In SA at the time...
Focus on policy implementation
The educational context was characterised by the growing coherence of the national education policy framework represented by documents like the South African Schools Act, the National Qualifications Framework and Curriculum 2005.
Mathematics and science education continued to cause serious concern as teachers had poor content knowledge and inadequate pedagogical skills. English had emerged as the overwhelming choice as medium of instruction in schools after Grade 3 and at tertiary level. This was despite the fact that learners were struggling to learn through the medium of English, particularly when their teachers also had an inadequate command of the language. Difficulties with the use of English would inevitably impact on learners' conceptual ability to deal with mathematics and science.
The Department of Education undertook a major drive to develop management capacity at school and district level. It set up training programmes for whole school development.
Curriculum 2005 (introduced in 1997) underwent a review in 2001, resulting in the Revised National Curriculum Statement that was published in June 2002.
Provincial Educational Trusts were established to co-ordinate the contribution of donor agencies seeking to work in the field of schooling.
HIV and AIDS was increasingly being recognised as having a huge impact on teachers and learners.
Education was still marked by large backlogs and inequitable distribution of resources, materials and skills, both managerial and educational, in the majority of South African schools.
The educational context was characterised by the growing coherence of the national education policy framework represented by documents like the South African Schools Act, the National Qualifications Framework and Curriculum 2005.
Mathematics and science education continued to cause serious concern as teachers had poor content knowledge and inadequate pedagogical skills. English had emerged as the overwhelming choice as medium of instruction in schools after Grade 3 and at tertiary level. This was despite the fact that learners were struggling to learn through the medium of English, particularly when their teachers also had an inadequate command of the language. Difficulties with the use of English would inevitably impact on learners' conceptual ability to deal with mathematics and science.
The Department of Education undertook a major drive to develop management capacity at school and district level. It set up training programmes for whole school development.
Curriculum 2005 (introduced in 1997) underwent a review in 2001, resulting in the Revised National Curriculum Statement that was published in June 2002.
Provincial Educational Trusts were established to co-ordinate the contribution of donor agencies seeking to work in the field of schooling.
HIV and AIDS was increasingly being recognised as having a huge impact on teachers and learners.
Education was still marked by large backlogs and inequitable distribution of resources, materials and skills, both managerial and educational, in the majority of South African schools.
Expansion and alignment with national priorities
During this five-year period, the Zenex Foundation operated in an educational policy environment that was increasing in stability. It therefore expanded the number of projects that it was committed to. It also strengthened its alignment with government priorities and policies and adopted a more rigorous approach to project evaluation and the design of grant-making (which included substantially increasing expenditure in relation to projects' scale and provincial reach).
The number of projects the Foundation supported continued to expand very rapidly during this phase, and the strategic choices informing project selection are presented below.
The Zenex Foundation continued to fund mathematics and science education, with a growing commitment to funding English language programmes. This stemmed from the emergence of English as the preferred language of instruction among parents and learners – a factor that would be key to the teaching and learning of all of the other learning areas. The Zenex Foundation's other funding foci included support for materials development and education resource centres that served a number of schools.
The Zenex Foundation also took a vigilant stance in funding skills training programmes by insisting that these be tied to employability. It was a requirement that projects receiving funding had to provide follow-up placement records.
The Zenex Foundation decided to prioritise support for developing IT-based school management systems as a solution to effective and efficient school management.
The Zenex Foundation's support for infrastructure projects continued to diminish and it started reducing its emphasis on whole school development. It chose instead to focus on human resource development in schools. This prompted the Foundation to direct grants to projects that aimed to improve the performance of teachers with a view to making an impact on outcomes at a classroom level.
During its expansion phase, the Zenex Foundation remained responsive to the priorities and policies of the state, especially in relation to the review of Curriculum 2005, the establishment of the Provincial Educational Trusts, and the HIV and AIDS pandemic.
- The Department of Education's review of Curriculum 2005 in 2002 meant that the Zenex Foundation became cautious about accepting proposals from service providers before ensuring that the service providers were aware of the developing changes and were ready to align their programmes accordingly.
- The Zenex Foundation actively participated in the newly established Provincial Education Trusts. These trusts provided the Zenex Foundation with the opportunity to partner with the Department of Education to implement its infrastructure programme. The trusts also, importantly, continued to provide opportunities to work in tandem with other funding agencies and ensure that the Zenex Foundation's support was complementary. Over the years, the Zenex Foundation has withdrawn from the various trusts as its strategy has become less focused on infrastructure.
- Owing to the growing impact of the HIV and AIDS pandemic in schools, the Zenex Foundation commissioned a report on the issue and also became active in a number of forums. From this informed position the Zenex Foundation decided to make it a condition of grant approvals that HIV and AIDS awareness and education be integrated into project proposals. During this period, the Zenex Foundation adopted a rigorous approach to project evaluation and grant-making, which included larger grants for longer-term projects on a larger scale.
-
tertiary institutions (academic support, staff development and outreach
programmes).
Focused approach to expansion
In terms of its grant-making strategy, the Zenex Foundation decided to focus on impact and provide much longer-term support to fewer but larger projects. The scale of the Zenex Foundation’s activities had grown significantly from 44 projects in 1997 to 124 in 1999 (the projects were spread across all provinces, with its priority provinces being Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape). Of the 124 projects, 15 were complete and many of these were school building projects. This meant that by the end of 2000 the Zenex Foundation had more resources to support larger projects of R250 000 and more. This led to a new, proactive approach to its grant-making. Along with the traditional route of considering unsolicited and solicited proposals, the Zenex Foundation began to use its criteria to encourage organisations to submit proposals.
The proactive approach proved to carry a higher risk, since some projects did not have the capacity to manage large grants over a longer period of time. The Zenex Foundation overcame this problem by providing capacity-building support to those projects that needed it, until the projects’ organisations had reached the level where they could make effective use of the larger grants.
By 2001 the Zenex Foundation was supporting some projects with grants as large as R2 million or more. Many of these projects also operated in more than one province simultaneously.
The projects that showed the spreading scope and scale of the Foundation’s activities were:
- the mathematics development programme combined with materials development in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Eastern Cape: R9.5 million (2001 to 2003).
- the science programme combined with the delivery of micro-science kits in the Eastern Cape: R7.7 million (1999 to 2001).
- the whole school development and classroom-based teacher programme in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape: R2.8 million (2000 to 2003).
- the mathematics and science programme in Gauteng: R2.7 million (2001 to 2003).
- the technology education programme in KwaZulu-Natal: R2.4 million (1999 to 2001).
This gave the Foundation a deeper understanding of the ‘make and break’ factors which define project efficacy. The accumulated knowledge came from approximately 40 external evaluations.
By the end of 2002 the Foundation had successfully passed through the expansion phase of organisational growth.
Copyright © 2007 Zenex Foundation. All rights reserved.