Sexuality education in South African schools: The challenge for civil society organisations

Context and sampling strategies

The paper reports on finding a larger cross-sectional study conducted in 2011–2012 focusing on the implementation of the LO learning area in public schools in three provinces in South Africa (George et al., 2013). Secondary school learners in their early to late adolescent years were purposively selected because of the heightened exposure to sexual activity characterising these developmental years (Reddy et al., 2013), while the decision to focus on 16 schools was in line with feasibility recommendations proposed by the National Department of Education, as well as budgetary and time constraints.

Poverty quintile rankings (PQs) provide national indicators for poverty and infrastructure whereby lower PQ communities (1, 2 and 3) represent more under-resourced and non-fee paying schools ² than PQ 4–5 settings (DBE, 2013). Stratified random sampling across PQs resulted in 10 schools drawn from the KwaZulu-Natal province (2 × PQ1–5 schools), 3 schools from Gauteng (1 × PQ4 and 2 × PQ5) and 3 PQ1 schools from Mpumalanga.

The greater proportion of data was generated from the uMgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal, owing to the high HIV prevalence within this community as documented in antenatal clinic statistics (40%; DOH, 2013), as well as the province’s median performance in the 2010 National Senior Certificate examinations (DBE, 2011). Two other districts, North Tshwane in Gauteng and Bohlabela in Mpumalanga, were included as the best and worst performing districts, respectively, in terms of overall matriculant pass rates for 2010 (DBE, 2011). Only one school in the Umgungungdlovu district refused participation in the study and was replaced by another randomly selected school in the same poverty quintile.

Data collection procedures

Ethical approval for the study was granted from the Humanities and Social Science Research Ethics Committee at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the National DBE. Written informed consent for adult participants and verbal assent, which were applicable for participants aged younger than 18 years, was obtained with full consideration of confidentiality, anonymity and voluntary participation.

Qualitative methodology was preferred to provide a richer understanding of the processes and relationships across ecological systems. In total, 32 focus groups were conducted across 16 schools, with one Grade 9 group (aged 14–16 years) and one Grade 11 group (aged 16–18 years) selected per school, respectively. Classes were selected at opportunity, with priority recruitment for learners who had returned informed consent forms. Each focus group comprised six members – typically three boys and three girls. A total of 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with LO educators (n = 30) and heads of department (HoDs) (n = 15) overseeing LO across the 16 schools. The total number of interviews for the sample was within a pre-defined estimate (32–48 interviews ³ ), with a maximum of three staff members interviewed per school (Grade 9 educator, Grade 11 educator and LO HoD).

Learners, educators and HoDs responded to their relevant interview schedules requesting views about LO lesson delivery and teaching pedagogies, the quality of learner–educator relationships, experiences of school safety and belonging, educational involvement with CSOs and other influences on LO like parent communication and cultural messaging from the community. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted in English, Zulu or Xhosa by fieldworkers proficient in the respondent’s preferred language. The interviews and focus groups were between 45- and 60-minute duration and were conducted in a classroom, office or private area on the school grounds outside of teaching times.

Interviews were also conducted with five CSOs from within the Umgungundlovu district to gather information about the programmes and interventions in schools, their views of the LO programme and the perceived challenges and strengths of collaborating with schools. Recruitment of these organisations was informed by the participating schools and under guidance from provincial education authorities. Individual interviews were conducted with senior staff members from the five recruited CSOs, as well as mixed-sex focus groups with youth facilitators from two of these organisations (four and six facilitators, respectively). Of the five CSOs interviewed, two prioritised the training and support of LO educators for the improved delivery of LO lessons in schools, while the other three worked directly with learners through the facilitation of life skills programmes that appeared to fall within the scope of the LO curriculum, namely, HIV and AIDS, teenage pregnancy, menstruation and bodily changes, values, substance abuse and careers. While all five organisations were active in the Umgungundlovu district, only one was identified by schools in this study as recently facilitating on-site programmes.

Data analysis

Research conversations were digitally voice recorded, transcribed, translated where necessary and reviewed by members of the field work team to amend errors. An initial selection of roughly 20% of the transcripts, as suggested by Hruschka et al. (2004), was subject to a process of open coding by two researchers working independently. Thereafter, the two sets of descriptive accounts were compared (Gibbs, 2007) and through a process of cutting, sorting and synthesising, a new coding framework was developed (Ryan and Bernard, 2003). Themes and sub-themes were organised in relation to the school, community and CSO systems of influence, as well as the levels of interaction (Bronfenbrenner, 1999).

Situating a novel approach

One-fifth of educators and HoDs interviewed (n = 9) ⁴ acknowledged the novelty of CSOs in encouraging learners to better engage with, listen to and understand the topics presented. This approach was considered particularly impactful for learners from rural and lower PQ schools, where exposure to external services is often limited due to practical and economic constraints. However, as the following educator quote illustrates, learners across a variety of contexts tend to welcome diversity in their lesson facilitation:

I don’t think that the kids are reluctant to learn about [HIV and AIDS]. They welcome it but I think they’re tired. It would be nice hearing from someone else other than your teacher. They’re listening to me five days a week, all the time, it will be nice hearing it from someone outside, bringing it and coming in. Do you know what, this is real, so your teacher is not talking nonsense, just to sort-of help the process along. (LO Educator, PQ5 School ‘D’ ⁵ )

Learners reiterated this view by suggesting that different opinions and perspectives were interesting and created a reprieve from everyday learning:

We feel as if our teachers care about us by bringing in these people, knowing since they themselves can’t teach everything, they know these people know better. And we are able to open ears and listen. (Grade 11 Learner, PQ4 School ‘M’)

Enthusiasm was generated by learners across poverty quintiles for hearing from guest speakers such as medical professionals or the survivors of illness or abuse and having outings to facilities such as hospitals to witness realities first hand. Although interest was generated in these types of exposure, it is acknowledged that fear-based stories and strategies exhibit questionable efficacy for actual behaviour change (Albarracin et al., 2005). A further reading of the previous two quotes suggests that CSOs may lend credibility to LO teachings. However, an uncritical acceptance of CSO involvement based solely on novelty tends to reinforce an assumption that LO is a ‘common knowledge’ subject (Tucker et al., 2016).

CSO facilitators and senior staff described their organisations’ use of various participatory lessons that incorporated visuals, drama, debate and role play. In one example, key messages from classroom discussions were translated into soccer analogies where learners were tasked with practically demonstrating topics like the biology of HIV infection and transmission, planning and goal-setting, and identifying and navigating life obstacles:

It needs to be participatory and a lot of the teachers don’t have those skills or they just never learnt them or they’re just, not everybody’s interested in that. We also have to understand teachers are teachers as well, there’s a certain methodology about teaching whereas what we’re talking about really has to be engaging and it has to be fun.

(Senior Coordinator, CSO ‘A’)

The incorporation of participatory activities is advocated by the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for LO as issued by the DBE (2012a), which recommends a variety of daily assessment tasks including practical demonstrations, mind-maps, debates, group work and individual record-keeping. However, as illustrated in the previous quotation, some educators still lack confidence and competence in implementing participatory methods, while others may express a personal preference towards more didactic pedagogies.

Despite the potential for knowledge sharing, there were few examples of CSOs facilitating specialist training for school staff. Most notably, LO educators and HoDs from higher PQ schools within the North Tshwane district (n = 3) reported attending CSO-facilitated seminars or hosting staff workshops on social issues such as human trafficking and abuse. For the majority of LO educators (n = 24, 61.5%), in-service training was received via departmental workshops. However, more than one-third of LO educators (n = 15, 38.5%) reported to have never been on any in-service training.

As CSOs are typically not bound by set curricula and assessment standards, they have the potential to offer alternate activities for positive youth development that prioritise individual assets and strengths rather than information for prevention (Lerner et al., 2005). However, introducing additional lesson activities is made problematic by the LO educator’s responsibility to ensure that the prescribed curriculum is covered within the allotted time. Where CSOs may provide benefit, in terms of their external affiliation, is in their greater freedom to engage with contentious issues and practical needs, such as HIV testing of learners:

It was last week and early this week where they were conducting the blood test for HIV and AIDS. We can’t do that as teachers, even now there is still a debate about this. Even the children they were afraid to ask me to conduct those tests, but they were free to ask [name of CSO] to bring the people to test them. (LO HoD, PQ3 School ‘C’)

Although these ‘freedoms’ enabled progress and innovation in select areas, they also created a source of concern for school staff. Concerns were expressed by educators in three higher PQ schools that past facilitators had supplied learners with inaccurate information about modes of HIV transmission, had not engaged with topics like HIV and AIDS or sex with enough sensitivity and professionalism, and did not work from a formal curriculum or utilise appropriate teaching methods. The following quote by a specialist LO educator illustrates this point:

Because parents send their children to school to learn, they don’t send them to school to have other people who are going to tell them other things. So we have to make sure that we work with these people closely to make sure that they don’t go out of line … We understand those people are not teachers … so sometimes they might not know how to actually deal with students. We also ask them how they find our students. They give us feedback, sometimes feedback on what we did not know.

(LO Educator, PQ4 School ‘F’)

A small minority of LO educators and HoDs (n = 4), primarily from higher PQ schools, reported that they screened and closely monitored the content and delivery of information by CSOs to learners. Stringency of procedures for the selection, monitoring and evaluation of organisations and other external speakers, however, varied across school contexts and was largely influenced by the interest and investment of senior management towards LO as a subject:

In some schools you find out that some principals are really difficult because you find out that they will take the programmes that you’re coming with, as with just any extra-mural activity that doesn’t matter. (Youth Facilitator, CSO ‘A’)

Individual learners from three higher PQ schools expressed concern about the potential intrusiveness of external visitors and questioned the motivation behind the involvement:

When these people pay us a visit at school you may not really know the reason what has brought them to our school. […] You just wonder if they were here to do a survey in our school, or what? They leave us with questions.

(Grade 11 Learner, PQ4 School ‘M’)

Interestingly, the preceding comment may also be interpreted as a veiled challenge to ourselves as researchers in this study. However, in the context of analysis, this comment highlights the potential failings of CSOs to communicate their intentions to learners and the relational disconnect across systems of influence within the school in providing support for CSO efforts.

Supporting learning exchanges

The youthful characteristics of many CSO facilitators were helpful for garnering participation as learners responded to their energy, enthusiasm, knowledge of teenage concerns, direct approach in asking and answering sensitive questions, and their sharing of practical experience and personal stories:

What I really liked about [the CSO facilitators] is they are not so old, they are almost our age group. But, you know, everything we talk about, they have experienced it as well, so they come to tell us in their lives ‘this is what happened’. You will be able to learn more, because someone has shared his/her experiences with you.

(Grade 11 Learner, PQ4 School ‘G’)

Group facilitators and speakers who were known to live in similar communities as learners were well-versed in contextualising concerns and issues. However, previous evidence has suggested that young people may resist communicating with service providers from the same community for fear that their concerns will be disclosed to family members (Ingram and Salmon, 2010). Privacy itself was one of the qualities favoured by learners, particularly within lower PQs, where the flexibility of visiting CSOs afforded greater anonymity for personal disclosures and less perceived judgement or repercussion at the school-level:

I feel more comfortable because I don’t know those people and they don’t know me. Even if I ask a question they won’t judge me or anything ‘cause if I ask my LO teacher she’ll be like ‘Oh [name] is now involved in this kind of a thing’ and only to find that I’m not.

(Grade 9 Learner, PQ1 School ‘I’)

Individual learners were more likely to identify the benefit of anonymity if the relationship with their own LO educator was simultaneously described as tenuous. However, the comment yields an important consideration regarding the LO educator relationship with CSOs. In this study, CSOs acknowledged that educators would vacate their classrooms for periods of time, when they perceived their presence as a barrier to learner communication about sensitive matters. LO educators, on the other hand, did not directly acknowledge leaving their classrooms, rather some educators in PQ3 and PQ4 schools (n = 3) highlighted instances where their presence supported lesson facilitation and eased potential learner discomfort:

We know that sometimes they are not free to see those people because they’re strangers, they don’t know them. So sometimes they won’t ask questions. So I sit with them in the same class and if during the questioning time, I even raise my hand and ask them questions.

(LO Educator, PQ4 School ‘K’)

Members from the two CSO groups largely agreed that facilitators want to be viewed as friends or peers in order to foster trusting and supportive relationships, with a relaxed approach to lessons that encourages participation in a non-threatening manner. Most of these facilitators even asked to be addressed by their first name:

It all goes with the approach, you know, like when you introduce yourself, like you shouldn’t introduce yourself as a teacher, that’s why we don’t want them to call us sir and missus and stuff, and prepare them to call us by name so that they see that there’s no gap between us and them, it’s just that we’re not wearing school uniform. Like during break time, we go to the grounds, stay with them, talk with them, have fun, joke, so that they can come to you and tell you their problems.

(Youth Facilitator, CSO ‘B’)

While having a youthful persona and adopting an egalitarian approach enabled an initial connection with learners, participating CSO facilitators admitted that these same qualities could pose challenges when establishing boundaries, maintaining discipline and managing classroom participation. As such, many learners across groups preferred the approach of their LO educator with regard to teaching experience and skills for maintaining classroom order:

An LO teacher is more trained to deal with the youth and to accept the situation that we are faced with as teenagers. If ever the students are in the classroom getting out of hand, the teacher knows how to deal with them until they realise that they are wrong.

(Grade 9 Learner, PQ4 School ‘M’)

The need for a consistent and dependable learning relationship was one of the key reasons why learners within a third of the focus groups (n = 10) across PQs and provinces supported the retention of LO educators as the primary subject facilitator:

I think the relationship we build with the LO teacher is very essential because he’ll get to know you on more than a student-teacher basis. Getting to know you personally will be easier for you to go and discuss personal problems with him.

(Grade 11 Girl, PQ 4 School ‘K’)

Although some individual learners in these groups expressed dissatisfaction with their own LO educator, the premise of sharing regular time with an on-site educator translated into greater opportunities for questions and lesson follow-up, as well as forging stronger bonds of trust based on shared understandings of personalities and community backgrounds.

Even with signed memoranda of understanding or job descriptions to clarify roles and responsibilities, youth facilitators in the two CSO focus groups expressed conflict over their duties towards learners in their care. Concern was raised by one facilitator about the moral and ethical consequences of opening dialogue on emotionally charged issues, considering the constraints for providing appropriate support and intervention:

I mean it’s like you’re opening up the wounds and then you’re leaving them unattended. Because you’ll find, let’s say for instance, I’m doing the workshop on HIV/AIDS and then you start talking about all those issues around that and then afterwards another comes to you and then says, you know, [] ‘I’m HIV positive and sometimes this is how I feel’, and you’re like, ‘Okay, oh my God’. [] How do I then help because our time is limited with them?

(Youth Facilitator, CSO ‘A’)

Although CSO facilitators recognised their potential to establish supportive relationships that would encourage learners’ disclosure of difficulties, they felt frustrated by the practical limitations of their involvement in the school or emotionally burdened by their own shortcomings with regard to counselling training, resolving ethical dilemmas and enabling reliable and sustainable referral systems. CSO facilitators also acknowledged their own personal limitations as helping professionals:

Even us as facilitators, somehow we think we are different from communities you come from, and we think we can go there and change lives. When we ourselves are struggling with these issues and it’s like we’re using a broken tool to fix a car, you know. Because the students we’re going to, they need help, they need our help and we ourselves, we need help. [] And until I can be comfortable enough about my status, my understanding, the way HIV has affected me, I cannot help [her] because they’ll be no-go areas for me. (Youth Facilitator, CSO ‘A’)

This verbalisation is not exclusive to CSOs, as previous research has highlighted the uncertainties and struggles of educators in managing issues related to sexuality education (Francis, 2013; Helleve et al., 2011; Smith and Harrison, 2013). CSO staff addressing sensitive matters may, therefore, also benefit from opportunities to identify and explore the personal values and assumptions that influence their interactions with young people in their care (Francis, 2013; Tucker et al., 2016).