I’ve just finished reading a rather worrying article in the Financial Mail (Dec 7, 2007) (I’ve been away for a few weeks so please forgive the delay in my reading of this!).

The article is titled “Why SA Fails its Children” and it outlines the differences between a worldwide McKinsey report on what makes for successful education and the actions of South Africa’s education department in achieving this goal. I found this article so astounding that I thought it worth summarising the salient points here.

The McKinsey report analysed education practices throughout the globe to identify those factors that have greatest influence on producing educated individuals. In short, their top three factors (in order of importance) were:

1. Make sure the best people are hired to become teachers
2. Give them, and the principals of schools, good ongoing training
3. Make sure they pay extra attention to those at the bottom of the class

This all sounds like sound advice and these would have perhaps been among the factors you would have listed had you been asked to think about it a bit. However, the South African education department would appear to disagree.

Let’s look at their actions with regard to each of these ideals:

Hiring the best people

According to the article, increasing spending and reducing class sizes has little effect on success if teacher quality is poor. However, the education department has had little focus on improving teacher quality and instead favoured policies of curriculum reform, upgrading and building schools and re-engineering of processes.

Schools that did the best in the McKinsey analysis came from countries that tended to hire the top third of graduates as teachers. Teaching is a high-status occupation in these countries and highly sought after.

A second article (“Primary cause of Failure”) in the same edition of the magazine states that “Of a group of rural primary school teachers tested on Grade 6 material, half failed the literacy test (and) their maths average was 66%”. Shocking… and the poor salaries teachers earn won’t be helping to attract the top echelon of graduates either.

Added to this, many SA training colleges have been closed of late, bursaries have been cancelled and universities now manage teacher training. This while education departments in universities are under-funded and reports show that there is insufficient tertiary education capacity to meet the skills requirement of the country.

Ongoing Training

The first article goes on to state that the Education Minister (Naledi Pandor) tried recently to improve the training situation by creating a licence system by which teachers would be required to get continued training to keep their teaching licences. This she hoped would remove those in educational positions that were incapable of being trained (yes, they apparently exist). This idea was shot down by The SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and is only tabled to be revisited in 6 years time.

The on-the-job training that already exist for teachers appears to be failing even though our teachers receive more training than do their opposite numbers in other countries.

Giving Extra Attention to Those Falling Behind

Special-needs classes no longer exist in South Africa thanks to the education department’s inspired policy reforms. And assessment criteria to at least monitor who is doing better or worse than others have been reduced. “Where students could once be refused promotion (to the next grade) for missing more than 60 days of school or failing their first language (!), these criteria have been removed”, we’re told.

So What’s the Deal?

Many have blamed poverty and inequality for the problems, though the successes of those attending schools in countries where the situation is worse act as a strong counter-argument.

The conclusion the articles reach is that it is the quality of educators that is at the route of the problem; but sorting this out is no easy thing in a country with such powerful unions. Says the second article, “Teacher trade unions have refused to allow testing of teachers, but where this has been done, the results are shocking.” (Refer back to the results stated previously).

Some more worrying stats are that “only 5% of grade 6s at township schools (can) read or write at the level expected for their grade. Only 2% (can) do the maths.” Reports also indicate that there is less time devoted to teaching, a slower pace to the lessons, and a lower expectation by teachers in township versus suburban schools.

Neither article paints a rosy picture of the duration of time we can expect before these problems are resolved. “More than 10 years” is one estimate.

Yikes!

E-Learning to the rescue?

Since we are an e-Learning company I though it only right that I jot down some ideas
Before I start though I need to say that I’m not in any way suggesting that we replace teachers with e-Learning delivery, I will be the first to agree that e-Learning cannot replace face-to-face interventions in the majority of cases. Simply that e-Learning in specific contexts and in delivering specific material (even if this is only a small part of a greater curriculum) may both complement the efforts of teachers and help alleviate some of the problems.

For one, the issue of poor quality may be improved through the use of e-learning since quality can be set when any lesson is created. In this way, the quality of education delivery is not dependent on the education levels of multiple teachers. A counter-argument to this is obviously that when using e-Learning a measure of flexibility is lost with regard to changing tack or slowing the pace, which human facilitators would handle naturally.

The counter-counter-argument could be that this necessitates that different e-Learning versions of the same subject be created, each version targeting an audience of slightly different aptitude. This could also necessitate flexibility be built in through the use of additional readings or optional educative tools that could be used by those lagging behind to catch up, or those leading the pack to stay entertained.

Still on the issue of quality, this time quality variance, e-Learning would help bring all in line with a given quality level (one of the benefits of e-Learning that attracts me is the ability to use computer-based testing to assess knowledge gaps and to assign learning that then fills these gaps, without having to assign whole subjects which a student may already have covered in part).

An obvious help would be cost saving in terms of creating and delivering content. With the kinds of numbers we’re talking here there would be major cost savings in using (and reusing) e-Learning content as opposed to the time and effort required to have someone physically presenting this information. Again, I refer readers to my earlier disclaimer.

So those are some points to start. In concluding, all that’s left to say is that I hope the government reads the same reports as the Financial Mail does and can have the soundness of mind to reassess their strategies on education in this country.