INTRODUCTION
As government battles the scourge of COVID-19, and
results of mass testing are dripping in, education as one of the key systems
that drive sustainable development, emerges as an area that needs more work for
any post-COVID19 reconstruction to undergird long-term societal resilience. The
unprecedented early lockdown announced by President Ramaphosa, with its
attendant slowing down of ‘official’ infection rates, indicate a possibility of
a review of the education process for the teachers and occurrence for the
learners. Yet there is now much work more work to be done for basic education
institutions to resume normal schooling that should at the same time respond to
the social effects of the crisis.
HOW COVID-19 AFFECTED BASIC EDUCATION
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit basic education in an
unprecedented scale. It may result in the redefinition of teaching as we knew
it before the pandemic. It has disrupted the idea of teaching in respect of
methods, way of doing things, culture and tradition of established social
hierarchies in the education system, and biases of how the curriculum will be
linked to outcomes obtaining in society.
As the sector is facing the emergence of new and
unknown diversities, commerce and industry is significantly affected, and the
business world is shedding jobs of parents, the base stability creating
constituency in education, the biggest socializing institutions for future
generations will face its most consequential review. Basic education provides
the highest concentration point for the ‘manufacturing’ of societal values
outside what happens in individual households. Not only will schools be faced
with the vexing challenges of resuming effective learning and teaching, but
learners and teachers will feel the impact of an interrupted calendar year.
Teachers provide the largest conduit for a national
curriculum to achieve its development objects. The crafting of a curriculum
statement is supposed to be a synoptic capitulation of national aspirations
that must be deposited into future generations. Schools as units charged with
this task operate in a context that has a myriad of determinants, most of whom
are not in the control of those charged with school management. Some of the
determinants of educations include, but not limited to; society’s income and
social status; social support networks; societal education and literacy;
employment/working conditions; social environments; physical environments;
learner individual characteristics and coping skills; and early childhood
development
The extent to which other agencies of the state
will be fast in resuming their normal service delivery systems due to the
COVID-19 interruptions, will be the single most macro-determinant of how
recovery of the education sector will unfold. The demands of social distancing
as the ramping up of lockdown opening will put strain on learning and teaching
resources that are otherwise challenged. The onboarding of stringent public
health management interventions in schools will create an additional strain on
the psychosocial challenges that teachers had been dealing with pre-COVID19.
The poverty safety nets of the education system such as feeding schemes and the
social grant system that will be challenged by structural adjustment demands of
lending institutions such as the IMF will balloon the social environment
related determinants of health.
HOW COVID-19 AFFECTED BASIC EDUCATION
The global schooling system has been hard at work
to find alternative solutions to go through COVID-19 thus triggering a
transition to post-COVID-19 new ways of schooling. The most common of these
solutions was the acceleration of online teaching and deployment of curricular
though webinar platforms. Teachers, especially in the private schooling spaces,
have been teaching during lockdowns; of course advantaged by the availability
of an otherwise expensive and continuously buffering data system.
Some school have even ventured to reduce the
non-fundamentals of the curriculum demands of the schooling system. They have
accelerated their on-tablet teaching platforms. Private schools are even
collaborating with teachers that are best in specific modules of the subject
area, thus creating a widened pool of teacher resources. To meet the teaching
needs of the country, the schooling system has already started rationalising on
the main deployer of content through mega-teaching systems with a wider reach,
and local teachers being reduced to on-site consultants.
As the COVID-19 crises proceeds, the competition
for teachers, teaching platforms and learners grew to a level where the local
teacher may be undermined by on line content deployment that may be sponsored
through marketing spend. The bargaining power of the physical school and
teacher has now shifted from the local school to the virtual teaching
platforms. Collaboratories with international examination centres have also
begun to flood the local teaching market thus creating possibilities of review
of the teacher resourcing thesis of many countries.
HOW DOES SADTU MANAGE THIS DISRUPTION AND RESTORE
ITS LEADERSHIP
Traditionally, the union movement would view these
as a threat to teaching posts and therefore jobs. The metrics that would define
the discourse on how to respond will be etched on teacher-learner ratios.
However, as the current crisis has displayed, pandemics like COVID-19, with an
impact that shoves technology into the fabric of society without any
negotiation, change the balance of forces in favour of the consumer of the
education service than the supplier. As the entire value chain of the education
offering is turned upside down, so will the bargaining power of labour be
concomitantly affected.
Yes, it is true that the mass transition of
learners to new teaching platforms will not be overnight, and in many cases may
be choked by socio-economic issues related with the basics of online access
resources such as data and energy. The reality is that SADTU needs to negotiate
a path of relevance in the new context. The predictability of less disruptions
related to traditional labour relations dispute resolutions mechanisms such as
strikes, will migrate most learners to new learning platforms as content
security havens, and the school will be relegated to a socialization theatre.
The perceived quality, cost, delivery capacity, and ability to provide
uninterrupted continuity of learning, as well as long-term resilience of the
new ways of teaching will require ‘cyber-labour relations regimes’,
‘cyber-space bargaining mechanisms’, and ‘cyber-regulatory mechanisms or
governance’.
The pandemic should thus be a warning to SADTU that
there is a need to accelerate the upskilling of its members to be cyber-world
relevant with a local school flair. The reality of both surveillance capitalism
and government as a human future and the new frontier of power must recalibrate
our generic behaviour on membership data and surveillance thereof. As the
personalization of the teacher as an individual already in surveillance
concretizes, it will require of SADTU to calibrate a strategic path that
catapults it into a future where the collective bargaining rights of its
members follows them into the cyberspace.
The trail of consequences to humanity that will be
more visible post-COVID-19, will procure from SADTU a review of its 2030 vision
as a strategic path finder. Because it is known that in a modern capitalist
society, any technology that is deployed on humanity, is an expression of the
economic objectives that direct that technology, SADTU should start a process
of shaping those objectives or being in the interior of those that shape them.
Our member education programs might require a complete overhaul, where members are retooled into a teacher
discipline community that focuses on making the nation to know how to learn, unlearn
and relearn. This would mean SADTU members themselves must learn, unlearn and
relearn to survive the next phase of human development acceleration, where the
convergence of information technology, biotechnology and engineering will
define the relevance of a teacher. It is the resilience, responsiveness and
reconfigurability of our membership base that will define South Africa in or
out of a post-COVID-19 World Order.
Even though the teacher’s position of leadership in the new ways of
teaching is assured, SADTU should not be complacent. This may be signalling a
shift of power to the not-in-physical school premises stakeholders, but that
might also be a manifestation of the deeper challenge of an ongoing crisis of
parental leadership in education. It is
essential that SADTU re-establish competent leadership on this post-pandemic
reconstruction reality at all levels of its organisation. Post-COVID19
reconstruction will clearly need a membership-wide system of teacher
development surveillance, curriculum-relevance testing of members, and a broader
education response to assure the nation of our readiness to onboard our members
into the new trajectory. So far, the Department of Basic Education’s
announcements on the way forward are generating
limited gains, but SADTU as a component of the governing alliance must
remain vigilant lest DBE further expands its role in educational governance and
institutional design at a time when SADTU is not displaying thought leadership
and thus technically stepping back.
Previous education transformation crises dating
back to the introduction of OBE and its later adjuncts offer important lessons
for restoring SADTU’s leadership in the education sector. Indeed, many
permanent forms of cooperation and institutional development have grown out of
moments of great tension and duress between SADTU and education authorities as
employer, and the governing party as an alliance partner through COSATU. If
SADTU is in a strategic government, then its effective leadership should be at
the service of participating in the building of a promise of a future for its
members out of the COVID-19 induced innovations rather than trying to use it to
isolate and alienate government and the inevitable catalyst of the change. For
decades, SADTU has maintained bargaining power, credibility, and influence over
the sector not only by virtue of its size and organizing capabilities but also
by attracting other progressive stakeholders in education to its vision for the
right of South African to learn in a context that has assured its teachers employee
rights.
A SADTU that is truculent and self-justifying about
its weaknesses right now is not a SADTU that will receive admiration among
allies. A SADTU; that learns from the experiences of global counterparts, the
private education domain, and other stakeholders education management; that
embraces practical and meaningful cooperation with government and the education
establishment; and that engages with international bodies and best practice, to
help in the post-COVID19 reconstruction, is a SADTU that can use the pandemic-induced
innovation trajectories as an opportunity to remind the South Africa of what
co-operative union-government leadership is.
By FM
Lucky Mathebula
#ThincFoundation@PostCOVID-19Solutionslucky@justthinc.co.za
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