Back in the 1970s I ran a Scout troop for a few years. One of the annual highlights was to take the senior boys on some kind of special expedition – something bigger and more challenging than the normal hikes or camps.

One July, we set off for a 10-day expedition in the Cederberg. Things did not run smoothly. Some way up the N7, the troop’s ageing VW Kombi began to feel more sluggish than usual. Then a red oil-pressure light appeared on the dashboard. With that, the interior began to feel warmer and warmer, and the van struggled more and more with every incline.

I was 20 years old or so, and knew nothing about engines. To me it was important to get to Moorreesburg, where we could top up with oil, and so I kept my foot hard on the accelerator to get there as soon as possible. It wasn’t long before the smoke appeared and the Kombi simply refused to go any further. I had hammered the vehicle into the ground and seized the engine – and Moorreesburg was still some way off, as was the Cederberg.

Ask any school head – running a school is a complex and demanding job under normal conditions. In a pandemic, it is exponentially more challenging. As community leaders, principals are holding the wellbeing of not only their staff and students, but families too, in their hands at all times, but even more so in these challenging days.

They need to be there for the people in their school. 

They need to be the symbol of hope and resilience and optimism. They need to be among their people, maybe at the gate in the morning with a warm and encouraging greeting for the day, despite what their own hidden burdens and stresses might be. 

They need to be seen, energetic and cheerful, in the corridors and in the playgrounds. And they need support in the crucial function of school leadership at this time.

However, through my regular contact with a number of heads, I have come to believe that so many school leaders are being treated the way I treated that Kombi: they are being pushed beyond the limit by more and more administrative demands.

There has always been a demanding clerical role in being head of a school. This is not a rant about admin per se. A lot of it is necessary – particularly the gathering of data that informs the teaching and learning process, or which pertains to the school’s sustainability.

These days, however, heads seem to be facing a relentless stream of additional administrative tasks and pressure: audits, registers, forms, proof of follow-up on absentees, admonishments for children’s learning not being where Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements dictate it should be at a particular time (I mean, really? When children are attending school only every second day?)

Some heads have been castigated for non-compliance in poorly explained tasks; principals have been contacted over weekends, demanding completion of some or other complex forms by Monday; unrealistic deadlines distract from the main job; in some cases, there is an insistence on hard copies of documents being physically handed over rather than electronically submitted; they are called to compulsory workshops and Zoom calls, often at very short notice, which disrupt schools’ internal planning and programmes.

The list of additional pressures goes on. Add to this a first term in 2021 of 13 uninterrupted, tense, on-off, pandemic-affected weeks, followed by a five working day holiday. 

Throw in the demands of the governing body election processes (frequently as presiding officers in other schools as well as being present at their own) and add the latest puzzling directive about preparing for 100% attendance by primary school children from July, but with Covid-19 physical distancing protocols in place.

So much of what principals are expected to comply with at the moment has very little obvious benefit to the learners or teachers in their care, yet the consequences of non-compliance can be severe.

The red lights are glowing on too many dashboards. And have been for some time.

Finnish educationist Pasi Sahlberg has this to say when asked how Finland evaluates its teachers: “We never speak of this. It is irrelevant in our country. Instead, we discuss ‘how can we help them?’”

It would be a good thing if our educational powers that be were to ask the same question right now.

It would be a really good thing if we got our entire teaching cohort vaccinated without delay, so we can get our children off the streets and back into school – and it should be the department of basic education driving this. It should not need to fall to the teachers’ unions to initiate this.

It’s a very long shot indeed, but it would be an excellent thing if educational delivery could be decentralised and less monolithic, so that professional teachers can meet the learners where they are, rather than where some archaic curriculum document dictates where they “ought to be” – especially now. 

If we are to prepare properly for a new post-Covid normal and somehow compensate for lost teaching and learning, it’s time for proper baseline diagnostic testing and then appropriate, individualised learning programmes. It’s not impossible.

All of these and more would be good things. Better things, for sure, than a string of paper trails that divert invaluable time away from the core of what education is really about.

I fear, though, that like that callow scoutmaster who ignored that red light 50 years ago, we’ll just keep hammering on for Moorreesburg and seize the whole engine. As was the case with that old Kombi, recovery from that will be a long, hard and costly haul. DM