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10/11/2016

For the last 3 years, VVOB has been supporting the national Department of Basic Education and the Free State Department of Education with the coordination of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) as a professional development strategy for teachers, head of departments (HoDs) and principals. Within PLCs educators drive their own development by identifying their needs and addressing those in a collaborative way:

“PLCs are communities that provide the setting and necessary support for groups of classroom teachers, school managers and subject advisors to participate collectively in determining their own developmental trajectories, and to set up activities that will drive their development.” (Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development, p.14).

The activities supported by VVOB entailed amongst others the development and ratification of national PLC guidelines, the organisation of a PLC colloquium, PLC orientation sessions in most provinces, the development of a PLC facilitator manual and training trajectories on PLC facilitation skills and M&E for provincial and district officials across the country. Provinces are expected to report on PLCs in the National Strategy for Learner Attainment (NSLA). However, challenges arise with developing indicators and tools to collect relevant information on PLCs. There is no one-size-fits-all framework for establishing PLCs, as they are needs based and bottom-up initiated.

To know the status and effectiveness of existing PLCs in the Free State and to improve the monitoring of PLCs, VVOB commissioned a study which was awarded to BRIDGE. The main challenge of the study was the identification of functioning PLCs within the district. Because there is a lack of monitoring of PLCs, it was difficult to create a sample of PLCs within and between schools. Once these “PLCs” were singled out, both their size, topic and regularity indicated that most of these sessions were subject committee and cluster meetings rather than PLCs. However, the participants could recognise the characteristics of PLCs in these meetings, this was not always confirmed by the observations done by the consultants. Sometimes the participants didn’t have the opportunity to voice themselves in the large group, which may have limited the group interaction and thereby curtailing their effectiveness. These PLCs were found to be generally lacking “inclusive membership” on the basis of structure, size, and level of member participation.

One of the PLC facilitators stressed the difference between a subject meeting and a PLC very clearly:

“With a subject meeting issues are raised but there is no discussion on HOW they will solve them.”

Apart from the study, 2 workshops with District Teacher Development Centre (DTDC) officials of all the districts in Free State were conducted in May and June to strengthen their capacity to collect, analyse and interpret information on PLCs. From these workshops, challenges were identified which mostly related to the roles and responsibilities of the different district officials to collect data on PLCs and to liaise this to the DTDCs, which would allow all district officials to learn and improve their support to schools.

Based on this study and 2 workshops, recommendations were identified to embed PLCs in the system and processes of the province as a whole. This relates to increased understanding of roles and responsibilities of provincial and district staff for PLCs, increased district support for PLCs, increased PLC awareness with educators and improved M&E and reporting of PLCs.

These recommendations will support the establishment of effective PLCs. This is also mentioned by a PLC facilitator in Bloemfontein commenting the outcomes of the PLC:

“The results have improved tremendously as people are there because they want to improve results. They are not at 100% yet but they are getting there. Before PLCs, they did not know one another but they know one another now and talk more. Management has changed as HoDs and deputy principals are empowered and principals are supportive.”

A full version of the report is available upon request.