Secondary education in South Africa: Two decades after democracy

Feb23

- By Jocelyne Kamwanya Mwabi

In South Africa, after nearly two decades of democracy there is a fear that the quality of education has decreased despite the huge investments made by the local and national government into the educations systems from the primary to the tertiary level.  It is possible that in trying to rectify the injustice of the Bantu education act on the black African population the government might have compromised the quality of education nationwide. The current South African (SA) government has made various policy changes in the education system and curriculum changes in order to ensure that every South African citizen has an equal opportunity to basic education.

However, the socio-economic status of an individual South African plays a large role on the level of education he/she will be able to obtain. Despite the government’s efforts to reduce or remove the racial inequality brought about the apartheid government, nearly 60% of the country’s economic wealth belong to the white minority. Some studies have shown that the average white home earns six times more than the average black home. Therefore the white families are much more capable of investing into their children’s education.  The current situation in SA is one where the wealthy whites have built expensive private schools for their children. There are a few wealthy families of other races that are able to place their children in these private schools. However, the majority of South African youths who are black still suffer the aftermath of the past government. Most of their parents are poor and cannot afford the funds required for schooling. Unfortunately the government education budget is not enough to cover the costs for efficiently running a school. Therefore the parents must also contribute to their children’s education.

In the past white South African students were privileged as they were given the opportunity to be educated at a higher standard than all other races. Therefore a white youth on completion of secondary school was guaranteed a good well paying job, managerial or supervisory position, while his black counterpart  was left with little choice for a career ( working in a mine or doing road and railway work). With the new government all racial groups have found themselves on the same platform with equal opportunity to education and improved lifestyle. Therefore more and more students are completing secondary school and a large number are entering tertiary education institutions.

The quality of education in South Africa should also be re-evaluated. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the average secondary school graduate to obtain a job. The current students are lacking a number of practical skills required in the workplace and employers are not willing to provide training due to additional costs on their business. The students are often obliged to attend tertiary institutions to obtain the skills they lack. Those involved in developing education policies for South Africa need to come up with strategies to improve the secondary school curriculum in a way that would give students more career options outside of tertiary diplomas and degrees.

Key policy challenges of secondary education in Africa

Feb22

Suleman Sumra (SS) and Rakesh Rajani’s (RR) working paper may well have been an analysis reflecting secondary education policy challenges in Africa. Five policy challenges encountered in Tanzania’s education policy reform process since 2001, which they raise, are outlined and discussed in the context of secondary education policies confronting the continent.

Teachers’ standards, incentives and tools

The main argument here is encapsulated by SS and RR’s position that ‘…without motivated and competent teachers focused on pupil learning, all the reforms will come to nought. If teachers are at the heart of education, they ought to be at the heart of…policy and practice, budgets and political rhetoric as well.’ However, rather than their view of a teacher versus infrastructure trade-off, I view both as complimentary and deserving appropriate investments. Teachers need to have both subject knowledge and pedagogical skills. In this sense, teachers could be seen as facilitators working with students to better understand the world around them and their own experiences. Learning after all is not just a function of classroom experience but a summation of the child’s interaction with their environment.

Teachers need to be trained pre and in service, but above training, standards for entry into the teaching profession need to be reviewed. Entry needs to be made competitive and like other specialised professions, teaching needs clear induction, review and upgrading processes, in addition to standard inspection processes. As SS and RR argue, rather than a ‘checking’ function, inspectors could do much more in contributing to the teaching and learning process. In addition to good teachers, attention needs to be paid to building/improving classrooms, providing learning tools (such as computers), libraries, laboratories, health/ sick bays, counselling service and toilets! This needs clear thinking beyond the current ‘six classroom block’ paradigm which is predominant around the continent. The thinking should focus on ‘what makes a classroom good for student learning?’

Language of Instruction

Language of instruction is perhaps one of the biggest subjects in education policy in East Africa, and the same is the case in the republic of South Africa. While, as SS and RR rightly note, many educationists agree on the value of local languages, there are concerns about opportunity for children if they are not well grounded in international languages. My take on this is to pursue a twain route: teach both languages simultaneously, and enlist the involvement of communities in language education, as many as 6, 000 languages are at risk of extinction. I am for learning and preserving local languages, without which many important local expressions and history may be lost. But how best to do this and achieve the best results remains a subject for debate both now and in future years. The ‘language of preservation’ – ‘language of opportunity’ debate continues.

Expand but focus

SS and RR discuss the need to set clear targets in relation to infrastructure, human capital development and enrolment. Achieving the right balance between these three issues presents serious policy concern for governments, especially given resource shortfalls and dependence on international donors whose mandate mainly focus on ‘universal primary education’ as enshrined in the MDGs. Many countries focus at the moment on enrolment as a measure of educational progress, but all three should work in tandem, and there is hardly enough justification for trade-offs as each is crucial to achieving any form of progress in education delivery.

Better to ‘focus on outcomes’ not outputs

Setting clear targets should have implications for curriculum, quality and outcomes, and bring to the fore the question: education for what? As SS and RR rightly note, education needs to focus more on outcomes in the lives of the pupils such as mobility, in addition to the currently near exclusive focus on outputs- no of students enrolled or completing final exams. Increasing enrolment is a good start, but this needs to be in tandem with the delivery of quality secondary education. Outcomes could include a range of possibilities in the lives of the young people.  Focusing on outcomes will mean linking education policies to broader national policies. National aspirations and educational planning should be inextricably linked, and the former should to a greater extent shape the design and pursuit of the latter. In order to answer the question ‘education for what,’ education policy outcomes should be evaluated and measured within the context of long term national development strategies such as the vision 2016s, 2020s and 2030s in different African countries; Botswana, Nigeria and Zambia respectively.

‘Measuring Success’

SS and RR raise important concerns about the present focus of measures of educational progress exclusively on outputs such as test/ examination results, rather than competencies and skills gained by students. This concern has been a subject of intense debate in South Africa following the release of the recent high school matriculation exam results. Measuring educational progress requires much more than exam results. It requires a focus on analytical and problem solving skills, and beyond that, schools need to develop a mechanism to keep track of their pupils’ future trajectories – where do they go when they leave? What do they become? Employers in Africa complain about the lack of human capital, in spite of claims that ‘this generation of young African’s are the most educated’ than any previous generation of their age cohort. Part of the problem is that schools don’t help them learn the skills they really need to survive in the labour market and employers are not ready to train.

 

ps: I welcome comments and your thoughts on the situation of secondary education in your country.

Tourism, Learning and Saving the Port Harcourt Zoo

Jan27

A couple of years ago, precisely 2003, I started the Save Port Harcourt Zoo Campaign, with the aim of raising awareness on the need to save the local zoo from collapse as a result of  ’inadequate care and nutrition for the animals.’ The goal was to ‘to set up a Zoo Renewal Fund’ in addition to a student volunteer programme at the zoo.

The main justifications were: the Zoo was an important venue for learning and recreation, not many such spaces were available in the city for the later at the time, and with the zoo in good shape, our kids could at the very least see the animals about which they are thought in class without needing to travel out of the city. The thinking then was to eventually expand the project to include broader issues like: conservation, wild life education and zoo management. At the time, I received one correspondence from an individual at the Nigerian LNG  who suggested the company could sell scraps to support the Zoo. A couple of years later, the project also generated some discussion on the internet, with calls for and commitments to support.

So when I saw this article [Enchanted by Port Harcourt's Wildlife Park, Sept. 2011] which suggests there might have been some improvements at the Zoo, I was so delighted. However, this other article [Nigeria-Wildlife: Where have all the animals gone?, Nov. 2011] published two months later suggests differently. Haven not been to the Zoo in several years, I am unable to verify or refute the content of these articles, but it will be a very big relief if the Zoo is indeed getting some attention.

Whenever I have an opportunity, I will visit the Zoo, and share my thoughts on its state and the state of the animals. Whatever the case, it is certain that the Zoo will require better funding from the government and support from the private sector to undertake many tasks, including simple ones like better shelter for the animals and setting up a website. I hope that going forward some support can be mobilised in this regard, and perhaps the ‘Zoo renewal fund’ can finally be established.

On NDDC, Fuel subsidy and National Honours

Nov24

I hope that the sacking of NDDC’s previous board does not mark the end of investigations on alleged corruption charges levelled against some of its members. Beyond this, I wonder whether anyone has found the current federal government institutional framework for Niger Delta development comprising: NDDC, Amnesty office and the ministry of Niger Delta Affairs as needing a review, expensive and difficult to justify. Do we really need all three of them? How much does it cost to manage the bureaucracy and administration of these different bodies? How accountable are they to the people of the Niger Delta? NDDC has the regional master plan to guide its work, what guides the Ministry, when does the functions of the Amnesty office come to an end? How do these agencies cooperate with each other and with states? I hope the new board of the NDDC will get to work immediately and implement programmes that will improve the quality of the life of ordinary people in the region. I suppose that’s why it was set up in the first place.

On the fuel subsidy mêlée, I think the federal government should fix the refineries, build new ones and develop local refining capability. Only after this has been accomplished should any discussion about removing subsidies be brought to the table. By that time, we should be talking about other facets of the nation’s development where we could channel the ‘new savings’ from the no-more-necessary ‘subsidy fund’ just like we did with the so-called ‘debt relief savings.’ For now, leave it as it is and tackle the corruption within the disbursing agency, that’s where the problem is, not in the subsidy itself.

The 2011 National Honours appears to have brought to the fore (again) some of the challenges we face as a country. First was the poor processes of nomination and communication to nominees (which, it is reported, led to at least one prominent nominee rejecting the award). Second was the inadequacy of medals and certificates at the honours event. You would think that at that level things would be  better organised given the enormous resources committed but apparently not. Did the committee not know the exact number of people receiving the honours? Whose responsibility was it to make sure the materials were ready ahead of the award ceremony? I will be interested to know what happened to those responsible, and if the person (s) who brought such a height of national embarrassment on us were reprimanded. In other contexts, those responsible would have resigned by now and apologised to the nation. But here, if they even bother, a terse statement will be issued et la vie continue.

But more substantively, what are the criteria for receiving these honours? Who nominates the awardees? Is there an open process through which citizens can put forward candidates? Or are the awards simply the exclusive reserve of public servants and their associates?

Protest and collaboration

Nov19

‘we will sue ya, we will sue ya, we will sue ya, we will sue ya…’

Protest – I have ‘witnessed’ three youth related protests since my stay in this country. The first was student protests against fee increases and funding cuts to the education system. The second was the widely publicised protest against police killing of Mark Duggan in London. The third against the planned closure of UEA’s music school by 2014. The students ‘collected’ around 7,000 signatures and organised a protest rally on November 8 featuring various speakers. Their call was simple, leave the music school open, as a cultural legacy and for posterity.

I have been thinking about the student movements here and in my country and the similarities and differences between them. In both countries, students are averse to fee increases; the Unions receive some kind of subvention from their home ‘authorities’ and students use protests to express their grievances. However, there are marked differences in their approaches, for example the difference between a well researched signature campaign versus break the window ‘aluta continua’ which ends in wanton destruction of University facilities (that is not to say this does not happen here, but it is not the ‘norm’ as in my country). Many thoughts are running through my mind: is it a result of differing education systems?; an outcome of the different social, economic and political environments?; is it just ethical? An outcome of deprivation and frustration on the other side? Or is it history? Student activism here started during the 1880s, ours only started in 1945. Perhaps the long history has created a ‘system’ here, which is yet to manifest in ours? I wish we could borrow a thing or two from this side and share on the order in the pursuit of various desirable causes.

Collaboration – HIV remains a humongous public health challenge in Nigeria and the government adopted a multi-sectoral approach bringing together various actors to tackle the challenge. HIV counselling and testing (HCT) is an important medium to encourage people to know their status, and reduce progression to AIDS, since people could be put on anti-retroviral medicine once they know their status. It also contributes to reducing further infections as positive people are encouraged to adopt safer sex practices like condomising in order to prevent others from being infected, or themselves from being re-infected. However, counselling psychologists appear to be missing from the action. As long ago as I remember, I have been calling for better engagement of counselling psychologists in the provision of HIV counselling and pre-test and post-test services. This is pertinent because counselling psychologists deal with a range of issues from the psychology of learning, behaviour modification to adjustment.

So beyond HCT, they could play important roles in other areas like: monitoring drug adherence and factors that inhibit or promote the behaviour. Their roles can also extend to the study of life quality of life of PLHA, for which I am yet to encounter any data from Nigeria. QoL data serve important purposes in health policy decision-making and have been found to provide guidance in medical decision-making. It would serve some purpose in AIDS related care within hospital settings. QoL data could also provide needed information to understand the relationship between post traumatic stress disorders, other co-occurring psychological conditions such as depression and HIV. So far, I do not personally see clearly how the counselling association of Nigeria is engaging to play any significant role in tackling HIV, but I believe that their role is crucial, and a collaborative effort between health professionals, counselling psychologists and other actors would produce valuable results.