WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-03-14 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
By Graeme Bloch
In the third article in our new series, Graeme Bloch, an education specialist at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, argues that a 30-year plan is necessary to fix the education system.
A toxic mix of causes keeps South Africa’s schools and educational institutions in a state of disaster, neither able to meet the skills needs of a growing economy nor to provide opportunity to young South Africans who expect to find a place in a shared and caring democracy.
Schools act as sites of exclusion and disappointment, when they should be pointing the way to excellence and achievement for all.
| ‘Teaching is the only profession with no agreed supervision’ |
The failures are well known. South Africa is routinely outperformed in all standardised tests for literacy and maths. Results are nearly bottom in the Southern African Development Community and among the worst in Africa, despite higher levels of spending and greater resources.
Just 7 percent of schools produce 67 percent of mathematics higher grade passes; 79 percent produce a dismal 15 percent.
In the Western Cape, 85 percent of Grade 6 pupils at formerly white schools could read at 6th-grade level in 2005; only 5 percent of Africans could. The corresponding figure for maths was a mediocre 65 percent for white schools and only 2 percent for African.
In matric, disparities remain: 39,4 percent of black candidates failed last year against 1,6 percent of whites. Exemptions for black students in matric in 2007 (10,9 percent vs 52 percent for whites) show that little has changed since 1991 when the figure was 10,8 percent.
Half of all black learners drop out. By any measure, 60-80 percent of our schools are dysfunctional, achieving poor education outcomes. It is largely black, rural and poor learners who suffer.
| ‘The best of our generations should aspire to teach’ |
Polokwane has opened up space for policy review, to ask honestly what has gone so wrong, why we have not achieved, even nearly, what we hoped? Is anyone to blame? What can be done?
Resolutions at Polokwane suggest that grassroots involvement, including by ANC branches, would benefit both education and health. The resolutions have improved from earlier drafts at the preceding July policy conference, where there was little analysis, energy or perception of the importance of education to ordinary people.
Now there is a call for free education to undergraduate level – though implications, costs and choices are not spelled out.
Taken together with a resolution on “no-fee” schools, there is clear concern about the impact of poverty on outcomes and achievement.
Most importantly, there is recognition of the central role of teachers, with a call for a social compact with the profession. Teaching will be restored to the noble profession it should be. In return, teachers will be in class, on time, teaching.
It must be said that much has been done in 14 years. The task should not be underestimated. It took enormous effort to unify education departments and dispensations. There is the regular logistical achievement of a single national matric exam and high levels of budgetary allocation to education with a realignment of spending to pro-poor norms.
A raft of praiseworthy programmes aims to improve teaching and the conditions of learning, including the new curriculum. Measures support teacher training and bursaries, school nutrition, infrastructure improvement, scholar transport, school safety initiatives and acknowledge the need for learning strategies around basic literacy.
Yet look at the realities. A young child lives with her granny; she is third generation without work in the family; she never gets up to see her father tying his shoelaces and setting off to work.
On the way to school, she is hassled. At school, there is chaos, teachers are late, school never sets the boundaries, disciplines and framework for support that is given to a small minority, “privileged” enough to find their way to the tiny number of places in functional schools.
Are teachers to blame? Apartheid banned maths in black schools, so there shouldn’t be surprise that content knowledge is now low. Where will a generation of brilliant mathematics teachers suddenly emerge? What brilliant maths graduate will want to teach rather than be an engineer or entrepreneur?
Many teachers in the system never chose teaching; until two decades ago it was one of the few professions open to blacks. Now colleagues have left to earn far more in government, or run their own businesses, or stand for political office – underpaid, unappreciated, in schools that remain poorly resourced, even the best and most committed teachers start feeling worn down.
To study teaching, you must find university-level fees, as the colleges were closed. Unions have become locked in a confrontational labour relations mode, in a state of continuous war with education departments. Teaching is the only profession with no agreed supervision. Year after year, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union complains about results in poor schools, but never seems to mobilise its teachers, who are precisely in those poor schools.
And leadership? Where would 29 000 excellent leaders spring from to run all the public schools? Where there are great principals, it is true there are often brilliant results, even in the worst resourced schools. Yet, on the whole, support to the classroom teaching endeavour is slack. Whether principals at school, poorly equipped district offices, or provincial authorities that don’t do their job, there are too many breakdowns and administrative blocks.
Bureaucratic and administrative functions, which should give support so teachers can get on with teaching, too often add layers of confusion, more paperwork and interfering top-down edicts. In a developmental state, these things will have to be sorted out as a matter of urgency and priority.
Too many schools still need electricity (16 percent), toilets and telephones. What will it cost to give each school a library, a computer lab, a science lab, a sports field? These are basics for effective education.
Is political leadership on the same page? There is some excellent provincial input. Yet even nationally, we saw how the first post-1994 education minister, Sibusiso Bhengu, lost momentum, and squandered space and enthusiasm.
Professor Kader Asmal’s high-profile energy couldn’t translate into structure throughout the system. Even Naledi Pandor’s stability and openness seems to be giving way to frustration and top-down style, as seen in the recent oath.
Education has to be a highest political priority, not just of the minister, but of co-ordinated government (health, sports, safety, social development, science and technology). Education will have to be the responsibility of the entire country, if we are to get it right.
So a “toxic mix” conspires to make it hard and complex to change education outcomes. Very few countries in recent times have succeeded.
Yet South Africa expects better and to be different, even as it creaks under the unchanged weight of its apartheid past. In-class and teacher-based issues; poor technical, administrative and political support around the school; and limitations of the wider society – from gangs to lack of books in the home – all combine to reinforce the past, to encourage division and mediocrity.
Instead of a learning nation going forward, a deep mix of history and sociology, of bad choice and unsatisfactory delivery, institutional failure and social deficit, all hold back our country and stop schools from doing what they should.
A suggested first task for a new minister of education is to prepare an all-in summit of stakeholders involved in education.
Fixing education is a 30-year task, which must start now, with urgency. Everyone should be on board, unified around a vision for a learning nation. What are priorities and how will we get there? What landmarks and phases? Where will we start? Where do we expect to be in five years, in 10, in 30?
This debate is not once-off, but a process. It must avoid simplistic, superficial posturing and discourage holy cows. Can we as a country talk about the place we see for education; dialogue about where we want to be? How we all do our bit, where each can best contribute, focusing on strengths and moving forward together?
There are some elements that could focus such a plan.
In the first place, teachers. How do we enthuse the teachers in the frontline with our youth? With training and clear texts, quality can rise. Through a mixture of encouragement and support – where necessary “gently” holding recalcitrants’ feet to the fire – teachers will be central to the national endeavour.
The best of our generations should aspire to teach.
Departments must do their jobs, especially at provincial level. Fill vacant and “acting” posts, manage properly, deliver on time and at the right place. There must be focus on management and follow through, responsibility and accountability. Social momentum can ensure government structures fulfil their tasks.
Society will have to rally around. Change will never come only from above. Initiative and innovation can draw down good programmes to school level, coming up with new schemes and keeping feet to the fire.
There are many backyard initiatives that concentrate where one has influence. Corporate social investment spending is increasingly focused in clusters of schools over a consistent and long period across a range of programmes of support.
Many graduates have organised to plough back into schools and help in a systematic way. Community programmes such as Proudly Manenberg, Tikkun, or parents of Piet N Aphane High in rural Limpopo, show that schools can be improved at grassroots level. Good practice and high achievement motivate others and spread.
Lastly, the question of resources will have to be faced. Throwing money at the problem won’t help, yet eventually these things will cost. All schools deserve a library, a lab, computers and a sports field.
A huge change in mind-set, accompanied by a massive effort, is needed to improve the quality of education, especially in the poorer schools where the majority of the disadvantaged are. Polokwane gives space to open debate, and focus on quality education for our future’s sake.