Multi-domain examination of school decline causality: A narrative inquiry into stakeholders

Abstract

The Department of Basic Education in South Africa continually strives to improve the quality of education it provides to learners in public schools. One of the primary yardsticks used to gauge the department’s progress in providing quality education is the matriculation examination results. While many schools, across contexts, have shown some improvements in matriculation results, there are pockets of schools that seem to take a backward trajectory. This paper reports on a study that focused on these schools, in one of KwaZulu-Natal's townships, to understand the causality of decline. The critical realism theory constituted the theoretical framework through which we understood the causes of school decline. The narrative inquiry, a qualitative way of studying human life, was adopted to engage narratively with the lived experiences of key stakeholders in declining schools. The findings revealed multiple mechanisms reflecting the paralysis of the structure, culture, and agency domains in the sampled schools.