her favorite successes is transforming what was
blandly called Book Education into a lesson that now includes literature,
reading and comprehension. The prescribed material was archaic and of
little relevance. In a radical revamp, Ms. Mpati also restructured the
course for junior primary teachers, showing them how to draw on resources
from neighboring schools and form partnerships with educators.
The national Department of Education now accredits Ms. Mpati's
teacher-training programs and she has plans for projects in other
provinces, starting in the impoverished Eastern Province.
$140 Can Go a Long Way
Another positive spin-off came two years ago when she was asked to
include her material in a primer on Book Education published by Kagiso
Trust in association with the South African Council on Higher Education.
When she got the first royalty check, for about $140, "It was a real joy
seeing something we have worked hard for reap rewards. It is not the money,
because it is a small amount, but it is the fact that so many people are
using the books around the country to make a difference."
More than 2,000 teachers in KwaZulu Natal have gone through the
primary-school program and now hold certificates; about 8,000 teachers have
won diplomas. Earlier this year the first 50 teachers completed a Further
Diploma in Education.
An assessment of the project by Jon Volminck, of the University of
Natal, found that teachers are more confident and display greater
assertiveness. The Department of Education also acknowledged the
improvement by increasing salaries by about 20 percent, to $600 a month. At
least 80 percent of the recipients are women and the sole breadwinners at
home.
Ms. Mpati's efforts came against a backdrop of the multitude of promises
blown in by the democratic winds that brought the African National Congress
to power in 1994. Despite the hopes of those days, the very poor in South
Africa, those who earn less than $60 a month, make up 53 percent of the
population but still receive only 40 percent of the educational resources.
On the other hand the richest 12.5 percent get 23.4 percent.
According to a South African Non-Government Coalition paper on "Poverty
and Education in South Africa," the morale and confidence of students and
teachers alike are deeply influenced by the physical environment. Ms.
Mpati's efforts in KwaZulu Natal are a beacon of hope: the Department of
Education spent almost $400 per pupil in Kwazulu Natal in 1995/96, but this
figure rose by $90 in 96/97.
The Burden on the Black Community
Still, KwaZulu Natal has inherited the worst problems of the apartheid
system. Of the African teaching staff in 1994, 46 percent were defined as
underqualified (lacking a high-school diploma and three years' training).
For Coloreds (mixed race), the figure was 29 percent, for Indians 7 percent
and for whites only 1 percent. And since salaries are linked to
qualifications, the unqualified African women have for decades earned less
than qualified males, black or white, and white females. Women also lacked
career opportunities, with only 8 percent of the principals' positions held
by women between 1987 and 1991.
According to the Department of Education, better qualified educators
have been entering the profession in recent years, and the likes of Cynthia
Mpati make a difference. But for Ms. Mpati, who comes from a family of
educators, the work is far from complete.
Drawing on her own experiences growing up in a family that placed great
emphasis on education, Mr. Mpati said her schooling at Inanda Seminary in
Durban and at the Roman Catholic Inkamana High School in Vryheid had made
her aware of the bigger challenges ahead. Subsequent stints at the
University of Fort Hare and her friendship with the anti-apartheid activist
Steve Biko caught the attention of the Security Police. She went into exile
in Swaziland, where she worked for Unesco, developing curriculums and
helping correspondence students at the university. She returned to KwaZulu
Natal in the early 90's and immediately began work on teacher training.
Having sowed the seeds for improved teaching in the province, Ms. Mpati
hopes to retire in five years to a less strenuous life, growing bananas at
her home in Umgababa.
Needs:
Cynthia Mpati needs people with expertise in developing education
programs, and materials and programs to develop literacy and numeracy. She
also needs some basics, like teaching aids for the junior primary level.
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