What About the School Board?

NDUMBA J KAMWANYAHIN OUR country’s efforts to improve the education outcomes for a Namibian child, who better than school boards – as citizens and community representatives – are suited to shoulder the responsibility of promoting quality teaching and learning in schools?

The power and mandate to establish school boards derives from the Education Act, allowing citizens the responsibility and greater degree of freedom to respond to local education matters. That in itself is decentralisation in action!

Therefore, on paper, this country perhaps, has many school boards. However, what they do and how what they do impact the performances of schools remains a mystery. Here is the research question for today: Are school boards relevant, and what role should they play to help improve the performance and operations of public schools?

As far as I could gather, little attention is paid to what school boards do. Training and funding for school boards, school board leadership and governance also rarely feature in our public discourse on education. Nor do we have research findings on the link between school boards and learner achievement or school performance.

No, I am not talking about the outlandish spending culture – through sitting fees, cocktail parties and tender favouritisms – that we have witnessed with parastatal boards.

What I am talking about is a simple and mundane institution of education which serves (or is supposed to) a very important function in our democracy. Elected or appointed to be champions for education at regional, local, village, school or community level, school boards everywhere in the world not only are instruments of local democracy, but also key pillars of the education system in that they represent the citizens’ voice, belief, values, aspirations and hopes.

Unlike corporate or parastatal boards which are very expensive and paid hefty sitting allowances, school boards usually are unpaid, voluntary/charity driven, diverse and more representative of a community; therefore making them a critical public link to public education in terms of bringing citizens/community views to the fore.

They are also accessible to the public and accountable for the performance of their schools. In that, they serve as the education watchdog for their communities in ensuring that quality teaching and learning are taking place in schools.

Their most important responsibility, of course, is to work with their communities to improve teaching and learning in their local public schools. By focusing on raising student achievement through strong citizen governance and actively mobilising their communities, school boards are in a unique position to be leaders and champions of education.

Here is how an ancient body of research describes an effective school board: It should commit to a vision of high expectations for quality teaching and learning; be driven by strong shared beliefs and values about teaching and learning; be driven by the principles of inclusiveness in making sure that no child is left behind; it should be transparent and accountability driven; it should work collaboratively with other stakeholders; it should be data driven to monitor and evaluate the impact of teaching and learning; it should have the ability to align and sustain resources to meet school goals; and it should take part in training and continuous education.

But, as the nation engages in the critical struggle to improve its education system, the role of our nation’s school boards to do all these functions in order to improve teaching and learning in the country is very peripheral. We might as well call them a neglected or undervalued institution of our education system.

That leads me to ask if as a nation it is our conviction that a school board is an important educational institution in improving public education outcomes, to what extent are school boards involved in education matters?

Do our school boards have the power to hold principals and teachers accountable for their performances, including hiring and firing them? What resources are at their disposal so that they can carry out their work effectively?

Why are school boards absent in our education training/workshops, planning tables and during the launching of major education initiatives? What can be done to mobilise and engage school boards effectively?

Therefore, along with the demand for transparency, accountability and greater participation in educational matters, our school boards today seem to face more complex oversight challenges, including financial resources, lack of strategic vision and the lack of a deeper understanding of their roles and responsibilities.

It is an urgent matter that we must address these challenges with a comprehensive approach to support and make our nation’s school boards sustainable in order to maximise their potentials. Part of that is to institutionalise them through the establishment of a national association for school boards – a body to organise, mobilise, advocate, lobby and support school boards.

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