Teacher Profiles on Social Cohesion and Learner Outcomes in Public-Private Partnership Schools in the Western Cape of South Africa

Public Private Partnership (PPP) or Collaboration schools in the Western Cape, South Africa, are public schools selected and contractually placed by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) under the School Operating Partners (SOPs). Their stated purpose is to redress the twin challenges of persisting poor learner outcomes and a lack of social cohesion which face those schools which serve children in historically disadvantaged communities. This study was set to examine how the profiles of teachers at selected PPP schools reflect the SOPs’ efforts to realise the contractual goal of the PPP schools. Using Man-Whitney U, the profiles of primary and secondary school teachers were compared to determine whether or not the schools shared the key demographics for addressing learner outcomes and social cohesion challenges. The findings indicate no significant difference in the examined social, academic and professional profiles of the sampled teachers across the selected primary and secondary PPP schools. However, what the profiles suggest is the need for twofold sets of strategies to be designed by WCED. One is the need for a set of strategies for the improvement of the representation of some ethnic groups amongst both teachers and learners to ensure a more acceptably diverse mixture of social profiles of teachers with the aim of achieving social cohesion goals. Second, despite the potential of the existing academic and professional profiles of these teachers to improve learner outcomes at the selected PPP schools, there is a need to set employment guidelines to protect young teachers from the negative impacts of the autonomy granted to management bodies of these schools. Additionally, the guidelines should improve the performativity and accountability frameworks which tend to characterise these schools.