Grade R in a failing system

2009/02/13

I FELT proud of the principal of Sinempumelelo Primary School in Beacon Bay for speaking out about the appalling conditions Grade R children suffer at her school (Crammed like sardines in ‘kitchen classroom’, DD, February 4). Let’s hope it’s a sign of growing public intolerance of sub- standard education.

We should share her anger at the way we treat children, but perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised.

Many schools in the Eastern Cape are not suitable for children of any age, let alone for the five year olds who are increasingly enrolling in Grade R. Such schools are neither safe nor clean. They don’t have enough classrooms, furniture or resources for everyone. The evidence is clear that children don’t learn to read, write, use numbers or learn to think creatively and critically. Nor do they learn firm moral values, or develop a strong work ethic. In fact, research shows that very few South African schools make a positive difference to the 12million pupils who attend them, and some actually do harm.

Knowing this, why do we relentlessly follow government policy that lays down that Grade R classes must be attached to primary schools by 2010? How can such schools be suitable when school principals and teachers often have no background in early childhood development, and expect a Grade R classroom to be a mini version of Grade 1?

Although Grade R practitioners receive specialised, accredited training in early childhood development, they remain the “aunties” of education. The minimum ECD (early childhood development) qualification is only the equivalent of Grade 12, and both salaries and status are much lower than those of real teachers. Practitioners who improve their qualifications immediately try for “promotion” to the Foundation Phase.

And why do we insist that every child should have a year at pre-school by 2010, even when it means penning them up in a small shack with nothing to do? Sinempumelelo is certainly not the only school that offers a poor environment. One GradeR class we know of was relegated to a sheep shed after the specially-built Grade R classroom was commandeered as a staff-room. Five-year-old children play in storerooms, amongst rubbish, dust and rolls of barbed wire. Many children are still taught by rote and threatened with a stick if they make a mistake.

It’s not that the policy is bad. On the contrary, in 2001 the Education White Paper 5 on early childhood development broke new ground in acknowledging the profound importance of the early childhood years for the development of human potential. It argues convincingly that society benefits enormously if young children are healthy, well nourished, and are offered creative opportunities and safe surroundings to learn about each other and the world. Therefore, so White Paper 5 argues, government should invest money, time and energy in the wellbeing of all young children, particularly the poor.

One of its main thrusts was to set out a plan – substantiated by international and national research – that every child should be provided with a good quality pre-primary year by 2010. Nothing wrong with that, except that we’ve tacked it onto an already dysfunctional system.

It must have seemed a wonderful idea, in the heady excitement of new and progressive policy development, to airily propose using the existing school system “with some additional investment in building rehabilitation” to accommodate the requirements of Grade R.

Seven years later, the Eastern Cape Department of Education annual performance plan admits that it is so “handicapped by budgetary constraints” that Grade R classes have been attached to schools without the necessary resources or training of practitioners, and that the physical infrastructure is ill-equipped and classrooms in short supply.

It’s time to get our priorities right. Too strong a focus on Grade R at schools not only detracts from the responsibility of communities and families to nurture and educate young children, but also exposes young children too often to what we can only call abuse.