The Knowledge Landscape of School Disciplinary Committees on Disciplinary Policies in Mopani Education district, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

Despite the clarity of the South African Schools Act (SASA) 84 of 1996 on the need to craft and implement a learners’ Code of Conduct by school governing bodies (SGBs), there seems to be a gap between the espoused learner disciplinary policies and practice at schools. Using the case study research design, the knowledge scope on education policies by the school disciplinary committees (SDCs) was examined at two secondary schools in a predominantly rural South African district. The study employed a qualitative approach to gather data from purposefully selected informants using focus group and face-to-face interviews. The study sample was composed of 35 participants who were school disciplinary policy duty bearers, comprising 10 SGBs, 10 school management teams (SMTs) and 10 SDC members, as well as five class teachers. The main findings from the thematically analysed narrative data pointed to inadequate knowledge of policies by most SDC committee members. In addition, although the two schools had learners’ codes of conduct that were aligned to SASA, the SDCs were loosely adhering to the provisions of the disciplinary policies in their operations. The gap between the espoused policy and policy in action was found to be due to the policy duty bearers’ inadequate knowledge of the national policy that governs school discipline. This calls for the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to offer policy enhancement workshops for SDCs and to employ a policy monitoring instrument on the functioning of SCDs.