An Overview of South African Human Resources Development ppt

On 26 April 2007, a National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development was gazetted.. The programme was designed by a consortium of agencies with considerable expertise and

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za

First published 2009

ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2293-9 ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2294-6 ISBN (e-pub) 978-0-7969-2299-1

© 2009 Human Sciences Research Council

Copy-edited by Lisa Compton Typeset by Baseline Publishing Services Cover by Fuel Design

Printed by Name of printer, Cape Town, South Africa

Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com

Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609

Series preface vProject preface viiAcknowledgements ixExecutive summary xiAcronyms and abbreviations xv

1฀฀ Introduction 1 2฀฀ Conceptual฀issues 3 3฀฀ ฀Dynamics฀of฀teacher฀supply฀and฀demand:฀

Research,฀policy฀and฀practice,฀1994—1999 9 4฀฀ ฀Dynamics฀of฀teacher฀supply฀and฀demand:฀

Research,฀policy฀and฀practice,฀1999—2004 17 5฀฀ ฀Dynamics฀of฀teacher฀supply฀and฀demand:฀

Research,฀policy฀and฀practice,฀2004—2008 23 6฀฀ Conclusion 33

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

The Teacher Education in South Africa series is produced as part of the Teacher Education Programme (TEP), funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 2005 to 2008

The programme took place at a critical juncture in the development of teacher education

in post-apartheid South Africa Since 2004, sustained attention has been given to the improvement of teacher education consequent on the revision of the curriculum and the restructuring of higher education In October 2004, the Council on Higher Education (CHE) initiated a review of teacher education programmes On 26 April 2007, a National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development was gazetted This provided the basis for a new system of teacher education and development for a new generation of South African teachers

The TEP emerged within this overall context of enhanced attention being given

to the improvement of teacher education Its overall goal was ‘to contribute to the knowledge and information base for policy formulation and implementation regarding the organisation and practice of teacher education, with a particular emphasis on initial teacher education (both pre-service and upgrading), as well as the professional development of school leaders and managers’ (CEA, CEPD, EFT, HSRC & SAIDE 2005) The work was organised under four major themes: teacher supply and demand;

institutional culture and governance; the development of education management; and literacy and teacher development

The programme was designed by a consortium of agencies with considerable expertise and experience in the field: the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD); the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC); the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE); the Centre for Evaluation and Assessment (CEA) at the University

consultation with stakeholders such as the national Department of Education, the Ministerial Working Group on Teacher Education, the Deans’ Forum and the Council

on Higher Education/Higher Education Quality Committee, among others Briefing and consultation continued through the process of research, for the consortium as a whole and in relation to specific projects

Michael Cosser, HSRC Organisational Manager, Teacher Education Programme

1 The EFT has been disbanded, and uncompleted projects have been taken over by the consortium.

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

In 2008, South Africa had 400 953 educators, which included school teachers and principals Were they adequate in number and quality for the 12 239 363 learners in ordinary public and independent schools? Is the country’s teacher education system sufficiently geared up to produce the teachers that are required? Are sufficient numbers

of teachers being attracted to teaching, and if not, why not? How have government and unions attempted to address specific teacher shortages since 1994 and how successful have these efforts been? What has the contribution of research been in these areas? These are the questions this monograph addresses It does so by providing an overview and synthesis of the interventions, research and consequences of initiatives related to the demand for and supply of teachers since 1994 As such, it pays particular attention to the research conducted at the HSRC within the Teacher Education Programme, examining its contributions to the unfolding debate and situating them within overall trends in research, policy and practice since 1994

This monograph first examines conceptual approaches to teacher supply and demand, and then shows how demand-side strategies combined with the restriction of supply and the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1990s led to declining enrolments in teacher education in the early 2000s A spate of research in the period between 2002 and

2005, as well as reports about declining enrolments, resulted in a number of supply-side interventions by the state from about 2004 These coincided with a renewed emphasis on skills supply more generally, and with new demands created not only for more teachers but also for better teachers by the revision of Curriculum 2005 and the introduction of the National Curriculum Statement Significant challenges remain in matching supply with demand, as demonstrated in the research conducted This monograph shows how the HSRC research has contributed to the ongoing and as yet unresolved debate about supply and demand of teachers and teacher education

Linda Chisholm, Project Leader

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

The generous support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for this project

is gratefully acknowledged

An early draft of this monograph was presented at the Third Annual Education Conference at Birchwood, and at seminars convened by the Cape Higher Education Consortium at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the Wits School of Education I would like to thank all the contributors, and especially Yousuf Gabru, Peter Kallaway, Dave Gilmour, Yusuf Waghid, Maureen Robinson, Mary Metcalfe, Albert Chanee, Jane Castle, Francine de Clerque and Spencer Janari for their comments I have tried to address questions raised at these seminars to the best of my ability Rob Turrell, Ivor Chipkin and Matseleng Allais provided extremely valuable insights and suggestions in written form Any errors, omissions or limitations are my responsibility

My colleagues in the Teacher Education Programme at the HSRC – Fabian Arends, Michael Cosser, Nolutho Diko and Glenda Kruss – have inspired me with their knowledge and passion for their work I am indebted to them for a collegial working environment

Vijay Reddy has also provided crucial support for my work

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

Background and approach

This monograph provides an integrated synthesis of a study of research, policy and practice in relation to the supply and demand of South African teachers in three periods:

1994–1999, 1999–2004 and 2004–2008 At the heart of the study is the question of teacher shortages and the need to match supply with demand so that a sufficient number of adequately trained teachers are teaching learners the subjects that need to be taught in schools Whether or not there are teacher shortages, where they exist and how to address them are issues that require both research and suitable policy interventions

The approach taken in this study is that the supply and demand of teachers is affected as much by the market for teachers as by the character of state interventions in this field In essence, the form and size of the market for teachers is, in part, determined by the state itself In this regard, getting to the bottom of any mismatch requires more than efforts to match numbers of teachers required with numbers of teachers supplied by the system, although this is also important Crucially, it requires an understanding of interventions taken by the national and provincial departments of education to address challenges

in education How they have understood these challenges, the concepts used both normatively and analytically, and the nature of the interventions are important to fathom

A number of important assumptions about the relationship between the state and teacher markets inform this study First, teacher markets are not free; they exist in complex socio-economic, political and institutional contexts, conditions and geographies that are shaped

by history and that constrain and enable the parameters of choice and decision-making related to supply and demand processes Second, institutions, including the market for teachers, are constructed politically The supply, demand and utilisation of teachers is regulated by state and non-state institutions such as the education sector bargaining chamber, the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) To the extent that policies

do not work as expected, the problem is conceptualised not so much as market failure requiring state intervention, which already exists to regulate the market, but as systemic failure: on the one hand, in terms of a state that is not yet functioning optimally to ensure that supply is calibrated with demand, and on the other, a state and a teacher market in which politics is institutionally structured and shapes outcomes in unpredictable ways

This critical political economy approach is supplemented by two additional sets of concepts Conceptual tools from the education planning literature are used to analyse and distinguish between the supply and demand of teachers In this literature, demand

is typically determined by learner enrolments, pupil : teacher ratios (PTRs) and teacher turnover, whereas supply is assessed by those factors that affect the supply of teachers:

the number of students graduating from teacher preparation programmes, the proportion

of those students who choose to enter teaching, the number of teachers licensed through alternative programmes, and the number of teachers from the reserve pool of teachers, including retired teachers These numbers in turn are influenced by the motivation or aspiration to become teachers, which in turn is affected by conditions of work

Interventions can be focused on either the demand side or the supply side; they correspond to the issues to be considered in terms of each; and they may be either short- or long-term Demand-side approaches can be considered in terms of the degree

to which they are implemented through centralised or decentralised processes – here the discussion loops back to the debate on the nature of the state and its ‘developmental’

capacities Within supply-side approaches, the short-term measures commonly

compensate for failures of demand or supply For social actors such as governments and unions, the issues are fundamentally linked to education funding, and in practice trade-offs are often entailed in the decisions taken either to expand or reduce PTRs and to raise salaries or keep them static

Using these concepts, the study analyses the nature, focus and efficacy of research, state interventions and related union activity during three periods: 1994–1999, 1999–2004 and 2004–2008 It draws principally on secondary literature, and especially the Wits Education

Policy Unit (EPU) Quarterly Review of Education and Training produced in the 1990s, but

supplements this with additional primary research, including government documents and key informant interviews For each period the study considers the research, policy and practice (or outcomes) that are relevant to questions of teacher supply and demand

Demand and supply dynamics, information and policies: 1994–2008

This study argues that in the first period, 1994 to 1999, a preference existed for redistributional solutions as a way of improving quality in schools instead of investing

in teacher education or re-education Finances for education were constrained, and the main priority lay in reorganising and restructuring the education system to unify racially fragmented budgets, departments and processes Government teacher policy was driven

by information that proposed demand-led, centralised teacher redeployment rather than supply-side solutions, although significant policy interventions were made that had determinate effects in producing a social panic on the supply side by the start of the millennium Whereas demand-side research and policies emphasised the reduction of teacher shortages in African schools through the mechanism of revised PTRs that resulted

in rationalising, redeploying and redistributing teachers within the system rather than training new teachers, supply-side research and policy emphasised that there was an

‘overproduction’ of teachers in teacher education colleges and the need for restructuring and incorporating teacher education into higher education The effects of policy and practice in this period were felt in the subsequent period The major outcomes of the struggles in this first period were marginal salary improvements, the reduction of teacher numbers in the system and a PTR that aimed at equalisation but did not effectively translate into smaller classes The pattern of privileging salaries over class size in teachers’ conditions of work was set in this period

During the second period, from 1999 to 2004, signs of the limitations of the redistributional logic began to emerge and there were belated efforts to improve the supply of teachers The threat of teacher migration and the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic created a significant social panic about the supply of teachers to schools While some HSRC and government-initiated research conducted in and on this period urged a more sober understanding, the teachers’ unions initiated research under the auspices of the ELRC that in 2005 reiterated the need for greater attention to supply-side issues In response, government initiated policy to improve the quantity and quality of supply of teachers for both the short and long term But the cumulative effect of policy changes since 1994, combined with demand-side dynamics affecting turnover as well as new demands created by curriculum reform, had by this stage also ratcheted up supply-side issues influencing the attractiveness of teaching As a result, the teacher labour market in this period was in turmoil over shortages Declining university enrolment, teacher migration and the impact of HIV/AIDS were cause for a renewed interest in supply-side measures

For the period between 2004 and 2008, it has become evident that despite some improvement in teacher supply, the legacy of redistributional thinking remained strong

Major research initiatives were undertaken and government intervened with policies to stabilise the teacher labour market and improve supply-side interventions for both the short and long term But shortages have persisted, and these can be met only through sustained investment in long-term supply-side solutions and by attending to significant barriers related to teachers’ conditions of work An important outcome of a ministerial committee appointed in the preceding period was the National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development in 2007 It provides for the consolidation and strengthening of teacher preparation and professional development as a long-term solution

to the problem of teacher supply for the system But the possibility of meeting actual demand for more and better teachers is now hampered not only by financing of teacher education, but also by the low attractiveness of teaching, working conditions and salaries,

as well as the system of teacher deployment, recruitment and retention in place at the provincial and school levels Beginner teachers often do not find jobs, teachers defined by schools as ‘excess’ circulate through the system, and schools and provinces compensate for perceived difficulties and address short-term interests by appointing temporary, often unqualified teachers As time progresses, such teachers become permanent

The study concludes with a consideration of the place of teachers in national development strategies and the ability of such coordinated strategies to address the key challenges identified Teachers need to figure more strongly in national development plans, but the limitations of these plans should also be recognised in a context in which

‘developmentalist’ features of the state are missing and capacity issues are pronounced

Research over the period has reiterated that matching and modelling the supply and demand of teachers is a complex exercise, the results of which are dependent on the assumptions used and are limited by the quality of available data Adequate systems for collecting and analysing data timeously to inform planning are a long way off; such systems rely not only on the national and provincial departments of education but on reliable processes and skilled people within schools and departments who are also in short supply

Towards meeting demand

Improvement can be effected in four main areas: information systems, financing of teacher education, salaries and conditions of work for teachers, and the post-provisioning system linked to teacher appointment, recruitment and retention Creaking information systems do not facilitate already ineffective teacher deployment systems Inadequate funding of teacher education does not enhance the capacity of a massively restructured system to respond adequately to new demands for teachers Moreover, poor salaries and incentives do not attract and keep the best teachers in the system The current system

of teacher appointment and deployment has not led to greater equity A decentralised system of teacher appointment is unlikely to improve matters, as the main determinant of whether the system is centralised or decentralised is leadership and capacity Ultimately, administrative rearrangements to centralise or decentralise the system will not necessarily get at the key political issues at the heart of teacher appointment and deployment

Nonetheless, improvements can be effected in the functioning of the system

Put positively, national and provincial governments could focus more on improving information systems Treasury and the national Department of Education (DoE) could work out ways of enhancing direct funding for university-based teacher education to

increase the possibilities for locally relevant and accessible teacher education in scarce and critical subjects The ELRC could consider how teachers’ salaries and class sizes can both be improved in a manner that will ensure quality teachers and teaching All role-players could focus closely on the system of teacher appointment, recruitment and retention to ascertain who benefits from it and how it could be improved to ensure that equity is achieved at the same time as schools are able to appoint and retain the teachers they need And researchers could try to understand better the tenacity of the conception

of the problem of teacher supply and demand as one of redistribution rather than investment and expansion Until we understand and address this appropriately, teacher education will receive short shrift

A likely emphasis in the foreseeable future is on expanding teacher numbers and reducing class sizes A major priority will be to ensure that teacher salaries and conditions

of work do not deteriorate and, perhaps more importantly, that teachers are appointed to positions for which they are trained and needed

ANC African National Congress

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

Introduction

The intention to reverse the negative effects of apartheid education and provide for greater access, equity and quality has placed curriculum and teacher policy at the centre of educational transformation in South Africa For without teachers who are both adequate in number and good at what they do, it will not be possible to realise the goals and ambitions of the society for a high level of education for all Matching the supply

of teachers with the demand so that there are neither shortages nor an oversupply of teachers is a major challenge for both researchers and policy-makers Whereas researchers map and model potential demand for and supply of teachers, policy-makers are required

to implement the necessary interventions at the right time to ensure a balance in provision – that is, enough teachers of good quality for all schools Nonetheless, despite ongoing research and a raft of policies to ensure greater equity in teacher provision and higher quality of the teaching corps, the system remains crippled by apparent teacher shortages on the one hand and poor educational outcomes on the other The question is why this is the case, the dimensions of the problem and what to do about it

The purpose of this study is to cast light on these issues by placing them in historical perspective It examines approaches and state interventions related to teacher supply and demand through an analysis and assessment of the relationship between research, policy and practice on the subject and how they impact on the supply and demand of teachers in three phases: 1994–1999, 1999–2004 and 2004–2008 In so doing, the study

draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including the Wits EPU Quarterly

Review of Education and Training produced during the 1990s, policy documents, minutes

of parliamentary committees, key informant interviews and recent research conducted especially but not only by the HSRC

Although the phases distinguished in this study (1994–1999, 1999–2004 and 2004–2008) correspond to the terms of office of education ministers Sibusiso Bhengu, Kader Asmal and Naledi Pandor respectively, events during these periods cannot be reduced to their initiatives Social dynamics are much more complex than this Often government ministers are simply dealing with legacies of previous decades or are implementing what has been set in motion in earlier years Their specific roles are important but not decisive in identifying and shaping key issues, which are much more deeply structured by long-term economic and political patterns and the actions of succeeding generations in different contexts The monograph suggests that in the first, post-apartheid phase, an approach

to teacher supply and demand characterised by an emphasis on redistribution and efficiency rather than expansion and development manifested itself Its effects were felt

in the subsequent periods Even though current initiatives take on teacher education and development, they continue to be overshadowed by this approach Its main features will

be sketched in the course of the monograph

There have also been three main periods of research and policy between 1994 and 2008, each responding to particular supply–demand issues In each period there has been

a close link between research and policy: policy at each stage has been informed by available research on supply and demand, despite acknowledged weaknesses in the actual data Policy at each stage has also responded in a piecemeal way to recommendations whose scope invariably reaches well beyond the capacity of either the state or the DoE

on its own to address them Even when gazetted, recommendations flowing from research can remain unimplemented Another complicating factor is the fact that research is often commissioned in one period while the findings only become available when the pressures

2

of that period may no longer be present Findings reintroduce issues as relevant that may have been addressed in legislation and interventions, but whose results are not yet clear Thus, new policies and interventions can come into being on the basis of inadequate information A key example is the call for the reopening of teacher education colleges This call for new institutions is based in part on outdated information, in part on systemic failures of the teacher allocation and distribution system and in part on inadequate funding for teacher education at university level

Before discussing the specific issues in these three periods, it is important to examine how supply and demand issues are understood and the approach taken in this study

Conceptual issues

In analysing the problem of mismatch between teacher supply and demand, it is important to understand the relationship between state and market Studies on the supply and demand of teachers have been conducted in an ongoing manner since at least 1994

Underlying the language of ‘supply and demand’ is the concept of the market The market analogy is implicit in and assumed in discussions of teacher supply and demand, and yet this analogy is often fallacious

Within the neoclassical conception of the economy, markets are seen as responsible for distributing production and consumption by determining price and quantity In this conception, government interventions can be designed as corrective measures where markets fail (Gastrow 2009) A market can function properly to set price and quantity only

if individuals can access relevant information that will help them make decisions This assumes that flows of information are transparent and that individuals are in a position

to access them Where information flows are far from complete, resulting in significant misallocations, ‘market failure’ refers to substantial dysfunctionality Adequate market information is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a functioning market When requirements are not communicated, market signals are seen as failing (Gastrow 2009)

In the case of the supply and demand of teachers, there are differences between how

are not commodities; second, the lead time it takes to become a teacher or student is not the same as that for a commodity in a market; third, conceptions of ‘production’ and

‘consumption’ of skills differ from those regarding commodities in a market Last but not least, the understanding of supply and demand at the micro-level of teachers has taken different and specific forms, to be discussed below Nonetheless the use of the terminology lends to the debate the assumptions underlying neoclassical economics – that individuals will make rational choices about their future depending on whether or not they receive the right information or signals about market demand It also suggests

an analogy between government intervention to correct market failure and efforts by the state to match supply with demand Within this framework, teacher shortages can be seen

as a sign but not the cause of the fact that teacher markets are failing

But this framework is not adequate to enable a full understanding of the dynamics that shape the persistent inability to achieve the right quantity, balance, mix or distribution

of teachers in schools It ignores the real, often conflictual social relations within which individuals and markets are situated, as well as the regulative role of state and non-state institutions Neither individuals nor markets are free, nor do they operate rationally They are situated within complex socio-economic, political and institutional contexts, conditions and geographies shaped by history These constrain and enable the parameters of choice and decision-making, and they are critical to an analysis of failure to balance supply and demand

Here the debate about the developmental state is relevant Many state actors argue that more coordinated intervention by the state should be able to address market imperfections But there are problems with this notion that can be better understood by examining how the debate has unfolded in South Africa

The notion of a state that intervenes and coordinates where markets have failed arose in the context of the critique by what became known as the ‘Post-Washington Consensus’

of the ‘Washington Consensus’ of the 1980s and 1990s The Washington Consensus

4

was characterised by the perception of clear boundaries between states and markets: it envisaged a key role for the market, a diminished and minimal role for the state, and structural adjustment of expenditure through a policy package consisting of reduction

of the public service, cutbacks in social services, trade liberalisation, and privatisation Politics was seen as essentially inimical to the pure operation of markets, and the task

of the state was to minimise such influence wherever and however possible The Washington Consensus sought to correct this negative view of the role of the state and politics in development, seeing complementarity of states and markets where neoclassicists saw the primacy of the market (Fine 2006; Hart 2002, 2004, 2006; Jomo & Fine 2006) Within this approach, an institutional political economy school of thought (not

Post-to be confused with institutional theory) has questioned the boundary between states and markets, arguing that what is considered ‘market failure’ or ‘interventionist’ in one context may not be so in another and that this depends on the nature of rights – obligations that are established in the society and that condition markets This approach promotes the essentially constitutive role of all markets by states and politics In this view, the market is one institution among many; it is a political construct; and politics is itself institutionally structured (Chang 2002) Thus, markets cannot be analysed without reference to the complex institutional framework within which they exist or to the integral role of politics

in shaping them This approach informs the analysis undertaken in this study

The debate on the developmental state in South Africa proceeds from the assumption that South Africa in the post-1994 years shared the market-friendly, neo-liberal Washington Consensus described above This was manifest in the GEAR (Growth, Employment and Reconstruction) programme embarked on in the mid-1990s, which committed South Africa

to a conservative economic and fiscal stance From the early 2000s, corresponding with improved prospects of economic growth, the state appeared to be espousing a more

‘developmentalist’ and interventionist course (Southall 2007) And yet this periodisation of market-based development followed by more interventionist approaches is flawed, as it is clear that state intervention helped to shape the market as well as the economic growth and development path of South Africa during the 1990s The market (or economy) did not reign unfettered and outside a broader state and institutional context

Recent research on the state and bureaucracy in South Africa has drawn attention to the non-developmental aspects of the state, recognising that the conditions identified

as existing in successful developmentalist states such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

do not exist in South Africa (Evans 1995) Here, despite some ‘pockets of excellence’, institutional failure, marked by high turnover rates, vacancies, dysfunctionality and incapacity, are characteristic of state institutions (Chipkin 2008; Southall 2007; Von Holdt forthcoming) One of the features of this failure is the disproportionate focus by analysts

‘on developmental policies rather than on the internal functioning of the state’ (Von Holdt forthcoming) In some instances, this mirrors the emphasis within the state and bureaucracy on elaboration of development strategies and coordination mechanisms which ultimately have little consequence or effect For Chipkin (forthcoming), the state is better conceptualised in this instance not as a ‘developmental’ state, but as ‘a constellation

of apparatuses, institutions and bodies’ that are simultaneously linked and delinked from one another, and in which the politics of the nationalist movement is critical in shaping its form and effects

The role of both state and non-state institutions has been important in shaping policy and practice on teacher supply and demand Within government, Treasury and the departments of education have been important Outside but including government, the

ELRC has been critical And outside the state, unions have been central Their impact is best understood through tracing their relationship to demand- and supply-side research and interventions over time since 1994 In order to do this, it is necessary to understand the way in which ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ are conceptualised in the education planning – and specifically the teacher policy – context

The demand for teachers is commonly understood as being shaped by three main issues:

pupil enrolment, PTRs and teacher turnover For example, more teachers are needed

if more pupils enrol High PTRs will require fewer teachers, whereas low PTRs will require more teachers Teacher turnover, considered the most important factor of all, can result from burn-out, death or illness (such as HIV/AIDS) and places constant pressure

on recruitment of new stocks of teachers Policy-driven changes to expand access to education will increase the demand for teachers, as will curriculum reforms and changing opportunities and conditions in teaching relative to other professions (Cooper & Alvarado 2006; Peltzer et al 2005; Wagner 1995) The demand for teachers may be for larger numbers of teachers or for more skilled and qualified teachers or for both In developing countries, education-for-all policies can and have expanded enrolments and the

subsequent demand for teachers In South Africa, the introduction of a new curriculum has created demand for more highly skilled and knowledgeable teachers

Whether this demand is met depends on those factors that affect the supply of teachers:

the number of students graduating from teacher preparation programmes; the proportion

of those students who choose to enter teaching; the number of teachers licensed through alternative programmes; and the number of teachers from the reserve pool of teachers, including retired teachers These numbers in turn are influenced by those factors ‘that affect the career decisions of potential teachers, current teachers and former teachers’

(Cooper & Alvarado 2006: 5) Here the key determinants of the supply of teachers are

‘salaries and working conditions for teachers relative to those in other occupations, and the cost of preparing to become a teacher relative to the cost of preparing for other occupations’ (Murnane 1995: 317) The attractiveness of teaching is linked, especially

in developing countries, to perceived living and working conditions In developing countries, the overall supply of adequate numbers of teachers may be the key issue; in more developed countries, the inadequate supply of teachers for specific fields such as mathematics and science may be critical In South Africa, the demand for mathematics, science and Foundation Phase teachers, especially in the mother tongue, has increased significantly since 1994, but the supply has lagged behind

Strategies to address mismatches have focused on either ‘supply-led’ or ‘demand-led’

policies, depending on whether research has shown the supply or the demand to be the main problem More recently, the focus has been on integrated, cross-sectoral and coordinated national development strategies

Among supply-led approaches there are short-term, quick-fix solutions and longer-term, more sustainable solutions Short-term, quick-fix solutions may – and in practice often

do – involve the employment of unqualified teachers or substitute teachers Longer-term policies include improving teacher preparation programmes; providing incentives that improve the attractiveness of teaching, such as scholarships and loans for students who otherwise could not afford to go into teacher education; and improving teacher salaries, benefits and working conditions (Cooper & Alvarado 2006; Murnane 1995) Other supply-led strategies include bonuses for teachers in fields of shortage, such as mathematics, or for those teaching in rural areas

6

Demand-led strategies to increase or decrease the number of teachers attempt to influence pupil enrolments and PTRs These in turn are closely linked to education funding policy As Carnoy (1996) has pointed out, developing countries faced with financial constraints in the 1980s and 1990s tended to trade off PTRs against salaries The lower the PTRs and the smaller the classes, the greater the number of teachers that are needed The more teachers that are needed, the lower the salaries will be – particularly

if countries are operating within constrained budgets The higher the PTRs and the larger the classes, the higher the salaries can be, as fewer teachers can command higher salaries Those countries with larger classes thus tend to have higher teacher salaries compared with those who have smaller classes and therefore lower teacher salaries In this context,

it is important in the narrative that follows to highlight state and union strategies and approaches and the trade-offs that seem to have been arrived at in South Africa The link with supply and demand of teachers is that if the choice has been to go for higher salaries, classes have remained large and the training and recruitment of additional teachers have been sacrificed On the other hand, if the focus has been on smaller classes and lower salaries, then training new cohorts of teachers will have been a focus

In reality, these choices and trade-offs are rarely consciously made and both state and unions will seek to achieve all desirable objectives In practice, however, some choices and trade-offs prevail over others, as this study seeks to tease out

Looked at in this way, it is clear that supply and demand issues are closely linked:

tinkering with demand-led strategies will inevitably influence the available supply and the match between the two What this means is that there is a permanent and unstable dynamic between the supply and demand of teachers: the balance is continuously affected by the outcomes of state–union negotiated positions within the framework of overall budget envelopes, as well as the short- and long-term effects of policies, local labour market conditions, institutional practices and social attitudes towards teaching that may shift and change for various reasons (Cooper & Alvarado 2006)

The education planning literature links demand-led strategies to either centralised

or decentralised market-based systems for the deployment of teachers (Kelleher 2008) Centrally planned systems are organised from national and provincial levels of government and are justified on the grounds that they provide for the fair and rational distribution of teachers In the South African context, the argument would also be that the means are justified by the ends: equity According to Kelleher, the ‘greatest drawback’

of centralised systems is their inability to respond quickly to local-level needs, and their vulnerability to nepotism and corruption where they also include transfer systems (2008: 59) ‘Market systems’ do not deploy teachers through a central system, but allow teachers

to apply to schools on the basis of their choice This system commonly prevails in the private sector; both schools and teachers have greater autonomy in this process, and it is more likely that immediate needs will be met The drawback here is that inequalities can

be reinforced as teachers will be lured away from unattractive teaching locales Analysing four cases from the Commonwealth, Kelleher concludes that ‘as a long-term approach, transfers are problematic because they create destabilised systems’ (2008: 69) Kelleher argues for decentralised systems that ‘potentially include well-planned, targeted training and recruitment and teacher incentives that tackle the challenge of poor/untimely pay, housing and travel allowances’ (2008: 69)

Although this provides a useful heuristic model, whether the systems are centralised or decentralised is not a guarantee of their effectiveness or indicative of where power and decision-making actually lies Changing the administrative systems to make them more

or less centralised will not necessarily lead to improved results What is important in either a centralised or decentralised system is the nature of leadership, ‘precisely one of the scarcest resources in developing countries, and even in developed countries’ (Carnoy 2008: 21) ‘The bottom line’, argues Carnoy, ‘is that decentralisation of management can work well in countries where there is already sufficient capacity at the local level to allocate resources efficiently and to produce effective education’ (2008: 22) The corollary

is that where leadership and capacity are in short supply, neither centralisation nor decentralisation provides the magic bullet for effective or improved systems

The concepts elaborated in this chapter are used in the analysis that follows to show that between 1994 and 1999, government teacher policy was driven in part by information that proposed demand-led, centralised teacher redeployment rather than expanded supply-side solutions From 1999, supply-side panics were fuelled by evidence of declining enrolments, teacher migration and the HIV/AIDS pandemic Research and policy initiated

in this period drew attention to the need for supply-side interventions, and these were introduced in the third period, from 2005 onwards Underlying all three periods was a centralised, finance-driven approach to education reform that shaped negotiations over key supply and demand issues and the parameters of what could be done in practice

In the period when demand-side and redistributional strategies were dominant, the outcome of state–union negotiations can be seen in improved teacher salaries without an expanded teacher corps The PTR was set and a post-provisioning model agreed upon

Teacher education and training and recruitment of new cohorts of teachers were the price that was paid Once agreed-upon PTRs were in place, emphasis shifted to supply, with both state and unions playing a key role in promoting research highlighting the need for supply-side interventions and changes in the PTRs, all of which would have effects on salaries However, all this was at a time when the economy was buoyant, and growth stood at an average of 5 per cent As the economy shrank and officially entered a recession, the gains made in earlier years were poised to be challenged We now proceed

to a detailed investigation of each period

Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za

Dynamics of teacher supply and demand: Research, policy and practice, 1994–1999

After 1994, it would have been possible to engage in a major process of education and re-education of teachers Yet this did not happen Instead, processes linked to redistributional understandings of how to address the legacy of teacher shortages and quality bequeathed by apartheid prevailed This chapter will trace these processes, while succeeding chapters will examine the consequences and continuing impact of this way of thinking about the issues

The quantity, quality and location of teacher education under apartheid were shaped not

by an overall national plan, but ‘by the need to maintain racial and ethnic segregation’

(Sayed 2004: 247) This in its own way was a centralised national plan Teacher education institutions in South Africa developed in a haphazard way out of mission schools,

universities and a host of local and regional initiatives, but from the 1960s onwards were more forcefully planned and segregated along the lines of race and ethnicity Control was divided between universities and provinces; on the whole, students intending to become primary school teachers trained at racially segregated colleges of education, and would-be secondary school teachers trained at segregated universities

Colleges of education proliferated from the 1960s, when the apartheid state used them

to control and divert African aspirations and advancement from urban areas by locating higher education institutions in the ‘homelands’ or ‘bantustans’ Thus, it was hoped the graduates would staff ‘homeland’ bureaucracies and schools in these economically unviable areas High enrolments in education colleges during the apartheid period resulted partly because positions in the formal economy were limited and partly because they provided the possibility for some form of higher education (Crouch 2002; Sayed 2004) Limited supply relative to actual demand was also influenced by ‘the amount

of money the various departments of education were willing to spend on subsidies to universities and technikons and budgets for colleges’ (Parker 2002: 21)

From the perspective of policy-making processes dominated by higher education constituencies and cost considerations, the condition of colleges in the mid-1990s was not positive Although many colleges, especially those serving white, Indian and coloured students, developed relationships with universities, they were on the whole considered

to be junior partners in these arrangements The pecking order was clear As change became imminent, college rectors from these institutions formed their own organisation, the Committee of College Education Rectors of South Africa (CCERSA), to anticipate and respond to change Some colleges in rural areas were part of this process, others not

College staff members were mostly unionised – some belonging to the associations that came to form the National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa (NAPTOSA), but many also belonging to the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) (Dave Balt, interview, 28 April 2009; Jon Lewis, email, 30 April 2009; see also Govender 2004)

By the mid-1990s, some colleges were internally better equipped than others to respond to change While a few colleges in rural areas were ‘showpieces in the dust, with manicured lawns and fountains’, many were also ‘quite rotten, with grass higher than you could see

10

through, terrible facilities, chairs in the quadrangle just rotting away…underperforming and problematic in terms of turning out quality teachers’ (Ros Jaff, interview, 16 April 2009) Many colleges, especially in rural areas, were torn by conflict between the mainly Afrikaans-speaking administrators and mainly black staff and students Ros Jaff, who visited teacher education colleges as part of the National Teacher Education Audit (NTEA), recalls that many of them were ‘embattled’ institutions ‘under fire from young students’:

I will never forget the one college The administration block was like the American embassy: you went in through a cage The typically Afrikaans-speaking leadership was literally separated by walls, cages and partitions from the student group There was fear, victimisation, entitlement of students, a new type of selfhood, anger at the malaise, a desire for places, people hungry for opportunity Many colleges were under siege (Ros Jaff, interview, 16 April 2009)

Consequently the voice and role of colleges within policy-making processes related to teacher supply was weak

Information about the number of institutions providing training, the number of students in training, and the number of students qualifying when the college system was in existence

is poor, and reported statistics vary widely According to the NTEA, 48 672 students were training to become primary school teachers and 22 336 to become secondary school teachers at colleges of education in 1994 The majority of those training to become primary school teachers were enrolled in 104 state-funded colleges of education, 93 of them providing pre-service teacher education in contact mode and 14 also offering diploma-awarding in-service education and training programmes The large majority, 85 out of 93, were catering to black students, and fully two-thirds were in rural areas (66 out of the 93 colleges) ( Jaff et al 1995) If university and technikon-based teacher education is included, the numbers increase Parker (2002) reports higher figures: in 1994 there were 150 public institutions providing teacher education to approximately 200 000 students Of these,

80 000 (rather than the 71 008 that the NTEA found) were in colleges of education But there was no national system of information and the data were as fragmented as the governance of institutions Bantustan systems of information were notoriously weak

Responding to a parliamentary question on teacher education enrolments and graduates in

2006, the DoE indicated that, prior to 2001, 32 universities and 120 colleges of education

incorporated into existing universities and technikons As a result of the mergers in 2004, the

Despite the fact that the majority of African teachers were trained in rural colleges of education for rural schools, PTRs in these schools were higher than in urban areas The under-supply of teachers in rural areas had a great deal to do with racially based per capita expenditure on education at the time The challenge for the post-apartheid government would be to address these patterns of relative oversupply in urban schools and under-supply in rural schools Research recommended the restructuring of teacher education colleges rather than their expansion (Hofmeyr et al 1994) Unions were at the time absorbed in the policy processes directly affecting schools, such as the South African

2 Numbers of colleges vary and are inconsistent in part because of the incomplete information kept by bantustans during the apartheid period, and in part because new colleges were in the process of being built as they were being incorporated or closed as colleges of teacher education (Di Parker, personal communication, 05 March 2009).

3 National Assembly (19/06/2006), For written reply: Question 699 Internal Question Paper No 18-2006.

Schools Act (No 84 of 1996), and were only indirectly involved in teacher-supply issues

NAPTOSA, one of whose members had worked on the supply and demand estimates for the NTEA, had no reason to oppose its findings and recommendations for restructuring (Dave Balt, interview, 28 April 2009)

Policy and practice in the immediate post-apartheid years focused on short-term strategies

to improve the supply of teachers to rural and poor urban schools On the one hand, newly formed provinces quietly augmented the supply of teachers with the appointment

of unqualified teachers, and on the other, a national demand-led plan to redistribute teachers to areas of greatest need was initiated

Policy discourses showed concern with teacher shortages as represented in high PTRs As

a key index of unequal per capita spending in education, high PTRs in African schools were seen not only as the symbol of inequality but also as a key indicator of the poor quality of schooling Overcrowded classrooms were enmeshed in unfavourable PTRs

PTRs agreed upon in the ELRC, the newly created bargaining chamber of the state and the unions, subsequently became the principal mechanism for achieving equity both between and within provinces After the Education Labour Relations Act (No 146 of 1993) was passed, the ELRC played an important role in midwifing many of the policy proposals dealing with the supply and demand of teachers

These discourses were at the heart of the framing of solutions to inequality and quality

of schooling From the side of the state, the problem was seen not as too few or too many teachers, but as a poor distribution of teachers across the educational system

Equity could be achieved through redistributing teachers according to PTRs fixed at 1 : 40

in primary schools and 1 : 35 in secondary schools Quality was linked to redistribution

of teachers in policy documents produced by the National Education Coordinating Committee’s National Education Policy Investigation, the ANC and the new government

Redistribution would enable the removal of the backlog of teacherless classrooms, improve PTRs, reduce drop-out rates and address the root of the problem of the culture

of teaching and learning (see Chisholm et al 2003)

Constrained fiscal resources and militant teacher action combined to concentrate policy attention on economic solutions for questions of teacher supply and demand In 1993, the newly recognised SADTU undertook strike action in April and August over pay and retrenchments The majority of African schools were already turbulent spaces – indeed, they had been ‘sites of struggle’ for over a decade – in which the ‘restoration of the culture of teaching and learning’ was one of the first priorities of post-apartheid education departments

While teachers were striking for better pay, fiscal constraint in policy circles shaped an approach to teacher supply, utilisation and development that sought to delink qualifications from remuneration The argument developed by business and that gained acceptance was that the need to expand provision of teachers and upgrade un/underqualified teachers would force spending upwards and thus place unsustainable strains on the budget In addition, it was argued that the linkage of qualifications to pay had led to a ‘paper chase’ which was not reflected in improved classroom performance by either teachers or students

A combination of circumstances and policy discourses thus gave rise to a set of policy interventions in this period that would have a determinate effect on the supply of teachers in a later period All these interventions were cast within the language of addressing equity, quality and efficiency of the system

12

Government proposed two options that focused attention on improving salaries relative

to PTRs The first option was to compress salary scales to improve the position of poorly paid teachers at the bottom of the scale The second was to delink remuneration from academic and professional qualifications, and instead base payment on evidence of classroom competence and level of responsibility (Hofmeyr et al 1994) Proposals for compressing salary scales and improving the bottom tier eventually found their way into

‘broadbanding’ policy proposals that found favour with the unions These salary ‘gains’ to some extent obscured the losses – large classes that the post-provisioning model did not really address – and the implications for the supply of new cohorts of teachers

The most far-reaching analysis and changes emerged in response to the NTEA released by the DoE in 1995 The Audit itself conducted an analysis of supply and demand, assessed the state of colleges, and found that unlike other developing countries in their post-independence phase, South Africa would not experience a major expansion in enrolments necessitating extraordinary steps to ratchet up teacher numbers (Govender, Greenstein

& Kgobe 2003) The Audit showed that pre-service education for teachers (PRESET) was highly differentiated in terms of quality, while in-service education for teachers (INSET) was ineffective Teachers were shown to be undertaking INSET upgrading programmes mainly to improve their qualifications and pay and without real regard for the classroom The argument to delink remuneration from qualifications thus made sense The Audit called for greater coordination and control over registration of courses and numbers of students, and made the argument that quality rather than quantity should be at the heart

of the teacher education system It concluded that ‘system reconstruction is crucial’ and that ‘a national policy framework for teacher supply, utilisation and development which initiates this and coordinates, regulates and synergises the contributions of all actors is a necessary starting point’ (Govender, Greenstein & Kgobe 2003: 223)

The Audit was not yet cold when provinces began to announce plans to rationalise the teaching profession by offering redundancy severance packages for excess teachers, closing teacher education colleges, employing teachers from India to teach mathematics and science, and providing no new bursaries to students studying at colleges and universities (Govender, Greenstein & Kgobe 2003) Rationalisation agreements had been reached in September 1995 and May 1996 in the ELRC The agreements involved setting national PTRs of 1 : 40 in primary schools and 1 : 35 in secondary schools These were to serve as guidelines for determining teacher provisioning in schools School right-sizing committees were established to identify and reduce excess teachers by offering voluntary severance packages Provincial and national redeployment agencies were also established

to compile databases of excess teachers and to facilitate their transfer if they did not choose to take the voluntary severance package Redeployment and transfer of teachers considered to be ‘in excess’ was linked to a new salary grading system that provided an average salary increase of 15.7 per cent for teachers who were now to be on the same salary levels as the rest of the public service

From 1996, restructuring of teacher education saw the redeployment and rationalisation

of teachers in the profession itself PTRs provided the rationale for redeployment of teachers from ‘oversupplied’ to ‘under-supplied’ areas – from white to black areas and from urban to rural, peri-urban and informal settlement areas (see Chisholm et al 1999; Mokgalane et al 2003)

Right-sizing and the offering of voluntary severance packages was fraught with conflict and difficulties – from the overall cost to resistance by some teachers (Motala 2003) Many