Dr Jaco Deacon, CEO of school governing body association FEDSAS, shares five lessons for the road ahead for education governance in South Africa.

You can tell a great deal about a country by travelling its roads. Some roads inspire confidence. They are well-designed, properly maintained and quietly allow thousands of people to reach their destinations safely. Some roads have speed bumps. They slow us down because something valuable lies ahead. And then there are roads that demand constant vigilance because the next pothole may be around the corner. Nobody deliberately designs a pothole. Potholes appear when small problems are allowed to become much bigger ones.

One of the greatest responsibilities of education leadership is to distinguish between potholes and speed bumps. Not every obstacle deserves to be removed. Likewise, not every difficulty should simply be accepted as part of the landscape. Some problems exist only because we have failed to maintain the system entrusted to us.

Great governance begins with trust

Governance rarely fails because legislation is inadequate; it fails because relationships have broken down. By the time lawyers become involved, the real problem has existed for months, sometimes years. Trust is the first casualty.

Road engineers understand this principle. Long before motorists notice a pothole, small cracks appear. Water enters the cracks, drainage fails. Heavy vehicles increase the pressure and maintenance is postponed. Governance follows the same pattern. The public disagreement is merely the visible pothole. The real deterioration began much earlier.

One of the greatest strengths of the South African Schools’ Act is a constitutional partnership between communities, the state and public schools. Government carries the constitutional obligation to provide basic education, principals provide professional leadership, and school governing bodies provide democratic governance. Parents are partners and communities are custodians of institutions that belong to the public. That is why we refer to public schools. There are no state schools in South Africa.

However, intentional design is not enough. Even good roads are dangerous when signs are contradicting. The same goes for education governance. Unfortunately, current education governance resembles a busy intersection during loadshedding.  Schools receive one directive from a district office and another from the provincial department. National regulations introduce further complexity and circulars attempt clarification. 

Fortunately, the Constitutional Court has consistently offered a wiser path, reaffirming that education governance is fundamentally about balancing constitutional responsibilities in the best interests of learners. Legislation alone cannot restore relationships and trust cannot be legislated. The Constitution provides the values, but trust provides the road on which good governance travels. Without it, every disagreement becomes a pothole. 

Great schools are built by people

Schools are transformed by people not policies. When educational outcomes disappoint us, our first instinct is to revise regulations or publish another policy. We often speak as though excellence can be legislated into existence.

Good legislation, clear policy, and sound governance matter. But none of these teaches a child to read. Successful schools have exceptional people. Not perfect people but committed people. The most valuable infrastructure in any school is invisible. It is the culture that exists when teachers believe in one another. It is the trust between a principal and a governing body. It is the expectation that every learner can succeed.

Road engineers know that maintenance is less expensive than reconstruction. Leadership is no different. One of the greatest compliments paid to a leader is that the organisation became even stronger after they left. Great schools practise succession long before succession becomes necessary. 

Great leaders create certainty

We assume the greatest obstacle facing schools is a lack of money. Funding is certainly important but schools are remarkably resilient when they know what resources they have. Even modest resources can be managed wisely when they are predictable. What is almost impossible to manage is prolonged uncertainty. It encourages short-term thinking and weakens confidence. Eventually it replaces strategic leadership with crisis management. Schools can survive difficult years. What they struggle to survive is not knowing what tomorrow will bring.

Road engineers understand a simple principle: Maintenance is not an expense. A small crack repaired today prevents a far more expensive reconstruction tomorrow. Nobody congratulates engineers because a bridge remained safe for another decade. Education works in the same way. There are no headlines when school allocations arrive on time or educator posts are filled before the school year begins. When SGBs approve responsible budgets and principals implement them faithfully, it simply appears that schools are doing what schools should do. Yet these quiet acts of competent stewardship form the foundation upon which educational excellence rests. 

South Africa rightly invests a significant proportion of public expenditure in education. But the true test of a budget is not how much is allocated. It is whether resources reach learners when they are needed. Education planning sometimes follows electoral cycles rather than educational cycles. Schools cannot afford to think that way. Road engineers design highways that will carry traffic decades into the future. Educational leaders should demonstrate the same discipline.

Admission disputes are the potholes of poor planning

Every new school year starts with the same headlines about thousands of children still waiting for placement in schools. Like the pothole that suddenly appears after heavy rain, admission issues are where years of inadequate planning finally become visible.

Responsible engineers design a highway for traffic that is yet to arrive. Education deserves the same discipline. Every school has a capacity. Not merely the number of classrooms but an educational capacity, and that distinction matters. The Constitution guarantees children more than access to a building, it guarantees access to an education. 

South Africa has every reason to celebrate the enormous progress made in expanding access to education since 1994. Millions of children today enjoy educational opportunities that previous generations were denied. That achievement should never be underestimated. But access or matric results cannot be the only measure of success. Access and quality are partners, not opponents. The Constitution requires us to protect both.

While more classrooms and more schools will increase education capacity, we also need to prepare for a future beyond bricks and mortar. Technology is already beginning to redefine educational capacity. We need to rethink our position on blended learning or online schools as fully recognised and regulated learning environments. Great leaders do not wait for the road to become congested before widening it. They anticipate the traffic that is still coming. Likewise, great education systems do not merely respond to overcrowding.

Great education prepares children for a future we cannot see

Throughout history, every generation believed the future would more or less resemble the present. Parents expected their children to enter professions they understood. Teachers prepared learners for careers that have existed for decades. Universities developed programmes that changed gradually. That world has disappeared.

For generations, schools focused on knowledge. Information was scarce and books were expensive. Teachers became trusted custodians of information. Today, every learner with a cellphone can access more information than previous generations could consult in an entire library. Information has become abundant – sound judgement has not.

If information is no longer education’s greatest value, then perhaps schools should focus more intentionally on what only human beings can cultivate: wisdom, integrity, curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage, sound judgment. Schools exist to shape human beings and unlock their potential. Let’s return to the primary purpose of education.

If the past thirty years were about laying a constitutional foundation for education, perhaps the next thirty years should be about building educational excellence on that foundation. Let’s choose partnership over power, invest in people before programmes, become better stewards than owners, plan before crises force us to react, and never stop believing in the extraordinary potential of every child.