One principal, three schools

Principals could be put in charge of more than one school - that is if Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi has his way.

This is only one of the drastic and far-reaching changes on the cards in Gauteng.

The proposal could see one principal put in charge of "two to three schools".

Lesufi announced the proposal before the Gauteng legislature's portfolio committee on education in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg, on Tuesday night.

But the plan, which is still in its early stages, is yet to undergo extensive consultation.

During his address, Lesufi questioned why one principal could not oversee operations at multiple schools - if that could help to transfer skills from well-resourced schools to under-resourced ones.

Lesufi's spokesman, Phumla Sekhonyane, said the proposal should not be understood to be a call for "social engineering of sorts", with teachers from well-resourced schools uprooted to work in dysfunctional and poorly resourced ones.

She said, on the contrary, the move was intended to bridge the inequality gap between schools of vastly different financial means as well as performance.

But questions remain about the practicality of the plan.

"As you would know, we have inherited a historically segregated education system. We have in the past 20 years addressed this. However, we continue to look at ways to facilitate social cohesion and transformation of the education landscape. In Gauteng particularly, the MEC has made social cohesion one of the priority areas for the next five years," she said

"To this end, a team has been established to look into ways of achieving this goal of a non-segregated and transformed education system. The team will also give us scenarios of how we can maximise the utilisation of our resources for this process

"The plan will be presented to Gauteng people for consultation and will follow the law to its fullest. Our stakeholders will also be given an opportunity to comment on how this is going to work."

The SA Council of Educators, Equal Education and the SA Democratic Teachers' Union said they would welcome the plan provided it addressed inequality without compromising quality.

The proposal follows Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga's announcement in parliament earlier this week that her department would invoke sections 3 and 8 of the National Education Policy Act to hold under-performing and non-performing districts and provinces to account.

Lesufi announced a raft of other proposals and changes, including:

• Reducing to 18 months contracts awarded to service providers to roll out the province's school nutrition programme, and changing the types of food provided to pupils;
• Changing aspects of scholar transport to include municipal bus services;
• Having 80% of Gauteng pupils take up pure maths by 2017, leaving 20% to study maths literacy;
• Reducing waiting periods for teacher disciplinary proceedings by appointing eight permanent chairmen and prosecutors to deal with such matters;
• Appointing principals, deputies and heads of department based on merit rather than union or political party membership; and
• Reducing district offices from 15 to five.

Equal Education's co-leader of education in Gauteng, Tshepo Motsepe, welcomed the proposal to assign principals to multiple schools, saying the organisation had met Lesufi last week to discuss the matter.

"The proposal seems to entail merging schools that are well-resourced with those that are under-resourced.

''If that is the case, then brilliant. We agree with the proposal in principle, provided it speaks to the issue of inequality in education," said Motsepe.

Sadtu provincial secretary Tseliso Ledimo said it would be impractical to put one principal in charge of multiple schools. But if the primary idea was to transfer skills from rich to poor schools, the union would welcome it.

"The idea of cross-pollination of ideas from well-resourced schools to under-resourced schools is something we support," Ledimo said.