- discussions/negotiations on the basis that this was a professional matter and not a governance issue. An agreement, still somewhat scant on detail, apparently emerged between the Department and the unions late in the year. Testing of learners will continue, but on the basis of random samples rather than universal testing, and the process will occur triennially rather than annually. Efforts will apparently also be made to ensure that the outcomes are statistically validly comparable, year on year. The Department has given in on more issues than we would have liked to see happening, but final judgement on the new approach will have to await practical implementation during 2017. No ANAs were written in 2016, and it is possibly of some significance that the home-grown, parallel system of systemic testing developed in the Western Cape experienced greater opposition and disruption in 2016 than had been the case in 2015.
- 2.10 Uncertainty around the implementation of the introduction of an additional indigenous language
- This is yet another contentious issue. Whereas there has been strong across-the-board support for the concept of teaching indigenous languages to children in those segments of the population that have been notoriously unilingual in the past, everybody except the education departments themselves believe that the necessary arrangements have simply not been far enough advanced to allow the project to proceed to effective implementation. Towards the end of the year, we were given grapevine-based indications that the project would not proceed, as the resources to carry it through were simply not available. The matter was not even touched on at of final meeting of the National Consultative Forum at the end of November, so imagine our surprise and dismay as we received notification immediately thereafter that the project was to proceed - this at the same time that schools in the Eastern Cape, the only province where the project had been implemented in any significant numbers, would be losing the services of their departmentally-provided, dedicated, indigenous language teachers. Of even greater concern was that neither the Heads of Education in the Western Cape nor the Eastern Cape were even aware of the existence of the instruction to proceed with this project! Yet again, we will have to await the unfolding of developments in 2017.
- 2.11 Growing discord between governing bodies and management in schools
- We reported a year ago on the growing discord, even antagonism, between school governing bodies and management. 2016 has seen little improvement in this regard, and we have had many instances of clear interference by governors in management activities, a growing unwillingness of school management in certain instances to provide information requested by governors, and a general deterioration of what we have long categorised as the most important relationship in the school - that between principal and governors. It does not bode well for either education or governance in our schools, and is something that will need to be seriously addressed in the coming months.
- 2.12 Uniforms and sole suppliers

Towards the end of the year, the Competition Commission re-ignited a feud which had emerged around schools, school uniforms and sole supplier status for retailers. We had already advised our membership early in the year of concerns around this practice, and what action needed to be taken in this regard. It would appear that many did not heed this advice and some complaints to the Commission (albeit limited in number) have been picked up on by both the Commission itself and the media - in the latter case, it would appear, in the absence of hard news with which to fill their publications at year end! Unfortunately, though, it has placed a matter at the forefront of the attention of many, and our fear is that it could possibly lead to attacks on the entire concept of the wearing of school uniforms, and become linked to the "#HairMustFall" movement.

- 3 IMPORTANT MATTERS FROM WITHIN THE FOUNDATION

Internal developments developments which have had a strategic impact on the Foundation during 2016 have included:

- 3.1 Membership
- We have held our own in the membership arena during 2016. We have seen a small outflow of existing members, particularly in Gauteng, sometimes on financial grounds, occasionally as a result of apathy on the part of the schools concerned, and in several instances on socio-political grounds, often linked to a perception that our careful and measured approach to law and officialdom is insufficiently combative or confrontational.