"Shake-up" in SA's Education System?
Reports in the Cape Times and The Argus of 5 February talk of a "shake-up" in South Africa's education system. The "shake-up" entails recommendations for the introduction of a national examination for grade 9 - formerly standard 7; the end of free and compulsory education for children older than fifteen; and paying a fee to write the matriculation examination. The recommendations were made by a government-appointed committee tasked with investigating aspects such as quality assurance of the present Senior Certificate examination.
The reports create the impression that at present all children enjoy free and compulsory education and that if the recommendations are approved and implemented only children under the age of fifteen will enjoy that privilege. The impression is false. Education is neither free nor compulsory.
All parents, both the very rich and the very poor, pay school fees from the time that their children start school. And now it is recommended that even the writing of the matriculation examination should not be free. The Education authorities have not set up the necessary infrastructure to monitor and enforce school attendance. The essential transport systems are not in place to ensure that children who wish to attend school are able to do so. In fact, tens of thousands of children of school-going age are not in schools. And in the past few years thousands have dropped out of school at the end of Grade 1 (Sub A)!
The impression is also created that the recommendation of a national examination for Grade 9 is new and startling. The intention of this examination is indeed startling. Successful candidates will receive a school-leaving certificate. Children will be able to leave the normal school system at the age of fifteen after completing what formerly was Standard Seven. They may then choose to follow a number of paths in levels 2 and 4 in the Further Education and Training phase. They may continue into the secondary schools; get job-training at technical and community colleges; receive industry on-job training; enter labour market schemes or regional training centres.
But the information is not new. The introduction of a National Qualification Framework (NQF) was recommended in 1994 already. The National Qualification Framework, which is the new education structure in terms of Curriculum 2005, proposes a General Education and Training Certificate (GETC) in Grade 9 after the completion of Level 1, and a Further Education and Training Certificate (FETC) in Grade 12, after the completion of Levels 2 to 4.
The National Qualification Framework was recommended by task teams under the auspices of the National Training Board. It was published in a 42-page booklet on "A National Training Strategy Initiative: A Preliminary Report by the National Training Board" (April 1994). The motivation for the search for a new education system was that the existing system tended to emphasise education, which is academic, to the exclusion of training which is practical skills-acquisition for employment. The argument of the National Training Board was that schools did not adequately prepare children for jobs. Next, the Minister of Education and Training, Sibusiso Bengu, in a White Paper on Education and Training (June 1995) presented proposals for the introduction of a National Qualification Framework. In the White Paper a strong argument was presented for an integrated approach to education and training. In August 1995 the Department of Education established a Consultative Forum on the Curriculum (CFC), comprising representatives of the national and provincial education departments, as well as "national stakeholders in education and training". To launch the process of curriculum restructuring, the CFC initiated an investigation which resulted in the Report: A Curriculum Framework for General and Further Education and Training. In 1996 Minister Bengu, with much fanfare, announced plans to implement Curriculum 2005. And in a Government Notice in June 1997 the Ministry of Education outlined the broad implications of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and an outcomes-based approach for the different phases of the General and Further Education and Training Bands.
Once the NQF is implemented up to Grade 9 and the national examination is instituted the Senior Certificate or Matriculation examination will be phased out. The Education Authorities have not indicated whether the Further Education and Training Certificate that will qualify students for university and technikon education will be achieved through a national examination with the same status as the matriculation examination. It is hardly likely. The Education Authorities have shown little regard for the significance that students, parents and schools attach to a matriculation pass. Success in the Senior Certificate examination is regarded as the pinnacle of school achievement. Passing with a matriculation exemption is regarded as an even higher level of success. Students and parents regard a good pass as a measurement of academic prowess and intellectual maturity. Teachers regard a good pass as a measurement of their own work in student-nurturing. Universities regard a matriculation exemption as an essential element for student admission. And even the Education Authorities use the results to determine in which provinces and at which schools physical and human resources have to be improved. But the poor matriculation pass rates over many years - 57.4% in 1988 and 50.79% in 1998 - in spite of annual public announcements that results would improve, is a source of deep-felt embarrassment for the Education Authorities. The results have been taken to reflect the weaknesses in the system. But rather than upgrade the physical and human resources, and so improve the culture of learning and of teaching and thereby the results, scrapping the matriculation examination is the Education Ministry's preferred solution.
The present Government is adopting strategies similar to those adopted by the National Party Government in the Apartheid regime in implementing its policies of separate education systems for what it deemed were separate population groups. The National Party first determined its educational policy direction, then appointed a Commission whose task it was to conduct research and establish the "scientific" evidence for the implementation of that policy. Proposals for the introduction of a national examination for Grade 9 pupils have been recommended for more than three years already and the intention has always been to scrap the Senior Certificate examination. Now a Government Committee has found that the work of the South African Certification Council falls short of good quality education and its approach to the moderation of papers is poor. The Committee has recommended that the matriculation examination should eventually be replaced by a Further Education and Training Certificate. As could have been predicted, the Committee has found that the matriculation examination does not provide an appropriate school-leaving certificate for most pupils, is not an effective predictor of success at university and is not perceived by employers as a good indicator of work-related competence. The Government and the Education Authorities now have the "scientific" evidence for scrapping the matriculation examination.
Finally, the impression is being created that the National Qualification Framework, Curriculum 2005, outcomes-based education, a national examination at the end of Grade 9, and a Further Education and Training Certificate at the end of Grade 12 will result in a dramatic improvement in education standards throughout the country. The argument is that throwing money at the education problem will not solve it. Time is most unlikely to vindicate this theory.
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL VOL.69 #1, OFFICIAL ORGAN
OF THE TEACHERS' LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA, JANUARY-MARCH 1999]
EDITOR: Mrs. HN Kies, 15 Upper Bloem Street, Cape Town, 8001
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