C ONCLUSIONES PARCIALES

Brand management has become a significant part of many, if not all, private schools in terms of establishing their relevance and their place in a community. Before I make a recommendation in this regard, I need to explain the background of how the management of the private school’s brand would be challenging.

For a vast number of years, actually from the inception of the private school in Oranjemund, the school developed and maintained a very high degree of educational excellence. The school provided tuition only up to Grade 7 but diversified the curriculum to such an extent that the private school was able to prepare its learners for both Namibian and South African secondary schools. The private school’s excellent reputation opened the doors for many learners to enter secondary schools in Windhoek or Cape Town. The Gr 7 learners were recruited through recruitment visits and

presentations in Oranjemund by the most prestigious schools in Windhoek, Cape Town and the Boland areas. These schools would include Karibib Private School, St Georges and St Pauls Private Schools in Windhoek, GRN schools like Delta High School, Windhoek High School and Windhoek Technical School. In Cape Town and the Boland area, schools like Paarl Boys High, Paarl Gymnasium, Laborie, La Rochelle Girls High School, Worcester Gymnasium and Worcester Technical High School, Stellenbosch High School, Paul Roos Gymnasium, Rhenish Girls High School, Somerset College, Wynberg Boys High School, Wynberg Girls High School, St Cyprians and Bishops. This certainly is and impressive list of schools which formed the basis of choice for the Oranjemund parents.

With commencing the secondary school as an extension to the private school, the question was asked whether the school could offer the same education for its learners as these schools mentioned above could or not. The demand, however, at that stage was two-fold; the Mine was in a position where it was looking at every possibility to save on non-production costs and the parents wanted their children closer to home and not attending high schools while being at boarding school.

Parents, who wanted to explore alternative education options for their children outside Oranjemund, could still do so and enrolled their children at schools of their choice at their own costs. The Mine did not support transport and hostel fees anymore like it did before there was a high school in Oranjemund.

This in one way, forced the low-income parents to have their children enrolled in the secondary school at the private school and therefor limited their choice of secondary education options for their children. On the other hand, parents from the higher income brackets could afford sending their children to schools outside Oranjemund.

The extreme limitation offered to parents since the inception of the secondary phase at the private school, proved to be a good choice, albeit the only one, since the private school did extremely well in the first ever external Grade 10 examination. This achievement was celebrated at length and the school ranked very high amongst established schools with excellent reputations of educational excellence. This fact led to the secondary school management believing that the secondary school was on the right track regarding its standards and started preparing the leaners for the first ever Grade 12 external examination.

The Grade 12 results of 2013 was a total disaster. Many learners failed key subjects for admittance to tertiary studies. The parents, the community and the staff were completely shocked at this outcome and it caused a huge upset amongst the parents. These poor results were totally unexpected.

Programmes were drawn up to intervene and establish what went wrong. Educational experts were consulted and an academic audit was done. These finding assisted the private school management to realign the focus of the teachers and the learners. This resulted in much better results in the following year’s external examination.

Yet, the impact of the poor results on the reputation of the secondary phase at the private school was so severe that parents lost confidence in the ability of the teaching staff in assisting in good performances of their children. It became very evident that the private school could not offer what the schools outside Oranjemund could offer.

It took several years of hard work and introspections that made school management realise that there are a couple of truths the private school need to face. They were amongst others; the school does not have an entry-level examination. The intake of learners is compulsory since the employees are working for Namdeb. Placement is automatic, provided there is space and that there are no major problems related to age, disabilities or the child’s behaviour. Schools outside Oranjemund selected the best performers while the poor performers ‘disappeared’ in the system without the private school staff knowing what happened to these learners once they left town. Another factor is that the private school was operating as a “new” school when it started the secondary phase. It took some time for the learners and staff to settle in to develop a productive work ethics and ethos. This came very slowly, but everyone, and is in fact, still developing.

Exposing the secondary phase learners to the broader curriculum came at a price; if the staff wanted the children to experience any high school related educational matters somewhere else, it involved travelling and costs. The private school’s secondary school learners cannot participate in any sport league matches. The school mainly compete on friendly winter sport or summer sport days against other schools. The teams have to travel for all regional and national competitions and trials. This usually means a couple of days out of school, sleeping over, which comes at a cost for travelling, accommodation, meals and allowances for the accompanying staff.

It would be fairly advantageous for any school to make sure that its reputation is protected and that there is a lot of work going into the brand management of the school. Conducting their study, a school principal’s remark to Verger et al.( 2016) summarises this very well: “To be honest, there is so much

good word-of-mouth, because our student population come by itself”. I understand this as that a school should be operating in such a way that it advertises itself. I would argue that by way of providing an excellent service to the parents, the school would sell itself to prospective parents.

One of the points of contention is the annual ranking of the school in the national external examinations. The Mine management feels that the school should be under the top 10 performers in Namibia. The private school management would be over the moon if that would be the case, but it is not possible. The simple reason for this is that every parent wishing to put his child in the private school is allowed to do so. There are no real admission criteria for a child to enter the private school.

The school has had a long-standing vision of developing each child to his/her unique optimal potential. The private school further does this with whatever resources are available. It happens that technology for instance, gets outdated, but because the Mine is suffering financially and the school is not seen as important for production, the school often had to take budget cuts in the past. This resulted that the ‘nice-to-have’ teaching aids like the upgrade of the computers laboratory or iPads, were always put off for the years when there would be a better economic environment.

The private schools in Windhoek and elsewhere in Namibia each follows their own admission criteria and therefor achieve good national rankings. They attract and select the best performing learners from other feeder schools. To be able to attract suitable learners and to exclude the “difficult” learners is easier for private schools, since they are not falling directly under the governance of the MoEAC.

Private schools may not discriminate against any child wishing to enter the school, but when some selection criteria exist at this school, it is easier to demonstrate that learning, discipline and safety are taken seriously. This could be a “selling” point to market the school against the “free” education available at the government school.

A tendency that developed over a number of years is for schools to send a number of teachers at the end of every year to act as national markers. The perceived advantage here is that the teacher would know how to teach so that the learners can obtain better marks and the schools achieve better national rankings. This certainly leaves many challenging questions regarding the effectiveness of teaching the syllabi per subject instead of coaching the learners “how to answer” the question papers. The learners do not necessarily understand the work and work with the subject content or make it their own. The learners battle to explain and use the learning content, but they are “trained” how to answer the questions, “should the question look like this…”, then answer it like that. The downside of this practice is seen with the drop-out rate of learners at tertiary level. It could be counterproductive when

looking at the main aims of teaching and educating learners at a school, but the chasing of better rankings can lead to some of these un-pedagogical practices.

In Oranjemund the argument can easily be levelled that the public school is the “lesser” offer against the “better” offer at the private school regarding education. There is, however, the tendency lately of parents who can afford it, to still take their children out of the private school for enrolment in perceived better options elsewhere in the north of Namibia, Windhoek, Cape Town or schools in the Boland area. It seems that parents are “escaping” a bad choice presented in Oranjemund, although there is a choice between a public or a private school. This drives the argument that the private school is still suffering the consequences of the poor results of individual learners and the subsequent low rankings. The reputational damage is that the perception is that the private school is not performing well. This obscures the fact that the private school does not have a selection criterion and admits all Namdeb employees’ children, regardless their educational background, disciplinary issues and learning obstacles.

As mentioned in the beginning of this point, the above elaborate background about how difficult it is to maintain a positive brand for the school, was necessary so that I could make a recommendation in this regard. Since the recommendation is that the private school focus mainly in pre-primary and primary school education, I would recommend that strategies be developed in the following basic areas to improve on the reputation of the school:

• The selection criteria for admission to the school must be done in the best interest of the learner. If a learner is not ready or fit for mainstream education and the school is not able to accommodate the learner, the parents need to be referred to another school.

• Determine the potential of each learner and work out an academic and if necessary, a remedial intervention strategy for those who need it.

• Teaching objectives must be clearly understood by every staff member.

• Macro-, meso- and micro planning is crucial and must be monitored regularly.

• Feedback to the learners in terms of the way written work is marked must be evaluated.

• Reports and feedback to the parents in terms of the learner’s performance must always be a true reflection of the learner’s ability.

When the basic things in a class are done properly, good performances and results will be the order of the day and the school’s brand and reputation will stay intact. Teaching techniques and the inclusion of the latest technologies are important to be developed in line with the latest global trends.

Care must be taken not to lose focus on the “aha-moment” during each lesson and that learning is not taking place.