Opening pandora's box? Desegregation and Transformation in Six Elite Public Schools in the Western Cape Province of South Africa

Gordon, Timothy John

Opening pandora's box? Desegregation and Transformation in Six Elite Public Schools in the Western Cape Province of South Africa

Thesis / Dissertation

2022

Publisher

University of Cape town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

In 1991, four years before race-based enrolments were outlawed in South Africa, 204 white public schools opened their enrolments to learners from 'other' population groups. Their desegregatory actions differed from international desegregatory precedent, however, and the schools appeared to act against the traditions of their own racial biographies (Jansen and Kriger, 2020). The questions arising from their atypical trajectories of transformation, together with a paucity of prior research on the topic, provided the impetus for the research. The study considers the desegregationist and transformational trajectories followed by six elite white public schools in Cape Town's southern suburbs - the “most untransformable area in southern Africa” (Jansen and Kriger, 2020, 2) - during the period 1990 to 2019. It identifies contextual factors which influenced change in the sample schools, and examines the impact of desegregation on their functioning and ethos over three decades. The main research question considers how and why public schools in similar communities, which followed identical laid-down desegregatory procedures in 1990, emerged with such contrasting demographic patterns and school ethos. The study considers racial and class demographics at learner, staffing, management and governance levels, transformation beyond demography, the post-desegregation marketisation of schools and the commodification of learning and learners. Initially the sample schools manifested pronounced similarities of ethos rooted in a 19th-century Arnoldian inheritance typified in the approaches of Britain's public and grammar schools of that time. During the course of the study period, however, markedly different patterns emerged. The most important findings to materialise are the following: By the end of the study period markedly different levels of learner desegregation - from 29% to 99% learners of colour - were manifest across the sample schools; Despite notable learner desegregation in four schools, the desegregation of the governance, management and educator components in all the sample schools was limited; Three distinct 'eras' surfaced around the schools' desegregatory and transformational trajectories: - an immediate post-1990 period characterised by a preponderant intent to break the legal prohibition on the enrolment of learners of colour, manifesting in the assimilation of the new intake, the preservation of ethos and the perpetuation of traditional approaches; - a second era, encompassing the period 1997 to 2015, characterised by consolidation and conservation; and accompanied by the modulation of race as the critical segregationist criterion through the increasing stratification of schools by class; - a third era, provoked by the pressures of #Fallism and characterised by changing mindsets and approaches to school attributes as divergent as ritual, learner leadership and the provision of bursaries.  The two latter eras saw the commodification of education instilling a change in the provision of schooling as a prescribed public entitlement for residents within reasonable proximity to a school, to a commodity for private consumption aimed at those able to 'purchase' it through a contribution to the school's financial, social or performatory capital.  Whereas historico-political and racial discrimination has not been eradicated from school choice and learner selection processes, the study postulates that levels of desegregation and transformation are also influenced by features of the urban landscape like transport nodes and conduits; catchment area and feeder school demographies; racial configurations in contiguous suburbs; and the social drawing power or 'aura' (Tatar, 1995) of the schools.  Indeed, geographical location emerged as a considerable factor in desegregatory developments in schools. Factors such as physical locality and proximity to public transport routes, and urban geographic developments such as commercial encroachment into the residential spaces in close proximity to schools surfaced as among the strongest determinants of the ways transformation unfolded in South Africa's desegregating suburban schools. The schools' individual catchment areas, aligned feeder schools and unique social drawing powers were also influential, manifesting in both their widely differing demographic patterns and an own unique ethos in each school. Much of the 'sameness' had dissipated. In arriving at its conclusions, the study focussed on the decisions, responses and reactions of leadership, management and officialdom rather than canvassing the opinions of learners and parents. The latter have no executive or decision-making powers in their individual capacities, and their collective opinions were canvassed by means of interviews with representatives of the schools' governing bodies, wherein both groups have representation

Keywords

Education

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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