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The focus of this paper is the availability and use of resources in disadvantaged schools in South Africa 20 years after the country attained democracy. It examines the extent to which teachers working in these deprived environments use available resources to perform their key pedagogical functions. The unit of analysis is a group of teachers registered for an in-service subject didactics English module at the University of South Africa (Unisa). A qualitative paradigm was adopted for the study and two instruments were used to gather data: semi-structured interviews and a lesson observation protocol. The results show that while much has been done since independence to improve the quality of education in disadvantaged contexts, teachers are still too burdened by constraints presented by their teaching environments; they are therefore unable to take control of available resources. Improving the quality of teaching and learning would entail a re-imagining of the entire education system with a view of empowering the teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]