Good teachers are the midwives of opportunity

Imagine living in a society where we have enough teachers; where teachers are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the subjects they teach; where they are committed to providing learners with a quality education; and where the government gives them all the support they need to excel at what they do.

Good teachers play a crucial role in making the open, opportunity society work: they equip learners with the knowledge and skills they need to exercise their freedom, take advantage of their opportunities, and develop their full potential.

I am thinking of teachers like December Mpapane, who teaches maths and science at Inkomazi High School in Mangweni, Mpumalanga. For the past 18 years he has given up his weekends to tutor learners for free. For the past thirteen years, every single learner who has been taught by him has passed. Last year, one of his pupils achieved 99% for Higher Grade Maths.

When I was the DA's spokesperson on education, I visited a school in the remote hills of KwaZulu-Natal. It is called Mthwalume. Even though the pupil teacher ratio was 70:1, the school had obtained a 100% pass rate for many years, and pupils from as far afield as Gauteng attended Mthwalume in search of affordable excellence.

The principal, Mrs Cynthia Zamisa, told me there was no magic formula for the school's success. It boiled down to a combination of rigorous discipline, full teaching time, additional study hours every evening, a merit-based policy of staff appointments, and a dedicated governing body working cooperatively with the teaching staff. But above all, the teachers made the school a success.

Good teachers - along with good nurses and good police officers - are the midwives of the open, opportunity society: they help us to become skilled, so that we can develop our potential and contribute to economic prosperity; they help us to be healthy; and they help us to be safe. Those are all preconditions for enjoying our freedom and making the most of our opportunities.

We need a steady supply of appropriately qualified and dedicated teachers for our nation to be a success and for South Africans to be able to pursue their dreams. That is why I was so concerned to read reports in the press last weekend that South Africa faces a shortage of up to 94 000 teachers by 2015, owing to poor government planning and the effects of Aids-related illnesses. Of the 433 280 teaching posts in South African schools, 62 616 were vacant at the end of May, and 31 949 posts were staffed by under-qualified, temporary teachers.

The shortage of teachers and the declining quality of education (shown by all the reliable indicators, from international benchmark studies on numeracy and literacy, to our drop-out rate, to the number of matric exemptions) are the result of the ANC's policy failures. These include the introduction of a teacher redeployment and voluntary resignations scheme, the incorporation of teacher training colleges into universities, and the termination of certain bursary programmes. All of these interventions have dramatically reduced the pool of available teachers in South Africa.

At a debate organised by the Sunday Times earlier this year, Wendy Luhabe, one of South Africa's most successful businesswomen, said that the quality of education for the majority is now actually lower than it was under Bantu education. Luhabe stated: "I'm a product of Bantu education and when I look back it really seems much better than what education appears to be today". She added that, "the difference was the quality and the commitment of our teachers". Dr Mamphela Ramphele, former vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and a person of great stature, agreed with her.

The first priority of the DA in government nationally would be to attract, reward, train and retain high-quality teachers. We would aim to ensure that, within five years, South Africa is able to supply an additional 30 000 teachers a year to our schools. At the same time, we would ensure that the overall quality of teaching improves. Our carefully researched, fully costed, and comprehensively detailed policy on education sets out how we would do this.

We will re-open some teacher training colleges. We will embark on an energetic, lively campaign targeting all learners at secondary schools aimed at showing the enormous advantages of teaching as a career. To create incentives for young South Africans to teach, the DA will introduce full bursaries for quality candidates who undertake to teach in specific underprivileged areas for two years.

We will actively seek to recruit teachers from other countries, and list qualifications in certain subjects as scarce skills on the Home Affairs database, so that anyone with these qualifications can short-circuit the usually tight working restrictions.

The DA will also promote short-term teaching contracts to alleviate temporary teacher shortages, and to give graduates exposure to teaching in the hope that some will decide to make a long-term career of teaching.

To stem the loss of teachers to HIV/Aids, we will introduce an HIV network specifically aimed at providing teachers with medication and all the ongoing medical support they need to stay healthy, and to deliver this in a way that will not take them away from their jobs.

Finally, to promote quality teaching, we will set performance targets for teachers and schools, and reward good performance. The DA will require all teachers to write standardised knowledge assessments in the subjects they teach. These tests will have career and financial consequences. Teachers will also be subject to a system of regular individual performance review - something that is standard practice in most other jobs.

Provincial education departments need to be reined in if we are to reverse the education crisis, and that is exactly what the DA intends to do in those provinces - like the Western Cape - which we can win either alone or in coalition with other parties in the 2009 election.

Firstly, provincial governments must stop targeting schools, and school governing bodies, that are functioning effectively and offering high quality education. They must, in particular, stop putting impediments in the way of school governing bodies supporting and encouraging outstanding teachers.

Provincial education departments must do what they are supposed to do: offer outstanding support to schools and teachers to do their job, not persecute those who do. They must ensure that teachers are paid on time, that quality is recognised, and that teachers are supported in restoring discipline in their classrooms. They must all have access to the necessary textbooks and teaching aids required to provide high-quality teaching.

Secondly, underperforming schools must be subject to much closer and more effective management by education authorities. This would include subjecting all teacher appointments to rigorous external review to ensure that they are based on merit and introduce financial management systems to ensure that school funds are directed towards the education enterprise.

Thirdly, in schools that are not performing, principals must be given very specific performance targets to meet, and they must face removal from office if they do not meet them. It is only possible to have motivated teachers if principals themselves are motivated.

These are the steps the DA would take to improve the quality of education, and to identify and retain teachers like December Mpapane. Because without good teachers and quality education, the open, opportunity society will be stillborn.

This article by Helen Zille first appeared in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, November 30 2008

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