Education Department Continues To Fail 3
Despite the backslapping over the 2006 matric results if one digs deeper the results don’t look all that celbratory. David Macfarlance lists his complaints with Minisiter of Education Naledi Pandor and her department in an op-ed at the Mail&Guardian. The following excerpt highlights two important complaints: the continued overburden of certain school districts despite over 13 years of the current administration and the abysmal Maths and Science pass rates.
But two of the minister’s other criticisms of the system’s performance serve to raise questions about the extent to which the national government is indeed playing its part. Illustrating her contention that districts need to provide better support to schools she observed that the Namakwa district in the Northern Cape has merely 20 secondary schools to oversee, while the Capricorn district in Limpopo has a staggering 362.
It is dismaying, however, 12 years into our democratic dispensation, to hear a national education minister produce this figure with an air of discovery. School districts do not come about via acts of God: government officials draw lines on a map. And for years educationists have been sounding alarms about the functioning of districts, usually to deafening government silence.
The second example concerns the wretchedly low 2006 pass rates in higher grade maths and science—4,8% and 5,6% respectively. Rather wanly, Pandor commented that “we will have to pay much closer attention to performance in these subjects”.
But what “attention” exactly has the national government been paying for 10 years now regarding these subjects? Since 1997 the pass rate in maths has never exceeded 5,3%; in science over the same period the highest pass rate was a paltry 5,9%. After all, “national [government] is responsible for policy development, monitoring and support to ensure we achieve desired outcomes,” Pandor observed; yet what has its monitoring over 10 years in these two areas achieved?
Education holds the key to be the true equaliser of society in South Africa and that the situation is as dire as it is 13 years after the end of Apartheid is nothing short of a slow moving tragedy.
My visits to schools up until 2002 showed that many were no different to what they were in Apartheid days. At that stage I still came across schools in the Eastern Cape with gaping holes in rotting floors, leaking roofs, no toilets, no running water and little in the way of books, pencils and other resources. Class sizes were in the 60s. It would not surprise me to find that this is still the case.
There are still too many under-trained and under-performing teachers. Teacher absenteeism, drunkenness and violence against children was still rife in 2002. Nevertheless, I also came across some extremely dedicated teachers who gave their all to provide poor children with the basics of education under very trying circumstances.
Much of this is a hangover from the cruel days of apartheid, but the ANC must also take some blame for the callous greed of those in positions of authority whose main interest is self enrichment rather than the delivery to communities for which they are responsible.
There’s more. Teachers are no longer allowed to discipline pupils and are more often than not afraid of them. There’s the ‘tik’ problem, which makes pupils aggressive and violent. Thugs are lying in wait outside the school gates. You tell me who can learn anything in such an environment.
Inyoka: I agree that there’s plenty that is still a relic from the pre-1994 era, what concerns me is that only after 10+ years the maths and science pass rates have not moved significantly at all. Pandor saying that they’re only going to now “pay much closer attention to performance in these subjects” is frankly a dismissable offence in my opinion.