The School Corridor Tatler

  The Social Worker component at our education district launched our Child Protection and Youth Month campaign. The sad reality is that our children are extremely vulnerable and they are subjected to all forms of abuse, neglect and sexual abuse. We were reminded that our children are entrusted to us; that it is our legal and moral responsibility to protect our children against all forms of abuse. Glen van Harte delivering his keynote address. Our district director, Glen van Harte, said, "We need to recommit and reenergize ourselves to look after our children. We have to watch our language. Language has the ability to leave scars that are often far more damaging than physical scars. We have to mediate the language we use with one another and with children. We need to be mindful of the relationships we have with one another and with our teachers. It is also important to look after ourselves so that we can look after our children." Lucinda Pelston, our Sen...

As I have explained, our education district, Metro South Education District (MSED) has started our MSED Talks. Our director, Glen van Harte, has a nickname for the talks, MSED FLs. Before your minds race to wonderfully, crazy never lands, FL stands for Friday Lectures. #Dalin Oliver and Glen van Harte, Director of MSED Today we had #Dalin Oliver, a vibrant comedian, ex-teacher and a sports presenter on Goodhope FM radio station. Crowd enjoying Dalin Oliver The attendance was fantastic too. Many of our schools joined us and we had a large group of Metro Central district colleagues in the house as well. Vanessa Berry, Head of Lantana Primary School and Andre Pretorius, Head of Heathfield Primary School enjoying the pre-talk snacks. Dalin''s talk was entitled, I came. I taught. I left, a title drawn from his popular comedy show. Dilan's rapport with the large crowd was brilliant. Despite his youth, he knows how to engage a rather mature audienc...

Asnath Mahapa, first black woman in South Africa to become a pilot. She also runs her own aviation academy in Gauteng. Cape Winelands Education District hosted a Leadership Conference for Deputy Principals on Saturday.  I chose to focus on the role female leaders can play to eradicate the gender prejudice with its manifestations of gross violence, injustice and abuse against women. Here is a snapshot of my talk that was entitled: Women in Leadership: It is time to bring gender balance in the top leadership structures in organizations. My argument was premised on the following three key points: 1.    We need women with positional power and influence in organizations to   advance the human rights of women.   Globally, women are progressively being subjected to extreme forms of violence and abuse in all areas of their lives. In this past week, we had two young women violently raped and brutally murdered. The one victim, Fransziska Blochliger, ...

 Spine Road High School in Mitchell's Plain is a standard bearer  in the Mitchell's Plain community. The report card of this remarkable school belies the fact that it is situated in an impoverished area where there are all the social ills of gangsterism, unemployment and broken homes. Let's have a peek at the school's learner performance, the standard by which schools are measured. Mr Najaar posing with three of his Grade 12s. Academic profile of Spine Road High School In the 2014 National Senior Certificate examination, Spine Road High School made history: they were the first school to achieve a 100% pass rate in the history of Mitchell's Plain. In the 2015 NSC Final examination 280 matriculants sat for the examination. The school achieved a 99,3% pass rate and an 80% Bachelors pass rate. In the Systemic Test 2015, the grade 9's achieved an 84% pass rate in Mathematics and 96% in English. The national pass rate for Grade 9 Maths is about 22%. T...

A new school year marks joy or agony for schools Another school year has begun. Again, school heads and their leadership teams confront the question: how can they lead and manage their schools so that they have inspired, committed staff that will deliver superior classroom teaching. Schools that are delivering excellent learner results,  will obviously look at ways to raise their game even more so.  However, there will be poor performing schools that may repeat history if they do not take stock of their own reality.  Poor learner performance means there are serious  systems issues at the school. Leave the children out of the equation to get to the deep systemic issues at school. Many  school heads and their SMTs that are quietly questioning why their school performance is poor when compared with schools with similar contexts as theirs, are already starting on the wrong foot.  Everybody at the school knows deep down what the real problems are,...

Both my blogs have been entered into the SA Blog Awards 2015.  If you like the content of the blogs, then please vote for my blogs. Perhaps a brief profile of each blog will help  refresh your memory of the focus of my blogs. In my lifestyle blog, www.3 dreflectionsoflife.com , I generally write about all my experiences and encounters from breakaways, friendships,  family life, to personal nuggets of my own life. Sometimes I ramble on about little things and at other times I am just giving you peek into the real me.  In my educational blog, www.schoolcorridor.com , I focus on school matters. I try to share stories of schools, give advice on management and leadership, human resource management and other school matters. I hope that The School Corridor Tatler will become a useful resource for school managers and their SMT teams. I wish I had more time to write posts but perhaps in the future, I will be able to generate far more posts than I do now....

I was privileged to attend the prize giving ceremonies at Delta Primary School and Floreat Primary School during the second last week of this school year. Delta Primary School's Prize giving ceremony Delta Primary School's newly-launched choir sang at the Prizegiving ceremony. This was the inaugural prize giving ceremony at Delta, one of the innovations that their new principal, Hilton Palanyandi, introduced. Another first for the school is their school choir. As a fledgling choir, the number of members is impressive. "When the choir started, there were only thirteen  learners. Now the choir mistress has difficulty keeping the choir a decent size because of the growing interest," said Hilton Palanyandi. The school's cadet drill squad also showed off their drilling skills at the ceremony. The master of ceremonies thanked the group and then proceeded with the programme. He looked surprised that the drill squad was not moving off the...

For the past three years, we have been actively promoting independent reading at our schools.  In 2013, Colleen Diedericks, then the Foundation Phase Subject Adviser, and I implemented a Literacy Improvement Strategy in our circuit. The Literacy Strategy was designed to meet three objectives. THREE OBJECTIVES OF THE LITERACY STRATEGY Firstly, we wanted schools to explore and interact with research that sought to explain how schools themselves entrench low literacy levels because of organizational and classroom teaching problems. Secondly, we aimed to help schools expand their peer networks so that they could have access to more resources and support. Thirdly, we believed that a corporate book reading campaign would help to galvanize school's literacy improvement programmes and energise them to lift the reading levels at their school. That is how the Reading 40 Books Per Learner Campaign came into being. Let me give you an overview of the build up to launching the Re...

Lavender Hill is a community that is under siege, but Lavender Hill will never be a trending favourite with mainstream media. Yesterday, children as young as eight years old, who were on their way to school, saw once again, how one gangster was killed by another rival gang member. The shooting took place at about 8 0'clock on an open field opposite Hillwood Primary School. School children use the very same open field as a thoroughfare to their schools. You will see children in their various school uniforms from Zerilda Park Primary, Hillwood Primary, Levana Primary, Prince George Primary and Lavender Hill High School, walking to their only real hope to help them escape the poverty and other evils of their neighbourhood. When the shooting happened, the children were there on the field, caught in this crossfire. Young children watched the shot man stagger across the field and then saw him jerk before finally dying.  These same children are writing their final examinations....

Grade 12's at Ocean View High School Yesterday the Grade 12's started their NSC 2015 examination in full swing. I monitored the English examination at Ocean View High School where 140 students were ready to write their first paper of the Grade 12 final examination.  The untold stories of these resilient youth at Ocean View High school and all other schools across the country, can fill volumes. Fourteen of these Grade 12's  at Ocean View High School were relocated to homes in Ocean View over the weekend. These learners live in Masiphumelele, an informal settlement that has been raging with unrests for the past few weeks. On Sunday, the principal and teachers of Ocean View High offered to accommodate their learners from Masi. These vulnerable learners need a place of safety and a space where they can study. The school heads of Bridgetown High School and St. Andrews High School. Masiphumelele High School is seriously under threat because of the violence and...

I wrote in a previous post  that a school head with a dysfunctional senior management team, makes it difficult for a school to succeed. What then, do we mean when we say school leadership is dysfunctional and how can the school leadership fix their poor performance?  Let's unpack Dysfunctionality. I like the definition of the word, dysfunctional, as described on the Urban dictionary website: to be very bad at something .  This definition eliminates the temptation to be pretentious about what is going wrong at the school. Being "bad" at something means you lack the ability and the skill to do what you are supposed to do. The complexities of dysfunctionality at schools It is often difficult for outsiders to know to what extent SMTs are dysfunctional. The outward signs at school may mask the degree to which SMT members are not helping to manage and lead the school effectively. These school leaders may themselves compromise teaching, monitoring of the curriculu...

The online School Improvement Plan (SIP) Before the end of the third term, the Western Cape Schools should have completed their online  DRAFT School improvement plan (SIP) for 2016. The online SIP includes a school-self evaluation component and an Action plan. The online SIP  was introduced about three years ago as a systems-planning tool for schools, education districts and the provincial education department. Schools are required to complete certain components of their SIP 2016, one of which is the ACTION plan by the end of the third term. The online SIP will then be signed off and accepted in January 2016, after input from the IMG Manager. Schools are alienated from their own SIPS Most schools usually rush to complete their online Draft SIP as a last minute exercise.  In their haste to comply, many schools do very little or no consulting with their other stakeholders like their teachers, support staff and parents. This oversight is especially evident ...

Schools that do not protect teaching time have the most problems. This is a fact.  There are many contextual issues that play a role, but class teaching time is the teacher's domain.  Before we look at the external issues, we need to ensure that the classroom environment is structured in favour of good, solid teaching and learning. There are certain fundamentals that must be in place when we talk about protecting teaching time.  Firstly, teachers must be in their classes on time.  If teachers are habitually late or absent from their classes, children will take over the space. This is not rocket science. There will be a breakdown in discipline because the children have been allowed to  run wild.  If this situation happens, then the teacher must take responsibility for the chaos and the waste of teaching and learning time. Secondly, there must be a deliberate intention to devote the lesson time to  disciplined teaching and learning...

Walk in the shoes of school principals and their staff. I often wish folk could have the opportunity to see what schools are doing against great odds. Perhaps then, we will have greater community applause for what principals and their staffs are doing to make school an excellent learning space. People need to walk in the shoes of principals and staffs before they crack down on them on a whim. Not everybody is blessed to visit schools as I do. But social media like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are also used to share good news. There are school newsletters and community newspapers that can help school celebrations reach the masses. There are text facilities like mass SMS texting. I don't get all my school news from visits only. I visit school Facebook pages, their websites and many schools share their highlights with me. I thrive on good news! Here are a few amazing transformational highlights that took place in the past week or so at just a few schools in our circuit...