After five years of schooling, about 50% of South African pupils cannot do basic calculations, such as dividing 24 by three. SA’s alternate education universes – a teacher’s inside view. The vicious cycle repeats itself. Education is a robust predictor of labour market outcomes in terms of employment and earnings, and thus is a key determinant of economic growth. Developing an education system for the fourth industrial revolution that actively applies knowledge to collaborative problem-solving. Cas Prinsloo, the chief research specialist at the education and learning research group, claimed that fads in global and nationwide pupil efficiency showed … While standards which professionalise create cultures of collegiality, expertise and pride among teachers, standards that manage can leave them feeling brow-beaten, untrusted, and demotivated. Consequently teaching is a prestigious and attractive profession which recruits the brightest and most motivated school graduates, who don’t require continual monitoring and oversight. The results show that 27% of our pupils who have attended school for six years cannot read, compared with 4% in Tanzania and 19% in Zimbabwe. The gap in test scores between … At the same time, management standards must be considered carefully. The desire and expectation of any parent, society or government is that children should receive a good education to enhance their personal development and transform them into good citizens. And in turn, poor quality education in rural areas will only continue to perpetuate long-term poverty in the region. How to improve education quality in South Asia. In a virtuous cycle the system can afford to set standards that reflect the best professional knowledge internationally. The latest results available, from the National School Effectiveness Study, which tests numeracy and literacy, show that South Africa’s mean scores for literacy in grade three and grade four were 19% and 27% respectively. The Mail & Guardian is a proud news publisher with roots stretching back 35 years, and we’ve survived right from day one thanks to the support of readers who value fiercely independent journalism that is beholden to no-one. This has been identified as a cause of the poor quality of South African education. THE RECENTLY released World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report 2014 on South Africa’s education crisis raises serious concerns of threats to … Half of all South African pupils who attended school for five years can’t do basic calculations. Figure 1 shows the proportions of functionally illiterate grade 6 … The quality of a nation’s teachers cannot be divorced from the quality of its learners exiting schools. Invariably, the relationship between teacher unions and governments becomes antagonistic and generates feelings of fear and mistrust. They include: Thando Ngozo and Sabelo Mtantato are researchers at the Financial and Fiscal Commission. The harder issue, which arises in the international milieu and in South Africa too, is the centrality of improving the quality of education. Their talents and abilities remain underdeveloped and their economic opportunities remain limited. Search for author on Twitter, Death and anxiety rife at matric marking centres as schools reopening delayed, Wanuri Kahiu, the Kenyan film director taking on the world, Published contracts are a powerful antidote to corruption, How lottery execs received dubious payments through a private company, What the Biden presidency may mean for Africa, Disinformation harms health and democracy. Various international studies attest to the poor quality of our education system. In tests conducted in 15 sub-Saharan African countries in 2007 by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (Sacmeq), South Africa ranks … Not necessarily. Read also: SA’s alternate education universes – a teacher’s inside view. At the same time, it’s calculated that 10% of the country’s teachers are absent from school each day, while research found that 79% of South African Grade 6 mathematics teachers were classified as having content knowledge levels below the level at which they were teaching. There are many excellent teachers who are hungry for opportunities to develop in ways that nurture autonomy and collegiality. The state justified its actions by saying that it was protecting the rights of children to education while also mitigating the effects of poverty experienced in the children’s homes. This is according to a 2015 TIMMS report on mathematics achievements among Grade 5 learners in South Africa. Subscribe to our Newsletter to get daily updates on local affairs, with a global context. Therefore, there are other factors that are key to underachievement in basic education outcomes. In most countries, such noble reforms would have improved the quality and equality of education and would have borne tangible fruits. Consequently, their learners do very poorly and teaching is perceived as a low status career. South Africa … Educational inequalities in South Sudan can be attributed to a number of factors. This, in turn, produces high quality teachers who improve learner outcomes. The world is changing fast and to keep up you need local knowledge with global context. In vicious schooling cycles governments take it upon themselves to hold teachers accountable. In the South African context, teacher standards are a response to a lack of teacher accountability. There remains a significant gap in education standards between rich and poor communities. To help us continue for another 35 future years with the same proud values, please consider taking out a subscription. Poor quality schooling at the primary and secondary level in South Africa severely limit the youth’s capacity to exploit further training opportunities. As a result, existing skills deficiencies among those who are the product of an underperforming school system (predominantly black youth) are likely to … Eskom: Energy expert warns of electricity catastrophe in SA, Herman Mashaba: Finding jobs for thousands of…, South Africans have a constitutional right to take…, SASSA beneficiaries water blasted while Lindiwe Zulu…. Therefore, the failure of South Africa’s education system has had an intense effect on the economy. While there is no magic bullet to fix the quality of education in South Asia, the report identifies a few key strategic priorities. Angry SAs speak: The alcohol ban is economic murder! A few of the report’s recommendations were implemented, for example, children from farms were moved to boarding schools in certain provinces, although this raised issues of whether the rights of children and parents were observed. As a result, their learners perform well and the school system enjoys a high level of public esteem. Enhancing the equity, effectiveness and efficiency of resource use across the education system; Increasing the managerial, administrative and technical capacity of the national and provincial bureaucracies; Increasing teacher content knowledge and teaching skills; Introducing entrepreneurship learning within the education system; and. These include inefficiencies and the quality of teachers (knowledge content), among others. Unsurprisingly then, research on newly qualified teachers indicates that students enter their studies with very poor skills, and leave with little more. Despite increased education spending and enrollment levels, South Africa continues to be considered one of the worst education systems in the world. This, in turn, alienates the best school graduates who frankly have better career options. In South Africa, the advent of democracy triggered significant reforms to the management, governance, curriculum redesign and restructuring, and funding of education. The country’s poor education system also results in inequalities in the returns on skills, unemployment, low labour productivity and low labour income in the self-employed informal sector. © 2021 BizNews, Inc. | The Rational PerspectiveTerms & ConditionsComments Policy. Indeed, South Africa did realise a rapid expansion of education, including increased enrolment, but the quality of education has remained poor and largely characterised by inequality. The reorientation of the education system encompassed transformation from knowledge accumulation to critical thinking and problem-solving, refocusing the racially segregated public spending on education to targeting poor children. 11 February 2020, 17:13 UTC. The end of school is therefore the beginning of higher education. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a quadrennial test conducted in 57 countries, ranks South Africa almost last in its various rankings, even though its scores have been improving. This is because few of them attain a university entrance pass and even fewer qualify to pursue degrees in the fields of mathematics and engineering, where most of the opportunities exist. “But public education provision in townships and rural schools is still of poor quality. image caption There are an estimated 12 million children in school in South Africa But introducing teacher standards in South Africa also comes with a caveat. South Africa should not shy away from developing and promoting professional best practice, and providing the opportunities for teachers to reach them. Prior to 2009, these two departments were represented in a single Department of Education. The quality of education for most black children is poor. These are their own views. Numerous suggestions have been floated. Counting was slow across Uganda as a result of the internet shutdown, which affected some of the biometric machines used to validate voter registrations. This is a common trend in countries like South Africa which have a “vicious” rather than “virtuous” schooling cycle. It is widely accepted that most of Africa’s education and training programs suffer from low-quality teaching and learning, as well as inequalities and exclusion at all levels. Previous studies have shown that the low quality of education offered to the poor eventually becomes a poverty trap.12 Thus one can say that poor children in South Africa, who make up the majority, are starting behind and staying behind. Education in South Africa is governed by two national departments, namely the department of Basic Education (DBE), which is responsible for primary and secondary schools, and the department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), which is responsible for tertiary education and vocational training. Does this mean that South African teachers are damned to the stick, rather than the carrot? Research into the value of teacher standards for South Africa warns that this approach could serve to de-professionalise the country’s teaching force if not approached carefully. After 12 years of schooling, many can’t find jobs. South Africa’s education system performs worse than those of Zimbabwe, Kenya and Swaziland. Education remains an apex priority for government. In the South African context, teacher standards are a response to a lack of teacher accountability. This is hardly surprising when 60% of maths teachers, teaching from grades one to six, failed to pass tests for maths at the grade level, according to the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality. The basic premise of teacher standards is that if you expect more from teachers, don’t allow them into the classroom until they’ve met a basic set of criteria, and hold them to account if they fall short, then the quality of teachers will improve. There are various reasons for this, but the chief one is the dual education system. It was stimulated by the view that higher expectations for student learning could be accomplished only by higher expectations of teaching quality. Unequal educational attainment is evident in the labour market because the large unemployment burden is disproportionately carried by young people. The quality and professionalism of the teachers nurtures the next generation of high-quality teacher trainees. © 2021 BizNews, Inc. | The Rational Perspective, Here’s how CEOs and school principals can fix SA education. Per capita, South Africa spends more on education than most advanced economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom, yet its primary education system was rated 126th out of 138 countries in the World Economic Forum 2016-2017 Global Competitiveness Report. The effect of food insecurity on education is partially addressed in South Africa through the government’s National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP). There are also certain traditional cultural ideas about women which make it more difficult for girls to get an education than their male counterparts. Material may not be published or reproduced in any form without prior written permission. Given that teacher quality is one of the biggest factors determining the learning outcomes of students, what will it take to improve teacher quality and professionalism in the country? A recent Amnesty International report on education in South Africa paints a picture of a basic education system that is still failing learners from poorer communities.. Yet management standards are often mistaken for professional standards. Everything from investing like Warren Buffett to the Audiobiography of Cyril Ramaphosa. This notable progress has been recorded across the three components of basic education in early childhood development, primary and secondary education: JOHANNESBURG — This time of year is usually filled with reflection for the thousands of learners who have completed (or failed) matric. Teachers instead enjoy professional autonomy; they are trusted in key decisions about their teaching and professional development. And as this international expert outlines below, our system in SA is completely hamstrung by the quality of teachers on board. Those without matric have poor skills and few work-relevant competencies struggle to enter a labour market that demands highly skilled workers. The means score for numeracy in these grades in other countries were 28% and 35% respectively. Surely, it’s time to properly professionalise this industry, just as has been done with engineers, pilots and (bar KPMG of course) chartered accountants? Therefore, good-quality basic education is one of the non-negotiables, as higher or tertiary education needs sound primary and secondary education to build on. South Africa spends more than 6% of GDP on education, which is higher than the OECD average of 4.5%, and schools in poor areas get more government money than schools in richer areas. 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