How teacher training can improve quality of education

I salute the department of basic education for recent hosting of the 21st National Teaching Awards at the Emperors Palace Hotel to celebrate and honour teachers that distinguished themselves in teaching and education. Learners too were recognised with National Learner Award for exemplary display of resilience and influence on peers. We congratulate schools and the awardees for this noble achievement during daunting Covid-19 challenges.

In her address, minister Angie Motshekga underscored the importance of staffing schools with highly qualified teachers. Teachers steeped in the knowledge and ability to disseminate curriculum achieve better learner performance and achievements.

Research also confirms that the quality of education can never be better than the quality of teachers. She alluded to a five pointer strategies research considers as plausible interventions to overhaul education and teacher efficacy and effectiveness. These include the sector's ability to: attract, recruit and retain high quality candidates into teacher training; train with intense school-based practice; train with high level subject specialisation and academic rigour; provide teachers with personalised continuing professional development (CPD) through mentoring and coaching; and involve teachers in research and education policymaking.

It would have been a befitting anecdote demonstrating the department's attempts to institutionalise the five pointer strategies as its chosen modus operandi to scale up teacher classroom efficacy and professionalism to date. While acknowledging research trends and initiatives on teacher education gives confidence, it is however, one thing to appreciate research optimism and the other embedding such strategies within the system's business processes and procedures. Had we optimised adoption and stricter implementation of similar strategies, more success would have been achieved to date.

It would require more than just research optimism to overhaul teacher training and development initiatives. Literature recommends an amalgamation of the following approaches:

Revamping learning ecologies to embolden the value of schooling environments and capabilities. Some school environments are hostile and volatile for quality education. Rehabilitating schools from violence can engender tolerance and co-existence among schooling communities. SA schools have serious infrastructure development backlogs. Failure to fulfill this national obligation not only undermines learners rights to quality education, but also sets them back on skills set development. Research indicates that state-of-the-art school infrastructure inspires learners to appreciate schooling and breach knowledge boundaries.
Re-imagining recruitment, training and retention of quality teachers. Teacher qualifications and professional quality remains a challenge. The conditions of service, despite incremental occupational changes have not made teaching a career of choice. Robust teacher training and development should underpin such initiatives. Failure to address this aspect has negative implications for 2022 schooling efficacy.
Mastering the art of mentoring and coaching brings invaluable success to entities that practice this approach. SA schooling environment is fraud with challenges that deminish initiatives for mentoring and coaching. School leadership dissonance has contributed to current challenges.
Schools too lack capacity and expertise to launch effective mentoring and coaching initiatives. The sector needs to explore and leverage requisite skills set residing within the sector in the form of retired educational professionals and mentors to enable schools to successfully implement mentoring and coaching systems.
Re-imagining teacher training and development programmes to bolster sector's skills set and expertise. Regrettably, robust teacher training and development initiatives are hampered by systemic sector budget cuts. A more sustainable investment in the professional training and development of teachers can open avenues for more subject specialised approach. A future and rigorous reconfiguration of curriculum and prioritisation of subject mix will determine the calibre of training and development and requisite economic and entrepreneurial skills set schools must provide. SA still grapples with skills set in maths, science and innovation.
Rethinking schools as communal assets to prolong longevity. SA has unprecedented destruction of school infrastructure with immeasurable national loss in terms of fiscus and human resources. When members of the public destroy schools, learners' rights to quality education get compromised and many dropout of schools.
Re-inventing dysfunctional schools. Celebrating teachers' selflessness and commitment to quality education can never be complete without addressing the impact of dysfunctional schools within the sector. It is plausible that those who won teacher and learner awards were never from dysfunctional schools. We need to mainstream these institutions on our transformation strategies.

When Motshekga imploded teachers to be winners, it was a directive to all employed by the sector, irrespective of whether they were nominated for the awards or not. Winning is a process underpinned efficient intersections of systems and personnel entrusted to manage these operations. Efficacious and effective leadership is the pillar to successful organisations. Recruitment of qualified and highly skilled teams with clarity of purpose and concomitant implementation strategies embolden the winning mentality.

• Monyooe is a Sowetan reader