When our pupils return to school...

The third week of the Public Servants strike has struck - our children - the cannon fodder in a "big-people's" battle.

Little hopeful eyes peered around the door, while the teachers sat engaged in a staff meeting this morning; discussing whether we could, or should try, to guarantee the safety of other mothers' children.

"Can we come to school, Ma'am?" These little brave-hearts were dressed in the full school uniform of our school which they are longing to attend. Their teachers drew close to them and tried to answer their questions. Their teachers tried to find out what they would do today and if there was someone at home to care for them.

Once again, the education system and the government, which promised "equal learning opportunities for all" has failed our children. "Sorry, no school today."

Today, again, we must postpone the inevitable question : When our children return to school how are we going to make up for the time they have missed?

Apart from tuition time missed, we will also have to ask ourselves some very uncomfortable questions about our conduct over this strike period. How are we going to regain the respect of these learners who look to us for guidance; who look to us as role models; who look to us as caregivers during the eight hour school day?

In times of civil upheaval, teachers need to be in their classrooms offering reassurance to the children of the land. That we are prevented from doing so, tells us something about how we, as South Africans, view and treat our children.

And so this morning I re-read the McKinsey & Company report which is entitled `How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top." Not surprisingly, the report refers to the fact that it is not about the money we invest in an education system that determines the success of that system.

Inspired by McKinsey's report, I visited nationmaster.com/stats to gather a few statistics of my own. I compared the percentage of total government expenditure on education in the top ten educational systems (as quoted in the Preface of the McKinsey Report) to that of education expenditure in South Africa. Other than Hong Kong, South Africa's government spends more of the total government budget on education, than the other nine top school systems in the world (as bench-marked by "The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)" and quoted in the McKinsey report.)

So, while our teachers are on strike, we must remember that education never was and never will be just about money. As we strive towards the "professionalisation" of the education system in South Africa; maybe we need to question whether we are not, in fact, wasting money on education when the quality of a system rests on the quality of its teachers.

Maybe we need to ask particularly home-grown questions and face some good old home-truths at this time. How is that some teachers , in previously and currently disadvantaged schools still manage to assist their learners to excel academically ?

Maybe, learner performance is not about resources, class sizes, access to technology, or even basic services ? Maybe it has something to do with our teachers' attitude towards schooling, children, education, and teaching ?

As professional teachers, it is high time we took responsibility for our learners' results.So when our children return to school, we need to answer their questions honestly. We need to be gentle and set up programs that will not "punish" our learners for time lost.

When our children return to school we must try to pick up where we left off. We must revise the work we were busy with and slowly add new skills and layers of knowledge. We need to timetable carefully and keep our assessments to a level that is within the capabilities of the learners.

Before the strike struck, we all should have covered enough work and completed enough assessment tasks, to ensure that the learners' academic reports this term are a true reflection of their abilities.

While we have been `learner-less' teachers over the last two weeks we have all had time to create notes and workbooks and graded catch-up programs. If children come back to school to meet teachers who have not prepared properly for the weeks which remain of the academic year; can we expect them to view us as professionals ?