Dr Prins Nevhutalu (Vice Chancellor, Cape Peninsula University of Technology)
Professor Yusuf Sayed (South African Research Chair & Director: Centre for International Teacher Education (CITE), Cape Peninsula University of Technology)
Attendees
South Africa redesigned its education system after 1994. It was a mammoth undertaking. The new democratic South Africa inherited a school and university system that was exclusive and tailored to serve a small white elite. It had to be transformed into a school and university system that was inclusive and tailored to serve the majority of South Africans.
I think it’s fair to say that we have opened up access to schools and universities, but we have been very much less successful in improving the quality of the education that our young people receive. In particular, we haven’t been able to improve the science and maths teaching in our schools and this has created a bottle neck in the expansion of our university system and unemployment for many young people. But more of that later.
As some of you will know South Africa underwent something of a step change in its politics over the past five years. Part of that process has been the choice of new education policies.
Let me recount a little education history.
In the first flush of our democratic transformation there were three key policy interventions whose impact (intended and otherwise) have shaped the way our school system has developed.
First, we tried to equalise teacher salaries and learner-teacher ratios between rich and poor schools. This was immensely difficult to do.
While the transition that we faced was not unique to South Africa, the experience of apartheid social engineering made the issues of transition uniquely complex.
The teacher equalisation strategy was an attempt to eradicate past inequalities in human and material resources (at the time of transition the state was spending five times as much on white as on black pupils). It was an attempt to equalise the distribution of public spending per pupil. If we couldn’t move pupils –and apartheid placed a geographic pattern on our cities and countryside –then perhaps we could move our teachers.
It has to be said that our attempt to move good teachers to poor schools failed. Many experienced teachers took a severance package rather than take posts in other provinces or regions where they were needed.
It was a trying time; there was a massive upheaval. Provincial departments halted new recruitment until all so-called excess teachers were redeployed or removed. It was also hardly surprising that students didn’t look on teaching as a career.
Second, we closed the 120 or so teacher-training colleges in the (rural) Bantustans and chose to move teacher training into universities where the standards were raised with a new policy on teacher qualifications and competencies. It was the right policy decision to take, but it placed training out of the reach of a lot of African students whom the whole process was intended to assist. Universities were few and were in the great urban centres, entry requirements were stiff, and it was more expensive to study at a university without a bursary (provinces had spent lavishly on teacher bursaries).
Third, we launched, a new curriculum. It’s launch was controversial. It was revised. And it’s still controversial.
Many teachers still find it difficult if not impossible to teach. It was worse for the many African teachers who had been trained in the homeland teacher training colleges on a fit-for-purpose curriculum dumbed down, so Mr Verwoerd so infamously implied, to suit our race. They found it most challenging to adapt to the new curriculum. And African teachers were and are in the majority in our failing schools.
We adopted a top-down approach and we stretched our teaching force to the limit. They buckled and revolted under the strain.
But government and the unions did join hands and to go into the future together on accepting a comprehensive policy on teacher education.
The National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development, published in April 2007, aimed to increase the supply and improve the quality of teachers. It reintroduced teacher-training bursaries that are redeemed through service in public schools. The impact of bursaries began to have a beneficial impact on the system quite quickly.
The framework policy was introduced when I was Minister of Education. It was subsequently improved in 2011 by the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa. The concern it addressed was both quantity and quality - that is the number of teachers and how well they are able to teach the curriculum. On the quantity issue I am told that there were under 6,000 graduates in 2008 and over 16,000 in 2013 and that the plan is to have 23,000 by 2019. Currently Funza Lushaka bursaries cost under R1 billion a year. On the quality issue progress has been much slower than anticipated.
I was always worried about our poor maths and science teaching in schools. It was always my aim to put good maths and science teachers in all public schools –and that was the one of the most important reasons for reintroducing tied bursaries for school teacher training - but I think, as Professor Carnoy's comparative study of maths teaching in schools in the North West and in Botswana showed, we have not as yet been successful in maths. The level of teachers’maths knowledge in South Africa and Botswana is simply too low –worse in South Africa than in Botswana and both worse than in Kenya. But Botswana does better than us and it’s the insightful understanding of why that is the case that is so important for all of us in education.
There were some key policy options that emerged from the Carnoy study and ones that the national department, the provinces and the DST considered carefully.
I don't think the a 1+4 model (one day teacher development, four days teaching) was one of them.
The Department of Science and Technology has a mandate in the area maths and science teaching. The DST’s key mandate around human capital development lies with postgraduate students, and specifically masters’ and doctoral research training, but the department has nonetheless championed a series of projects and programmes at both school and undergraduate levels.
It's part of an attempt to instil a wider appreciation and understanding of science in South Africans and especially among the young.
Compared to the R210 billion DBE (including provinces) and the R 6 billion DST budget, the R 69 million we spend on this initiative is small potatoes. But small potatoes can have a big impact.
Examples of existing DST initiatives are the annual National Science Week campaign and the Public Understanding of Biotechnology programme, while external stakeholders’ activities supported by the DST include the science centres and science festivals.
There are 30 science centres that the DST supports.
The DST uses new and existing technologies to improve maths and science teaching. I think of initiatives like Dr Math, a mobile Maths tutoring programme developed by the Meraka Institute, which enables learners to send through requests using MXit, and receive responses (via MXit) from tutors who are available online. Furthermore, through the Cofimvaba Technology for Rural Education and Development project, the DST is investing in research aimed at developing appropriate approaches for the incorporation of ICT in the classroom as part of the teaching and learning process.
In closing, let me say this. Teacher education requires vigour, professional action on the results of diagnostic analysis and the commitment of time and resources to achieving success.
There is a national consensus that there is underperformance in school education.
It is important that we focus on preparing for success from the early grades.
It’s impossible to achieve sustained success at grade 12, if we continue to have primary schools that do not teach reading, writing and numeracy.
Our current commitment to our children and their parents is to improve the performance of our schools in general and the achievement of our learners in maths and science.
Yet the evidence that poverty undermines education is overwhelming.
I believe –I do - that schools can make a difference to disadvantage and that they can overcome patterns of inherited poverty.
We celebrate those schools in rural areas where the results are above expectation and resources are poor. There are districts that achieve above provincial average success rates. We know what makes those districts successful.
The Ministerial Committee on Schools that Work, which I appointed in 2007, emphasised the important role that teachers play in achieving quality in education.
The simple point it made is that well qualified teachers, arriving on time, of sober mind and body, well prepared for their lessons and teaching for the duration of the school day make schools work.
I know that educational change is a slow and often painful process. But it's premised on the institutionalisation of educational routines.
We look to make learning and teaching routine in schools. We look to make teaching and learning happen in our classrooms every day, so that when learners leave home in the morning they know that the teacher will be in the classroom, that the teacher will be prepared adequately for his/her lessons and that all learners will be expected to work hard in class.
It is only when we are able to build this routine that we will be able to improve the quality of education in all our schools.
I thank you.
