Diversity In Schools Case Study

Chapter One

Introduction

In our dynamic South African society effective leadership is a huge challenge and an important responsibility. It has to be realised that one of the realities that is increasingly imposing itself on socio-politico-economic management all over the world, as globalisation becomes dominant, is the need to manage diversity (Kauzya, 2002:2). School leaders are faced with the challenge of transforming schools to comply with rapidly changing policies to meets the needs of a changing society, and are in a key position to develop a strategy for promoting and managing diversity (Naidu, Joubert, Mestry, Mosoge and Ngcobo, 2008:2).

Background

South Africa is not the only country to have known racial segregation and racial inequality.

Learners attended separate schools according to the four main population groups, namely Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Indians (Steyn et al., 1998:24). Racial separation was the defining feature of schools during the colonial and apartheid eras, which explains why this inquiry examines racial integration in the post-colonial and post-apartheid eras (Nkomo, McKinney & Chisholm, 2004: 5). The study focuses on the way learners deal with diversity on a daily basis at their school. In search of what Pandor (2004: 14) calls “quality education”, black learners overwhelmed the South African education system, by migrating from their under-resourced and underdeveloped rural and township schools to affluent and well-resourced neighbouring suburban schools. In fact, this was the movement of African learners to the nearby coloured, Indian and white schools. There has not been any movement in the direction of black schools (Soudien, 2004:

A number of considerations have guided and influenced my selection of the school. I will return to these considerations later in the chapter. The main purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of diversity by learners who had, historically, been divided by race yet, today, share a common educational space in a desegregated school environment. Another intention of this study is to make a contribution to issues of diversity in education in South Africa. Historically, race is inscribed in the functioning of everyday life by schools where the majority of learners spend a great part of their lives (Nkomo et al., 2004:4). This provided me with further reasons to find answers to my questions in a school because schools are institutions of socialisation and they become contested terrain in a changing society (Keto, 1990: 26, Bell;