Education after Dakar

2009/01/09

NO FESTIVE season would be complete without the annual orgy of recrimination and congratulation around the national and provincial matric pass rates.

And although the critics repeatedly point out that poor Grade 12 results are only an indicator of a deeper social and educational malady, at least the media attention gets ordinary people thinking about education.

So maybe this is a good time to look at some other important indicators of our education system, particularly the six goals we set with 163 other countries in Dakar nine years ago, when we promised to provide Education For All (EFA).

The first of the EFA goals is to provide early childhood care and education. We’re not so good at this, although we know that children’s early experiences have a profound effect on later learning and wellbeing. So we let 20percent of Eastern Cape children under nine go hungry, and nearly 80percent suffer income poverty. A total of 72 out of 1000 South African children die before they turn five, mostly from diseases of poverty. I don’t even mention the levels of child abuse that scar children for life.

And although policy provides that every child should have a pre-primary year, we need to ask serious questions about quality when Grade R classes are tacked onto unsafe, insanitary and ineffective schools in an attempt to meet numerical targets. We need to question why the “teacher” in charge of Grade R children – arguably the most important of a child’s school career – needs only the equivalent of Grade 12, while a high school teacher must have a degree and a teaching diploma.

The second EFA goal is to provide a universal primary education. Here we’re doing well, and in fact we’ve been improving steadily since about 1950. By 2007 over 93percent of South Africans aged between 18 and 22 had at least a Grade 7, when 15 years ago 84percent of the same age group had a primary education. Our children have more years of education than their parents and grandparents. But we have to ask more hard questions about quality and inequality.

The Grade 6 children of very rich parents, for example, achieve 39percent more in natural sciences and 44percent more in maths than very poor children. And the top fivepercent of our children in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study achieved five times more than the bottom fivepercent. Something’s very wrong.

The third goal is to meet the lifelong learning needs of youth and adults. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco’s) 2009 report, this idea is so hazy that few governments in the world really know what to do. South Africa has a welter of skills programmes and learnerships designed to improve adult skills. These are governed by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and funded through 27 Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas). The acronyms and bureaucracy are so confusing that it’s no surprise that the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), designed to combine training with job provision, has only achieved 19percent of its training goals, and spent only 59percent of its three-year budget.

We’re doing comparatively well with the fourth goal, adult literacy. About 87percent of people over 15 in the Eastern Cape are literate, and younger adults have a much higher literacy rate than older adults. But again, there’s a wide gap in quality of literacy between rich and poor.

The fifth goal is gender equity. Our gender disparity, unusually for a developing country, is in favour of girls. In fact, for many years boys have been less likely to get through high school, despite teenage pregnancies and social discrimination against girls. Boys are the needy ones in our society.

But we really fail badly with the sixth goal, that of quality.

The evidence is in our low literacy and numeracy achievements, particularly in poor communities. And our lack of quality education is reflected throughout the system, not only in Grade 12.

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.

A Lesson in Poverty

2008/09/12

LAST week a group of students taught me about poverty and compassion. But hang on a second – I was supposed to be teaching them a course for their Diploma in Early Childhood Development (ECD). The curriculum, amongst other things, specifies that they should know about the grim effects of child poverty, so I had come prepared with a bunch of book-learned theories to teach them.

Early childhood development practitioners can be amongst the most important influences in a young child’s life. They should know about barriers to child development, including how poverty affects children and families. They must understand the wide and deep reach of poverty – that it is not just a lack of money, but comes with a whole bundle of disadvantages that interact to keep people poor for generations. They need to know that poverty deprives children of the chance to thrive and grow, that it prevents them getting good food, good health, safety, education, support, and adequate care and stimulation. Without these things children are more likely to grow up stunted physically, emotionally and cognitively. They are far less likely to break through the wall of poverty that keeps people back. They will probably grow up as poor as, if not poorer than, their parents.

And so the poverty cycle rolls on, generation after generation.

This understanding is particularly pertinent for Eastern Cape ECD practitioners, since the children of this province suffer deeply. The statistics show that eight out of ten Eastern Cape children live in income poverty, and by far the majority of municipalities in which children suffer most from multiple deprivations are in this province.

Clearly, then, limiting the appalling effects of poverty is sure to be a major part of the ECD practitioners’ everyday work. They need to identify poverty and try to mitigate its effects.

These women – very few men enter the nurturing world of professional ECD – have a pivotal role to play in the future of the children in their care. They should be able to offer a safe, stimulating environment where children can explore, play, and learn freely. Perhaps even more importantly, they should be able to provide the warmth, respect and encouragement that children so desperately need to build resiliency, that wonderful quality that helps us bounce back when life deals us a backhander. They could make all the difference to the children in their care.

But back to the class. One of the many burdens of poverty is the stigma that often goes with it. In my naivety, I was half-expecting to uncover the poisonous, and all too common, belief that the poor are somehow to blame for their condition, that handouts will only make them lazier, and that the cure for their poverty is to get off their backsides.

After all, as a middle-class woman, I have many acquaintances – including, memorably, at least one devoutly religious person – whose convictions that poor people are lazy, dirty, and deserve their fate rise to the surface like scum as fast as you can say “social grant”.

Talking of social grants, I was also ready for the old stories of how the child grant promotes reckless breeding, and that adults spend the R210 per month on alcohol and luxuries rather than the children – this when about 65 percent of grant recipients’ budgets are spent only on food.

But these ECD practitioners showed me that they know far more about poverty and compassion than I ever will. Our discussions showed they have a bone-deep understanding of the way poverty grinds at self-respect, energy levels, and hope. They gave examples of how much harder poor people have to work to gain the smallest benefit. They understand poverty because, like many in South Africa, they live intimately with it. To condemn the poor for their poverty means to condemn your mother, your neighbour, your sister and your friend.

So I came away from the class feeling uplifted, confident that these practitioners can contribute enormously to children’s wellbeing, and deeply humbled by the depth of their understanding and compassion.

Network for Optimism

2008/12/19
ODDLY enough, this week I’ve felt a little more optimistic than usual about the state of education. Don’t mistake me. I didn’t say that education is getting better, only that I feel more optimistic about the future.

And, please note, my upbeat attitude has nothing to do with the education policies of any political party, whether in power, hoping to be in power, or clutching at straws. Policy is one thing, performance is another.

Nor is my optimism founded on hope for improved matric results. Although I’ll be the first to rejoice if we see an improved National Senior Certificate pass rate, it’s not the best indicator of the effectiveness of the education system. Matric pass rates only measure the achievement of the relatively few who actually write the exams. They don’t tell the stories of the more than 50 percent of children who fall out of the system on the way.

No, what I’m pleased about is the growing realisation among ordinary people that education, while it is a state responsibility, is too important to be left to government. With that understanding, on Monday this week, hundreds of teachers, parents, academics, religious leaders, non-profit organisations and education activists across the country formed Sekolo, a non-partisan network to encourage public participation in education.

And public participation is desperately needed. We need vigorous discussion, fearless debate and strong mobilisation to resolve what is clearly a serious crisis.

It’s unacceptable that our education system still fails the majority of children. It’s unacceptable that 14 years after the end of apartheid, and despite much policy that talks of redress and equity, the majority of children are hardly able to read and write, let alone earn a living once they leave school. Again and again, research shows not only that South African children do badly in comparison to other countries (including countries in our own region), but also that most children simply do not achieve the learning outcomes set out in our own curriculum.

It’s unacceptable that most schools don’t have libraries or laboratories, and it’s unacceptable that nearly half of households with school- going children experience a lack of learner support material. It’s unacceptable that we spend money on a dubious and yet-to-be-investigated arms deal while our children don’t have the means to practise reading and writing.

It’s unacceptable that we expect the majority of children to learn, be taught and assessed in a foreign language when we know how this compromises their ability to learn. We need to encourage parents and schools to give their children the advantage of learning in their mother-tongue, while at the same time ensuring that all children feel at ease in English. Not an easy issue to resolve, but we need to work on it.

It’s unacceptable that Grade R teachers are not expected to be as well-qualified nor as well-paid as other teachers, and that the schools they are attached to often don’t begin to understand the profound importance of early childhood. It’s unacceptable to dump young children into dreary classrooms to chant meaninglessly and wait endlessly for the teacher. It’s unacceptable that many are beaten when they make a mistake.

It’s unacceptable that the children who suffer most from the crisis in education are still poor and the rural. It’s unacceptable that for “poor and rural”, we need to read “black”. It’s unacceptable that over the poorest 40 percent of school communities educate 70 percent of Eastern Cape school- children.

And let’s not trot out the old lie that the poor are to blame for their condition. We – society as a whole – must take responsibility to change things.

Part of that responsibility is to call for an independent commission to investigate the issues and propose solutions. You can do that with a click of the mouse button: www.ppen.org.za or e-mail info@ppen.org.za for more information.

Your involvement would be a great Christmas gift to the children of South Africa.

Levelling the language fields

Although this blog was written about the South African province in which I live, it’s probably true of the whole of South Africa, and many other countries in which most ordinary people – and their children - speak a different language from the dominant one. 

 

If your children are English (or Afrikaans) speaking they have one supreme advantage over every other child in the Eastern Cape education system.  They understand what is being said, written and read in the classroom.

 

That’s quite an advantage, you will agree.

 

If your children are not English speaking, chances are good that they have to jump a hurdle that their English or Afrikaans friends don’t even notice.

 

That hurdle is language. About 1.2 million isiXhosa speaking kids learn and are taught in a foreign language, in a province where the majority of people speak isiXhosa. Seems crazy, doesn’t it?

 

We shouldn’t be surprised.  After all, English is the language of the economy, politics, commerce, and of a huge body of international literature and culture. And Afrikaans may not be international, but you can write the matric exams, study at university, and run a business in Afrikaans. No such thing, apparently, in isiXhosa.  Even our proud Eastern Cape Universities who taught the likes of Mandela, Tambo, Biko and Sobukwe use English for teaching.

 

Clearly, then, isiXhosa kids must just learn in English and like it.

 

There’s one big problem here.  Children (and adults) learn far more easily and more profoundly in the language of home and family. After all, they grew up hearing, speaking, singing, shouting, dreaming, joking and playing with the language of home. Language is a deep part of our identity, as intimately a part of us as the blood passing through our hearts.  We are comfortable with it; we can understand and express complex concepts that we could never articulate in a different language.

 

Imagine what happens when, as young children,  we have to learn in a less-than-familiar language.

 

First, our understanding of the words and the structure of the language prevents us fully comprehending what is being said  to us.  We can’t hear properly.  Second, our command of the language prevents us articulating our thoughts as effectively.  We can’t speak properly. Thirdly, and most importantly, we can’t even begin to understand complex concepts using a language whose shape we don’t know. We can’t think properly. How can we expect a primary school child to learn if we put up such barriers?

 

Forget grade 12, forget university, forget even finding a job in the English-speaking world.  Unless children build an understanding of what they’re learning, they’ll never even get to matric.

 

According to the latest statistics, 98% of Afrikaans kids from grade 1 to 4 learn in Afrikaans and 100% of English kids learn in English.  But only 56% of isiXhosa speaking children in grade 1 – 4 learn in isiXhosa. This has enormous effects on their competence at school.

 

By the time Eastern Cape children get to the sixth grade, over three quarters are not competent in the language in which they are taught.  No prizes for guessing which children those are.  Not the Afrikaans kids, nor the English ones.  If you don’t understand the language in which you are taught, how can you expect to understand the content?

 

Children who learn in their home language typically get 22% more in maths, 34% more in language, and 25% more in natural sciences.

 

Of course, language is a proxy for race, and race is a proxy for deprivation and poverty.  Poor children are more likely to be from isiXhosa families, and to have fewer resources at home and at school. They have plenty stacked against them already.  So why do we put up this extra barrier?

 

Because of the deep love of parents for their children.  They are determined to give them the best chance possible in this life. They dream that their children will never suffer the deprivation, unemployment and poverty that they had to face. Parents want their children to use English fluently – so they choose English as the language of learning and teaching.  Is it coincidence that Qumbu, Mthatha, Ngcobo, and Libode have the lowest percentages of young children learning in their mother tongue?

 

The parents are not wrong. Children SHOULD learn to speak, read and write English extremely well. A good grasp of the language of international power is necessary to everyone – but not at the expense of their education. All children should learn in their home language, right up to and past grade 12.  And don’t tell me that isiXhosa doesn’t have the flexibility, beauty and expressiveness to articulate complex concepts right up to university level.  We will only have the text books, the exam papers, and the vocabulary when parents demand them.

 

Meanwhile, there’s nothing stopping our children learning any other language – including English – extremely well.

 

In fact, English as a second language is as important as mathematics and science, if not more so. It should be taught by specialist teachers whose home language is English  – but in your dreams would you catch Ms Anglo-Saxon teaching at Woza Woza High in Qumbu or Libode.

 

Which brings me to my last point: I take responsibility for this, dis ook my skuld, luxanduva lwam nam olu, mea culpa.  Between them, my English speaking children know less than a smidgen of isiXhosa. That’s like going to school in Italy or Germany and never bothering to learn the language of most people. How arrogant!

 

We all need to send the message that all languages, including isiXhosa, are worthy of study and enjoyment. And that includes we Abelungu.

Orientation? Not on your life!

I’m as crabby as a hermit tonight.

 

As usual, I had set aside Sneckie my Favourite Laptop when my second favourite child came to spend his mandatory hour chatting lightly of this and that with his darling Mama.

 

I admit I was already in a foul mood. Years of falling deeper and deeper into the mad rabbit hole of NGO life occasionally reverses itself suddenly, and I find myself vomited out into the daylight. The daylight, in this case, consists of realising I DON’T want to spend Saturday and half of Sunday tapping grimly at Sneckie the Enemy Laptop to produce some impossible document that will do nobody any good.

 

And you know, don’t you, how when you’re in a temper, you soek for things to affirm your fury? You actively go out and collect more irritating information.

 

So I asked my dearest one, meaningfully, How was Life Orientation at school today? The darling brightened, scenting an entertaining parental rage coming on. He hates LO as much as I do. He fails it regularly, which is the only sensible thing to do with LO. When he passes it, I will be worried indeed. It will be a sure sign he’s gone over to the mindless enemy. Pity he has to pass it to get through Grade 12.

 

Life Orientation is crap. In theory, it’s a good idea, but in practice it’s rubbish.

LO has four posh-sounding learning outcomes that the Department of Education has concocted to bamboozle us with. The first is that learners will achieve and maintain personal well-being, whatever that is. Quite a tall order for an adolescent male, given those crazy hormones and even crazier fantasies the gutter press is always banging on about. We won’t even start with the girls and entrenched inequalities that reduce their personal wellbeing somewhat.

And I wont bore you, or myself, with the other learning outcomes. If you want to read the whole mealie-mouthed load of codswallop, go to http://www.education.gov.za. I suspect – in fact I know – that most schools treat LO like a poor relation with bad breath and no money.

But I digress. Let me get back to my satisfying fury.

My darling was entertained by two American evangelists in LO today. And as he told the tale of how they finger-wagged, harangued and lectured about Sin, Hell Fire and the One Way to avoid the Great Detention, so his gentle mother became more and more hellishly furious. Seeing this, the darling stoked the fires, telling gruesome tales about the Rapture, and the inevitable fall into Hades for the likes of his beloved parent.

And does the school plan to invite a Muslim to talk about Islam? Or a Hindu? A Buddhist? A Jew? An Animist? Or Heaven forefend, an Atheist, or even a Humanist? The sweet mother asked with gritted teeth and bloodshot eyes.

No, quoth the darling. Why should they? They know that the evangelists are right. We don’t have to listen any further to any other point of view. There IS only One Way, dearest mother of mine. Discussion is useless. The school knows the truth.

He smirked as he left the Audience Chamber, after politely passing Sneckie the Rational Laptop back to me.

Little bastard.