The state of education in South Africa

[Dave A]

Matric results are out, and the pass rate is down

But this indicates the larger trend:

The overall pass rate dropped 2 percentage points to 60.7 percent, meaning that since 2004 the pass rate has fallen 10 percentage points. This is despite a fifth of the national budget being spent on education - far higher than the international norm.
full story from Business Report here

In the interests of accuracy, the pass rate was actually down 1.8%, and more people are doing maths and science which is supposed to be tougher subjects (something I never understood personally as these were my "easy" ones, but I guess we've all got different talents).

But a 10% drop in pass rate since 2004! And it's not as if we're not spending the money!

So what is it then? Teacher quality? Bad management? Bad leadership? Bad students?

[sterne.law@gmail.com]

Matric results are out, and the pass rate is down

But this indicates the larger trend:

In the interests of accuracy, the pass rate was actually down 1.8%, and more people are doing maths and science which is supposed to be tougher subjects (something I never understood personally as these were my "easy" ones, but I guess we've all got different talents).

But a 10% drop in pass rate since 2004! And it's not as if we're not spending the money!

So what is it then? Teacher quality? Bad management? Bad leadership? Bad students?

If we wanted to be really accurate we would need to factor in the facts that the exams or standards are lower, hence matric has actually become easier.
i think all your reasons are valid - but perhaps an interesting statistic would be to invetsigate the attendance records of those who failed.
Furthermore, the habit of passing pupils or putting students through in the earlier and fromative years, is a practice taht is not in the interest of the students.

[wynn]

Improvement will only be seen five years after they realise that increased matriculation numbers start with better educated, examined and promoted grade 8,9.10,11's and of course 12's

Matriculation is a ticket to study at university, grade 12 (old std 10) is a school leaving certificate which some pass and others don't and is only good for some trades and techs.

I was asked to leave school at the end of std 9 because my and 20% of the rest of the class's continued attendance would skew the schools perfect pass rate achieved in std 10 senior certificate and matriculation results.

Better than a 'Boere Matric' (JC, std 8) but not good enough.

When my youngest did "Matric" as grade 12 (std 10) is referred to these days he passed on less than I learned for and failed in old std 9.

There is no doubt that a sharp movement to the right of the graph happens every year.

Soon the only requirement for "Matric" will be attendance at the exam, won't qualify you for anything, but at least you won't feel like a loser.

[tec0]

Thanks for awaking my past. I happen to be one of those losers that never finished school.

Education, the act of bestowing knowledge trough the curriculum by means of books, teachers and faculties. The students are our future as humanity, they are our children and we wish to give them the best possible education.

Well the truth is; not all are born as equals some takes longer to understand the system then others and the pain the "lesser" has to go through still brings tears to my eyes. So your child must go to school to be measured by system and if found lacking discarded and then forced to go to a lesser system that is “les challenging” for them. This BS will then follow the lesser person to their graves staining their minds with stagnant memories.

School was never a good place for children between 1940 to 2010 and regardless of what has been said schooling as a system will fail more and more people because of the quality of education and the systems used to measure children.

Now how do we improve education? Simple but down the books and give every child a computer. Educate them trough modern audio and video media. The human mind is better at remembering sounds and pictures because it is how we interact with the world by default. Secondly allow children to work in factories and hospitals from a young age. Practical workshops are an effective educational tool and it adds incentive.

Fact is education works best if the person understands the meaning of the education in question. The only way to do this is to allow them to experience the other side of education. The “doing” as it is, will prove to them that they are and will be capable to function. We have the technology so it is time to use it...

[twinscythe12332]

I've always found education to be a bit weird, especially with regards to motivation. by grade 10, you're starting to feel like you've been in the system forever and just want to get out. Your way of getting out is matric. Matric used to stand for something, but now it is effectively the same as completing an intense game and having a banner that says "you win the game." When you have completed your Matric and passed out of the high school system, all you have is a slip of paper that doesn't describe what jobs you are capable of, just that you have skills in a multitude of areas.

In recent years, a matric certificate has almost become as worthless as a bog roll. When I left school in 2005(I think, I've honestly lost track), I didn't even think of trying to find work. I knew that would be hopeless, unless I wanted to become a waiter or something.

Anyway, this all comes back to incentive. There is none. You've been in the system for 12 years. You want to get out. Once you do, you have to go back in to study on a specific career path. Teachers affect results, as does course material and mental ability. But I honestly believe incentive plays a big roll in this.

Ideally, schools should offer courses specific to where the learner WANTS TO GO.

[tonyflanigan]

I feel the problem is not only with the learners (pupils), but also with the system. Several educators (teachers, in the old language, just to keep Wynn in the loop here (Hi Wynn!)) have complained bitterly to us about the Dept Bosses, curricula, and (lack of discipline) discipline.

OBE was instituted to enable PDA individuals to be able to get through the system, but its not working, 'cos the forementioned 'bosses', are too busy not doing what the taxpayer is paying them to do. My daughter matriculated 2 years ago, and was the first intake of sub-A's, aah damn, grade 1's, to do the entire 12 yrs with OBE. There were plenty of wobblies and hiccups, but she made it. I must add that discipline, by which I mean punishment for offences, and reward for achievement, were a strong feature at her school. Also, and I don't think this was strictly according to the books, her teachers were instructed to penalise non-participating members in group projects.

Education should be about teaching, not politics, and unfortunately politics is happening in the education system.

In my opinion, re-introduce corporal punishment, and the old way of teaching.

[tec0]

Well the worst thing a system can do is to give teachers the ability to scare a student with a “record” system. It was proven in good old America that female teachers will give male students bad records just because they have PMS.

It is proven that male teachers will be “less” severe on some female students and more to others just based on how attractive they are?

So what do you do?? Well look at the more successful schools in the world. Monitoring systems, discipline via sports and other activities. Yes there are working systems that will allow for children to be educated properly but it will take good leadership and a sound understanding of discipline and to implement a proper monitoring system. The question is can our government do that??? Well it is a damn good question.

[wynn]

And when it comes to exams, offer a choice, open book pass mark 90% closed book pass mark 33.3% if you haven't done the work you won't pass cause you won't know the work or where to look for the answers.

My problem is not with understanding most things, it is with remembering it.
I know I could never be an airline pilot, cause you need instant memory recall when the s#!t hits the fan, on the other hand I could be a psychiatrist because after listening to the patient, I would know how and where to research the symptoms, make an educated diagnosis and make the correct recommendations for treatment.
I don't believe that a brain surgeon, doing an unusual operation, will go into the operating theatre without first reaquainting himself by researching the relevant information for the area of the brain to be operated on??? would he?????

[tec0]

Well I can recall every sound I hear, it is a true gift “not to brag” but if my mom read my work out loud for me I got like 90% on my tests but if I had to read it myself I cannot for the life of me remember a damn thing.

The point is it is deferent for every single one of us... If I had an available system back in the day that could read for me like computers can today MAN OH MAN my life would have been so very deferent today.

Trust me education must start working WITH technology... it is a good place to start.

[tonyflanigan]

"And when it comes to exams, offer a choice, open book pass mark 90% closed book pass mark 33.3%"

Are you not assuming a somewhat inflated literary ability Wynn?

[Marq]

I did matric twice, once in 'b stream' and the second time in 'a stream', many moons ago.

Now I was an 'a stream' student all through my school years, but when I chose my subjects for standard 9, one of those was industrial arts, a subject that not many with so called brains had chosen. The result was that I found myself in a class of guys that were not sure if they should have left school in standard 8 to go to tech or drop out. There were two of us a streamers in this 'b stream' class. At the end of that year I was told that my standards had dropped and I was no longer ellegible to complete matric in 'a stream' unless I really jacked myself up. Mission impossible in the class I was in. The same fate was reserved for the other 'a stream' guy, who also repeated matric with me.

Looking back I realise that there was no way I would have been able to keep up the higher standards in a class where lower standards were acceptable. I would have had to achieve 110% in everything and do extra work after school just to have a fighting chance. No one had advised or probably realised that I was going downhill during the standard 9 year never to recover. I certainly did not know or realise what was happening.

The point of sharing this, is to show a few things:-

• The learner may not have the wherewithall to know what is expected or what a potential outcome will be of an action
• There is always a potential for the standard to develop at the lowest brain capacity in a class
• The teacher should be aware of what each student is capable of and compare that to the actual.
• The parent may assume that the school has their children's interests at heart and not be aware of potential failure, despite ensuring attendance and homework being done.

So I see a peter principle here (Every Learner Tends to Rise to their own Level of Incompetence), fueled by teachers who are not able to or not interested in attending to individual needs and abilities. Here were can probably point to the system, not properly training teachers and then sending them out into classrooms that have too many learners. I do not know what the student/teacher ratio is or should be but this is a factor that I have not seen or heard being discussed out there in the real world.

Parents are barely equipped to be parents never mind teachers as well. I think their duty is to see that there is discipline in the child, make sure they attend school and ensure that the child is doing some homework and extra school activities to develop a social framework. Other than that, most are working all day to pay school fees to ensure the child is taught by a professional or competent teacher.

One parent process that can help change abilities in South Africa is the situation where the grand parents look after children especially in their developing years. At the most crucial stages of growth being the first 7 years of our lives, the child is lovingly looked after by a person who is two generations behind. How can they ever be expected to catch up given that weight. Parents must take on the role they were designed to do, if we are to catch up with the rest of the western world. Current technology and teachings must be introduced to the child in the current world not at a later stage.

Education is a process of bring out the knowledge in each person - not pumping it in. This means we need to emphasis individual abilities and the methods of teaching should involve a process to develop the learners understanding of themselves and what they are capable of. Life skills and the use of current technology with a solid basic grounding in the various subjects are what is important.

Matric is just a pass to go into a higher education field - its not a beez knees thing to assume that you know something. A bachelor's only tells us, that a general understanding of a specific area of interest has been reached, it also is not the greatest thing in the world. Until the learner has some experience and can apply the knowledge they have extracted, they are useless to all.

Its a long slog and unless you know the end goals, the potentials and have life plan or an understanding on how life works you are at a complete disadvantage. Just because you are in Matric or even in grade eleven getting ready to do matric year does not guarantee that you are capable or have the inclination to do the work. Most learners I would imagine are just following a system and doing what is expected of them - why is the system then putting so much pressure on them to complete something they may not want to complete or have a feeling for?

We need all sorts of people of all levels of abilities in a country. Some will need to know about romeo and juliet and some will want to know stuff that can only be learnt on the job. Why insist on a high percentage pass rate when we should be concentrating on channeling and focusing ex learners into the economy to drive us forward? If we spend more energy in vocational guidance and see the potential in an individual based on their interests rather than a piece of paper, surely that individual would be more productive and once guided correctly be able to study further and become skilled in his work rather than be an uninterested generalist who actually knows nothing.

[Dave A]

A truly great post with many excellent points, Marq

I'd like to pick around a few of them before I get into my theory as to what the biggest problem might be.

Parents are barely equipped to be parents never mind teachers as well. I think their duty is to see that there is discipline in the child, make sure they attend school and ensure that the child is doing some homework and extra school activities to develop a social framework. Other than that, most are working all day to pay school fees to ensure the child is taught by a professional or competent teacher.

So true. And from some of what I've heard, a lot of the kids aren't getting competent teachers. One story I recall was of a school where the kids were only getting about two classes a day. The rest of the time they were lounging around without supervision as the teachers lounged around in the teachers' lounge too.

Its a long slog and unless you know the end goals, the potentials and have life plan or an understanding on how life works you are at a complete disadvantage. Just because you are in Matric or even in grade eleven getting ready to do matric year does not guarantee that you are capable or have the inclination to do the work. Most learners I would imagine are just following a system and doing what is expected of them - why is the system then putting so much pressure on them to complete something they may not want to complete or have a feeling for?

Now there's a problem. I suspect precious few kids really know what their career goals are while they're at school - other than getting the schooling stuff over, perhaps. That would seem to be a fly in the ointment for setting up career pathing options in earlier grades. I suppose the flip side is precious few people end up in the same career line as they started out on either. I certainly didn't - not even close.

Education is a process of bring out the knowledge in each person - not pumping it in.

At the very least it should be encouraging people to think for themselves, but I think this is where OBE may have failed us. This idea of bringing out the knowledge within each person is one of the cornerstones of the OBE teaching method that was introduced. Now that's fine and well if there is a solid foundation of knowledge already in there to bring out, but it's doomed to dismal failure if there isn't, or the teachers don't have the skills to properly equip the student to bring forth this knowledge. It is also resource intensive which I think we should acknowledge as one of the very real operating constraints most schools have to deal with.

To my mind though, the one thing that can turn this around in quick order is strong leadership at the school level.

I went to a high school that was supposed to be full of kids from the wrong side of the tracks. We were supposed to be the hooligans and ne'er do wells and the school had a reputation - not the good kind. However, the whole situation changed in the five years I was there, and it really started with two teachers with strong leadership skills who didn't accept that we were not expected to amount to much.

They changed the entire culture of the school. Us hooligan kids "young men" bought into their deal, and it wasn't long before the rest of the staff was doing a whole lot more than just passing the time and drawing their pay cheques too.

It didn't take more resources - it took a change in attitude, expectation and level of leadership.

When whole schools aren't performing, look at their leadership.

[Butch Hannan]

There are some very good and valid comments from all of you. Being an oxygen thief my children finished school many years ago. I have however, witnessed the drama that my grand children have had to go through. As a result of this my youngest daughter is home schooling her two children and rather successfully I might say. One of the issues that made my daughter go this way was when her son who was in std. 4 (11 years) was told how to put a condom on and how to clean his genitals in Life Orientation. He is now 15 and doing Grade 10. I believe that you must give a child the correct answers to the questions that he asks.
I agree with Dave when he mentions quality of teachers, bad management and bad leadership but I must disagree with bad students. Bad students are developed by the system due to the teachers not being allowed to discipline them for their bad behaviour. In the Life Orientation children are taught about their rights but not about their obligations to the society that they live in. One of my daughter's teacher friends has resigned due to the lack of discipline and the abuse that she is subjected to. This is a person with a degree who has maths and science as her teaching subjects and is now on the way to New Zealand.
I agree with Teco when he says that computers should be used much more.
In South Africa we have wonderful plans to fix everything that is wrong but somehow we always seem to fall short.
Butch Hannan

[tec0]

Well hitting children is just barbaric and in my case when the teacher hit me I started hitting back. Yes I give him a nice black eye because he broke his sawed-down fishing rod on me. My bum was bleeding and I just had enough because I was only guilty of the bus being late that morning. I was not the driver. It was my second year st8 and I was about done with this school thing.

So I walked up to the headmaster and wanted them to get the police... My request was never honoured. Well I can give you my sad story of a troubled unforgiving childhood but this is about education and not me.

Don’t start with discipline start with respect. If you don’t teach your children respect at home they will not respect the teachers and hitting them will only make them more rebellious I am prove of this fact. Still I had a good upbringing but I just had one of those faces that people didn’t like and the trouble hit my-way all the time. Just so that you know 4 teachers I did like I am still friends with today and I will always respect them because they respected me and I did well in their subjects.

Still I was an B student, I got a B for 4 of my six subjects the other two was math and science and unfortunately if you failed in both math and science it is game over. Unable to change my subjects I had to suffer the humiliation over and over again and started smoking heavily due to stress. I stopped smoking when I walked out of school for the last time.

Fact is I did damn well in a normal school because I never told anyone about my read write disability and I would have finished school but it is kind of difficult because when you do a math problem I wrote down 21 when it was suppose to be twelve! “Just to name one example” Still I think if the schools had better systems and took the care to understand the student and their needs there will be a lot more success stories.

Fact is we need better teachers and better systems but most important of all we need to understand that respect starts at home not at school.

[wynn]

Nope! just the ability to look up the answers.