When I was growing up I knew the value of
education. I knew that education was important for my future position in the
labour market. I remember some of the days when my parents did not have money
to pay for my school fees. In those days if you did not pay the school fee you
were not allowed to attend school until the money is paid. My parents were
relatively poor and were struggling to maintain the monthly household
expenditure. My father had attained a standard 6 and my mother had some
secondary education. The levels of education they had acquired channelled them
to work at the lower end of the then South African labour market; hence they
were struggling to afford some basic expenses such as payment of school
fees. I remember that on such occasions
I usually swore that I would report my parents to the police as they were
denying my right to education.
At school I was very competitive and as a
result I always came in the top 5 in my class. I remember then there were exit
examinations at various levels throughout the basic education: at standard 5
(grade7), standard 8 (grade 10) and standard 10 (grade 12). As learners in
those days we were doing our best to achieve and our parents were monitoring us
by looking at our books frequently, though as we progressed to higher grades at
secondary school they did not understand the work we were doing. Unlike today
there was no continuous assessment, our fate was mainly dependent on the final
examination.
Those days there were inspectors from the
Ciskei Department of Education who always visited our schools. These were the
days I enjoyed most at school because our teacher were more friendly and did
not use the stick to beat us. I always felt a feeling of satisfaction when some
of my exercise books had a signature of the inspector. This made me feel
important. As I progressed to higher grades of my secondary education I came to
realise the importance of these inspectors. Their role was to monitor the
quality of teaching and learning.
It was also during my later school days
that I became aware of the politics of the country. When I was watching the
news at our neighbour’s black and white TV set, I always wondered why there
were conflicts between white police and blacks in the townships of the Republic
of South Africa. Another strange thing to me was that when we travelled to King
William’s Town we were in ‘another country’. But this town was supported by
people from surrounding villages who were belonging to the Ciskei homeland. The
1976 uprising by Soweto students against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of
instruction also contributed to my political awakening. During 1984 and 1985
when the apartheid offensive became stronger against black communities, I began
to contribute though modestly to the struggles of students of that time. I came
to understand that our education was inferior to that of our white counter
brothers and sisters. Our schools were overcrowded, we did not have necessary
equipment and facilities, there were no laboratories and libraries, and the
list is endless. It was against this
backdrop that we struggled for the release of political prisoners and the
unbanning of organisations such as the African National Congress.
I was overjoyed when the ANC won the
elections in 1994. Even before that I was happy when leaders such as Nelson
Mandela and Walter Sisulu were released. One of the great things that the ANC
government did after it came to power was to broaden access to schooling to
many school-going age children. Access to schooling for children between from 7
to 15 year old has been almost universal. Many government documents and
academics agree that the country has achieved the Millennium Development Goal
of universal access for this age group. The only age group that still faces
some challenges due to dropping out of the school system is from 16-18 years.
These are high school learners whose participation in school education is
around 83 percent. However, relative to other countries South Africa fares
better in this age category. The other commendable achievement made by the
current government is with regard to public expenditure in schooling. The
government has been able to narrow the gap between per learner expenditures
between the racial groups in South Africa. This has been achieved through
pro-poor spending programmes such as no-fee schools, nutrition programme and
scholar transport. About 60 percent of learners in South Africa do not pay
school fees, i.e quintile 1 to 3. During apartheid education public expenditure
towards a white learner was five times more that of a black learner. Currently,
evidence suggests that per learner expenditure towards a learner in a
historically white school is 1.22 times more than that of a learner in
historically black school. This difference is attributed to the non-teaching
personnel advantage that the historically white schools still enjoy.
In many countries including South Africa,
most of the expenditure of the national budget goes to education. In the South
African case public expenditure on education is around 20 percent of the
national budget and the bulk of this money is channelled towards basic
education due to high number of learners enrolled in this level of education.
Moreover, about 5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on
education, and around 4 percent of this is spent on basic education. The
question that we need to pose ourselves is to what extent are our schools able
to transform such huge investments in schooling into learner outcomes. In other
words, we need to ask ourselves whether our schooling is efficient or not.
There is plenty of evidence that our schooling system is very inefficient. This
evidence is in the form of national assessments such as matric examinations,
national systemic evaluations, international assessments such as Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ) and Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS). Before we examine the performance of our learners in these types of
assessment I must highlight the point that our schooling system is bimodal. We
have inherited on the one hand a schooling system for historically white and
Indian schools which is characterised by functional management, motivated
teaching corps, disciplined learners and subsequent high levels of learner
performance. On the other hand we have a system of historically black and
coloured schools that is characterised by dysfunctional management, demotivated
teachers, ill-disciplined learners and low levels of learner performance. In
all the forms of assessment highlighted above there is a dichotomy in terms of
the level of performance by leaners from these two systems of schooling. As
indicated above learners from historically white and Indian schools perform far
better than those from historically black and coloured schools. And more importantly
learners in historically black and coloured schools perform poorly in
mathematics and science, and these are the subjects that indicate quality of
schooling. Moreover, most of learners from these schools do not get university
endorsements.
This scenario paints a bleak future for the
majority of our learners from historically black schools in particular, and
from historically coloured schools in general. Most of these learners would not
be able to participate in the labour market that requires high skills, such as
engineering and accountancy. The implication is that black learners who are
from poor families, even after 20 years of democracy, are confronted with
greater opportunities of being unemployed/unemployable and if employed they would
find work in low-paying jobs.The sad thing about this is that poor black
parents who cannot afford to send their children in historically white schools
will never escape from poverty since their children won’t be able to get decent
jobs. Only the children of the middle class parents who have access to
historically white schools are fortunate. In a nutshell the current system of
education breeds the seeds of inequality and further perpetuates such
inequality for future generations.
The above situation compels us to ask
ourselves some hard questions in order to find solutions to this crisis. Why
even after we have levelled the playing field in terms of funding to poor
schools, these schools are still not performing according to national
expectations. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has formulated some
strategic plans to overcome this, and some of these plans are being implemented
as we speak. Among these plans is the maximisation of teaching time,
introduction of accountability, introduction of incentives to schools that
achieve more than 10 percent in each successive annual assessment. Evidence
abounds about less time that teachers in historically black schools spend
teaching. In some cases teachers would be present in school but not actually
teaching the learners. The DBE has introduced various measures to maximise time
on task on the part of teachers. One other plan is to involve parents through
School Governing Bodies (SGBs) in monitoring school performance. It is hoped
that this will strengthen accountability among teachers and school managers.
However, this won’t be easy since most of our SGBs are themselves dysfunctional
and are easily manipulated by principals and teachers.
No comments:
Post a Comment