Education deadlock

It is a picture that will be hard to erase from memory. On the second page of a Cape Town newspaper there is a photograph of the provincial head of education sitting atop a school gate trying to lift his substantial body mass from the street into the school grounds.

Donald Grant has a scheduled meeting with the principal of this Malmesbury primary school to discuss its poor academic results but the teachers' union has locked him, and his department's officials, out.

The Western Cape MEC for education would have to repeat these high jinks when he visited another under-performing primary school, in Atlantis, simply to discuss the problem of children who fail basic literacy and numeracy tests.

This is part of the labour action currently destroying poor schools: teachers are to work only the hours specified in their contract and officials cannot visit public schools.

Nowhere else in the world would such a bizarre situation be allowed. Since when does a teachers' union bar public-schooling officials from visiting and assisting the schools their department pays for?

In the simple act of locking school gates you understand why playing musical chairs with ministers of education will have absolutely no effect on the transformations so urgently needed in our schools.

The government has to take the authority to run schools back from teachers' unions, but this is not going to happen because, in the contemporary politics of South Africa, the fate of poor children is less important than the interests of the powerful.

On the other hand, there are real problems in schools that should disturb any decent unionist. In fact, the so-called solidarity visit of prominent citizens to Eastern Cape schools could not have come at a worse time for Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga.

With the SA Democratic Teachers' Union breathing down her political neck during the countrywide strike, the band of eminent visitors, led by Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, took a tour of some of the worst schools in Eastern Cape. This newspaper provided graphic pictures of the situation on the ground.

What the visitors saw was truly tragic. Mud schools, pit latrines, and more than 130 children packed into one classroom, were among the horrors on display. Children relieved themselves in the long grass.

Sadtu had elections, so schools in one area closed for two days.

Children pointed to diseased skins, which they blamed on unhygienic conditions for menstruating girls.

Delegates in the touring party cried openly at this horror show.

If the government cannot transform the horrible conditions in poor schools, and the majority union makes it worse by keeping out officials trying to improve the learning achievements of those schools, what is the result?

It is quite simple, really. The children of the poor remain stuck in the political standoff between the government and the unions.

There is an alternative. The unions could link the welfare of their paying members, the teachers, to the academic success of those in their charge, the children.

What then becomes the basis for union activism is the improvement of schools, not only the remuneration of teachers.

The provincial governments could, in turn, make sure every school under their authority meets the standards for decent infrastructure and that schools have the number of teachers required.

But our education politics is so poisoned with self-interest, political grandstanding and the absence of leadership that the stalemate is likely to continue.

Notice that the well-financed, former white schools in the suburbs and cities are not affected by the strikes; in fact, these schools are where unionists send their own children while they lock the gates and disrupt the learning of poor children in township and rural schools.

That this disgraceful behaviour is tolerated by ordinary South Africans says a lot about our values and our collective conscience.

Where, then, could the change come from?

It could happen when poor parents stand up and shout that they refuse to have the education of their children disrupted.

It could happen if the president of the country assumed leadership on the education crisis as a matter of national priority - not only in speeches but in determined action that takes on the provinces and the unions.

And it could happen if every citizen, middle class and poor, combined to make this a noisy, public issue until the stalemate is broken.