While successful learners all across the country are celebrating their matric results and with a cohort of new grade 1s just starting their academic careers, it is apt to question whether the National Senior Certificate (NSC) is a true measure of the learners’ knowledge, skills and personal development. Is it time South Africa rather moves to continuous assessments like other countries?
Before we can determine the best possible solution to benefit the learners, a critical look at the state of education in the country is necessary.
During the technical briefing on Thursday 19 January 2023, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) Director-General, Hubert Mathanzima Mweli, remarked that the issue plaguing the education system is not dropouts but a high failure rate.
I agree with him on the high failure rate and appreciate his candour, but the country’s high dropout rate cannot be ignored. Both these issues deserve Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s urgent attention.
The high dropout rate and the high failure rate are symptoms of the same disease. StatsSA’s 2021 General Household Survey revealed that 21.2% of learners drop out of school as a result of poor academic performance. The 2022 dropout rate for the matric cohort was 31.8 %, and the real pass rate only 54.6%.
Other roots for both failure and dropouts are the need for quality teachers, failure to provide adequate and safe infrastructure, lack of learning and teaching support material (LTSM), and lack of necessary facilities and equipment like computer labs, data, wifi.
Not to mention factors like bullying at school, substance abuse, learner pregnancies, child-headed households, financial constraints, and gender-based violence (GBV).
And then of course the extraordinary circumstances of Covid-19 lockdowns and last year’s KwaZulu-Natal floods.
Rolling blackouts would also have aggravated the situation even further. On 8 December 2022 the rolling blackout monitoring app, EskomSePush, revealed that South Africans had suffered through an average of 192,720 minutes of rolling blackouts last year. While measures were put in place to minimise the impact on the matric examinations, learners were not exempted from the rolling blackouts during the rest of the year.
The quality of education that learners receive is possibly the biggest obstacle to their success. Unfortunately, studies have shown that the quality of South Africa’s teaching does not meet local or international education standards. In answer to a written parliamentary question, the minister revealed that in 2021, 1,575 unqualified and underqualified teachers were teaching in schools across the country.
Furthermore, a study by the Southern and East African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (Sacmeq) to measure teachers’ knowledge of the subjects they teach proved that local teachers fall woefully short of international standards, with teachers unable to pass tests in the subjects they teach.
The DA has suggested establishing an independent school monitoring evaluation authority to evaluate and monitor teachers. An independent authority is crucial to the professional development of teachers, as the South African Council for Educators (Sace) seems to have forsaken their mandate to manage the professional development of teachers. The 2021-22 Auditor-General’s report highlighted this by stating, “Sace is still struggling to produce credible performance reports”.
Given the poor quality of teaching many learners receive, it is hardly a wonder that South Africa fared the worst out of 50 countries assessed in the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls), which measures learner literacy at a grade 4 level, as well as literacy teaching methods.
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And our performance in the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timms) was disappointing. Both grade 4 and 8 assessments revealed a failure to meet international standards. Without a strong foundational base in numeracy and literacy, learners become discouraged and either drop out or perform poorly due to lack of interest or skills — because their educators failed to instil the necessary skills to naturally progress in learning.
There has been much blame assigned to the curriculum, but the presentation of Umalusi’s benchmarking study to Parliament’s Basic Education Portfolio Committee seems not to bear this out. Our curriculum compares quite favourably to the other programmes/qualifications in the study. I must note that although quality of teaching did not form part of this study, it was raised as a concern during the presentation.
Not that the curriculum does not have room for improvement. The DA’s numerous oversights and engagements with education stakeholders and teachers have highlighted issues with administration, pacing, content and focus.
Teachers are buried in mountains of unnecessary administration that reduces preparation time for lessons and teaching time. They are unable to provide struggling learners with extra attention and resources, as they simply do not have the time after completing all their administrative duties.
A 2020 study by Amnesty International found that South African teachers spend an average of 12% less classroom time than their international counterparts on actual teaching and learning — 66% compared to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 78%. Teaching time also decreases with class size due to increased time spent on classroom management.
Struggling learners are also not able to keep up with the curriculum’s demanding pace and heavy content load — factors that also influence the quality of teaching. And with overcrowded classrooms, teachers are simply not able to provide those learners the attention they need to master the content. Learners simply continue to fall further behind.
While the multiple school-based assessments might aid in identifying struggling learners, they also exacerbate the problem by increasing teachers’ administrative workload and thereby stealing valuable teaching time.
Foundation phase teachers need to be equipped and supported to provide all learners with the necessary numeracy and literacy skills without which they do not have a hope of reasonable success in the subsequent phases.
The curriculum needs to be refocused to cultivate entrepreneurship, creativity and independent thinking. Learners need those critical skills to create economic opportunities no matter the economic climate or age in which they find themselves. If we want our learners to thrive, we cannot continue to rely on an outdated curriculum that fails to address historical inequalities and must instead prepare learners to create their own prosperity.
In light of these serious concerns, we should ask whether learners truly benefit from the 12 years (or more) they spend in South African classrooms and if the NSC is worth it.
The current curriculum fails to instil in learners the knowledge skills necessary for the harsh realities of our economic climate, as much as the matric examination fails to measure learners’ potential to succeed.
Maybe it is time we reconsidered alternative assessment and teaching methods that will allow all learners the chance of success they deserve. DM
Baxolile Nodada MP is the DA’s Shadow Minister for Basic Education and the party’s Constituency Leader in Alfred Nzo District.