Basic Education in crisis

Too many teachers can’t pass the tests they set for their own pupils.

This was the verdict of acting basic education director-general Bobby Soobrayan, who presented a document on the quality of schooling to the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on basic education yesterday.
Soobrayan said that despite significant investment in teacher development, there were serious problems related to commitment and practice. Ths, along with weak school management, lack of proper infrastructure, poor learner outcomes in the foundation phase and lack of support from districts and provinces, had led to a major education crisis.

“There is a high level of consensus that we face a crisis in basic education that requires urgent remediation,” he told the committee.
Soobrayan said that while progress had been made on the issue of qualifications for teachers in general, it was the quality of teaching that needed to be fixed.
The department had been given assurances by teacher unions that they would not block efforts to deal with poorly performing teachers.
“The key to our system is teachers. We can’t fix the system unless we address this issue. The improvement of teachers is an important thing.
“Unions have (said) they will not defence teachers who, despite assistance, despite interventios, despite opportunities, continue not to deliver what is expected of them. “
In many schools that had matric pass rates of 20 percent and below, absent teachers and principals, or clashes between them, had contributed to poor performance.
Soobrayan said major interventions to significantly improve the performance of pupils in the lower grades would be introduced.
Figures show that only 36 percent of Grade 3 pupils function at the required literacy levels and only 35 percent have the required numeracy skills. Soobrayan said the plan was to increase this to 60 percent by 2014. “(But) we cannot …expect that (just) 60 percent reach the required level. It should be 100 percent – this is Grade 3,” he added.
Other interventions included providing learner support materials such as textbooks to schools on time and improving the support of district and provincial offices.