School Ethos as Influenced by School Categorisation

Abstract

Several attempts have been made to understand the nature and quality of school education over the two past decades in response to the continuing poor performance of learners in public schools within South Africa. These attempts include a curriculum focus, school leadership and management focus, policy focus, teacher development focus, infrastructure focus and resource focus. Despite interventions in these areas, little improvement has been noted in the learner performance. In this study the researcher brings another perspective to the understanding of school or learner performance, that of the influence of school ethos to school categorisations. School categorisation within our education system seems to be quite ingrained with categorisation in terms of, amongst others funding (quintile rankings); user fees (fee-paying and no-fee paying); geography (rural, urban, township); poverty (feeding scheme); performance (national strategy for learner attainment and non- national strategy for learner attainment). Given this synopsis the question is asked: How does school categorisation influence school ethos and what are the implications of this on leadership, teaching and learning in public schools? This qualitative study, in a form of case study approach was conceptualised through interpretivism lens to explore the perspectives, experiences and practices of school principals and teachers in five schools regarding the ethos and their influence in the school categorisation and the implications on leadership, teaching and learning practices from the selected schools.  The methods of generating data which were employed in the study included: semi-structured interviews, observations and document review. Ethical processes were followed.

Keywords: school categorisation, school ethos, school leadership, learner performance