Abstract:
The South African Schools Act, No. 84 of 1996 (SASA), provides parents with opportunities to serve on the governing bodies of public schools. In this context, members of school governing bodies may hold unique sets of expectations, which may influence the type of education to which a school community aspires. This article reports on an investigation into middle-class, public primary school governing body expectations of teacher workloads from a South African labour law perspective (Minnaar, 2008). The expectations of
parent members of school governing bodies were examined to determine whether they
were aligned with or diverged from the law. The findings provided evidence that although
governing body expectations of teachers were aligned with prevailing education labour
law, the open-ended nature of such law, together with omissions and silences, allows
legal space for individual and contextual interpretation and implementation and may
consequently intensify the workloads of teachers.
