Poor Quality of Education (Post-Apartheid)
{ Causes }
People and Society
Political
Corruption
In terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act of 2004, bribery or corruption occurs when a member of the governing body, SGB or teaching staff directly accept or offers to accept money, goods or services from another person in exchange for being awarded a tender or landing a contract. It can also occur if a relative accepts or is offered money, gifts or services by the person.
The most common form of corruption that occurs in education is the misuse of school funds and resources. This includes procurement in construction, shadow schools and ghost teachers, diversion of resources meant for textbooks and supplies, misuse of school grants for private gains. Others include bribery in recruitment, admissions, buying of grades and tenders, selling of exam and test papers, nepotism in teacher appointments and fake diplomas, absenteeism and private tutoring in schools. (Corruption watch, 2013).
The avenues where corruption can occur is high with the decentralisation of the education system, which means that funds go through several layers of administration, such as the governmental and provincial levels before reaching schools and individuals. (Rabin, 2011). There are often insufficient monitoring of the movement of public funds and little or no accounting needed when handling these funds, thus corruption is prone to occur.
Corruption occurs especially since a large amount of funds is involved. According to Transparency International (TI)'s report, education is the largest or second largest recipient of public funds in most countries. In South Africa, 20% of the budget is spent on education. (SouthAfrica.info, 2014). In addition, education employs the greatest number of civil servants. Another reason is the high stakes that education bring. Since education is seen to be important in affecting the prospects of individuals and nations, education providers are able to use it to carry out political manipulation and extortion. (Rabin, 2011).
Transparency International (TI)'s report found that 27% of school principals did not receive their budgets on time in south Africa . The conditions within schools were therefore largely inadequate. In South Africa, three-quarters of the principals interviewed reported that they did not have the required funds and facilities to run their schools.(as cited in Rabin, 2011)
Corruption leads to a reduction in resources and facilities, thus students have a less conducive environment for a higher quality education. Apart from that, corruption also raises the cost of higher education, making it harder for those in low income families to pursue higher education.
Video: The effects of corruption
In terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act of 2004, bribery or corruption occurs when a member of the governing body, SGB or teaching staff directly accept or offers to accept money, goods or services from another person in exchange for being awarded a tender or landing a contract. It can also occur if a relative accepts or is offered money, gifts or services by the person.
The most common form of corruption that occurs in education is the misuse of school funds and resources. This includes procurement in construction, shadow schools and ghost teachers, diversion of resources meant for textbooks and supplies, misuse of school grants for private gains. Others include bribery in recruitment, admissions, buying of grades and tenders, selling of exam and test papers, nepotism in teacher appointments and fake diplomas, absenteeism and private tutoring in schools. (Corruption watch, 2013).
The avenues where corruption can occur is high with the decentralisation of the education system, which means that funds go through several layers of administration, such as the governmental and provincial levels before reaching schools and individuals. (Rabin, 2011). There are often insufficient monitoring of the movement of public funds and little or no accounting needed when handling these funds, thus corruption is prone to occur.
Corruption occurs especially since a large amount of funds is involved. According to Transparency International (TI)'s report, education is the largest or second largest recipient of public funds in most countries. In South Africa, 20% of the budget is spent on education. (SouthAfrica.info, 2014). In addition, education employs the greatest number of civil servants. Another reason is the high stakes that education bring. Since education is seen to be important in affecting the prospects of individuals and nations, education providers are able to use it to carry out political manipulation and extortion. (Rabin, 2011).
Transparency International (TI)'s report found that 27% of school principals did not receive their budgets on time in south Africa . The conditions within schools were therefore largely inadequate. In South Africa, three-quarters of the principals interviewed reported that they did not have the required funds and facilities to run their schools.(as cited in Rabin, 2011)
Corruption leads to a reduction in resources and facilities, thus students have a less conducive environment for a higher quality education. Apart from that, corruption also raises the cost of higher education, making it harder for those in low income families to pursue higher education.
Video: The effects of corruption
Video: South Africa's fight against corruption
Video: Opinions of some people
Lack of Standardisation of Testing Methods
At Grade 12, students take a school leaving examination called the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination, or the matric exam. Based on their results, they will qualify for higher education at the Higher Certificate, Diploma or Bachelor Degree levels if they meet the entry requirements. (IEB – assessment matters, 2011).
The NSC examinations were the only form of standardised national examination since 1858. In addition, studies by Lam, Ardington & Leibbrandt (2010) and Van der Berg & Shepherd (2010), have shown that internal assessments in many SouthAfrican schools are weak, with lenient and random awarding of marks. (as cited in Van der Berg, Taylor, Gustafsson, Spaull & Armstrong, 2011).This makes promotion in the primary and lower secondary schools an inaccurate indicator of knowledge and skills acquisition in learning. Many pupils progress to higher grades with their literacy and numeracy foundations weak. This also leads to differing standards and thus quality of education in schools. Some data show that Grade 9 students from quintile one and two schools are performing at least three years behind quintile five students of the same grade.
This also leads to a high dropout rate before Grade 12, usually at grades 10 and 11. With the necessary skills not acquired, schools and teachers can no longer afford to promote pupils as the NSC examination approaches. Of the 100 students that start Grade 1, 50 will drop out before Grade 12, 40 will pass the NSC exam and 12 will qualify for university. In the Eastern Cape, only 20% of the Grade 2 students from the 2001 cohort passed the NSC examination in 2011. (Spaull, 2013). This means that the rate of around 70% passes in the NSC examinations is in fact much lower when the whole enrolment of the cohort at Grade 2 is considered. Of the Grade 2 cohort in 2001, only 38% passed the NSC examination. (Spaull, 2012).
Thus, although South Africa has a high enrolment rate of 98% and high literacy rate of 92.9% (qualified by being older than 15 or attaining at least Grade 7 education), the functional literacy rate only stands at 18.1% in 2011. A large proportion of the population’s highest education level is between grades 7 to 11. (Pretorius, 2013).
However, in 2011, the Annual National Assessments (ANA) was introduced and has since been conducted yearly. The ANA tests are for students in grades 1-6 and 9, with the test set based on what they learnt in that year. The marking of scripts is done by school teachers, however moderation of a few scripts is done by the Department of Basic Education for grades 3, 6 and 9. At the end of the year, the results will be released by the Minister. (Department of Basic Education, n.d.)
The ANA helps address the “weak assessment practices and lack of transparency regarding learning outcomes”. It also gives teachers a clearer picture of the standards of their students in comparison with the rest of the nation. According to Van der Berg et al (2010), many primary school teachers have a wrong impression that their students are meeting the level required by the curriculum when they are actually performing below such levels. (as cited in Van der Berg et al., 2011). With standardised examinations at the lower grades, benchmarks are set and education standards and quality can become more equal and improved across the country. (Van der Berg et al. 2011).
It should be noted that the performance in ANA is currently low and unequal. Below shows an example given by Spaull (2012) is a question from the Grade 3 ANA numeracy test. Only 40% of all Grade 3 students could get the answer to the question. The performance across quintiles showed unequal results, with 58% of the students in quintile five schools answering the question correctly in contrast to less than 40% in quintile one, two and three schools.dit.
School Governing Bodies (SGBs)
School Governing Bodies (SGBs) can be found in every South African school and consist of democratically elected members of the school community. Members include the principal, co-opted members who cannot vote, as well as representatives of parents, teachers, non-teaching staff and students of Grade 8 and higher. Parents who are not employed by the school have the highest representation. The SGB set policies and rules that govern and ensure that the policies are implemented. (Education Rights Project, n.d.)
Many SGBs are not operating as it should be. A majority of the parents on SGBs are White and economically stable, even though that may not be representative of the school population demographics. (Van Wyk, 2007). Even when some Blacks parents are represented, many of them face the problem of illiteracy as a result of the poor quality education they received under the Apartheid era. Also, parents are unable to access relevant management information issued from the education authorities. They struggle with a lack of confidence and skills needed to carry out their responsibilities. This may affect their ability to provide valuable inputs and support the school management in providing a good quality of education. The Ministerial Review Committee reports that 47% of teachers and principals felt that the lack of skills among SGB members weakens the effectiveness of SGBs. (as cited in Van Wyk, 2007).
SGBs with members who have higher income are able to contribute to the funding of the school, allowing them to more actively support and promote the interests of the school. Parents who are poor may find it harder to do so. (Heystek, 2010). In addition, they may struggle with affording the travel costs needed for transport to attend SGB meetings. (Equal Education, 2011). This can lead to irregular and poor attendance during SGB meetings, which can reduce the effectiveness of such meetings as not all of the interest groups can be represented.
Another reason for the dysfunctional performance of SGBs is the poor training provided by the provincial departments. Also, members of the SGBs lack the understanding of their roles and responsibilities as a member of the SGB. Some SGB members do not know the scope of their powers. They confuse school governance with school management, taking over the role of the principal. In other instances, many parents on SGBs do not express their opinions and look to the principal and teachers for leadership and guidance when making decisions. This causes the principal to play a dominate role during SGB meetings and decision making, which is the case for 41% of the teachers interviewed in a research. (Van Wyk, 2007). This can defeat the purpose of having parents to be the majority on SGBs and the SGB becomes incapable of influencing school decisions to improve the quality of education.
School Management
Another possible reason for the poor quality of education in South Africa is that principals are not clear of their roles. Hoadley, Christie and Ward (2009) found that majority of South African principals do not see their main task as overseeing the curriculum and teaching. Instead, most feel that this responsibility lies with subject heads and the Heads of Department (HODs). Thus, principals may spend most of their time on administrative duties and discipline of students, rather than ensuring the coverage of curriculum and high standards of teaching.
This could a reason to the problems such as insufficient coverage, poor management of resources and loss of teaching time, which leads to a poor quality of education. Insufficient coverage of the curriculum can be seen in a review done by the National Science Education Standard showed that students in taking Grade 5 mathematics never or hardly do complex exercises, and one in three Grade 5 English classes have not done any paragraph length writing in workbooks. The lack of sufficient exposure to exercises causes students to lack practice in the skills learnt in classrooms, thus probably accounting for the weak foundations seen in students.
The school management plays an important role in providing teachers with teaching tools such as textbooks and ensuring the effective usage of these resources. The management of resources also includes the deploying of teachers. Ineffective deployment can be seen when there are large classes combined with too many breaks in period for teachers. (Van der Berg et al., 2011) Smaller classes can help facilitate better learning as teachers can pay more attention to each student and better cater to the general learning progress of the students in each class.
Another possible reason for the poor quality of education in South Africa is that principals are not clear of their roles. Hoadley, Christie and Ward (2009) found that majority of South African principals do not see their main task as overseeing the curriculum and teaching. Instead, most feel that this responsibility lies with subject heads and the Heads of Department (HODs). Thus, principals may spend most of their time on administrative duties and discipline of students, rather than ensuring the coverage of curriculum and high standards of teaching.
This could a reason to the problems such as insufficient coverage, poor management of resources and loss of teaching time, which leads to a poor quality of education. Insufficient coverage of the curriculum can be seen in a review done by the National Science Education Standard showed that students in taking Grade 5 mathematics never or hardly do complex exercises, and one in three Grade 5 English classes have not done any paragraph length writing in workbooks. The lack of sufficient exposure to exercises causes students to lack practice in the skills learnt in classrooms, thus probably accounting for the weak foundations seen in students.
The school management plays an important role in providing teachers with teaching tools such as textbooks and ensuring the effective usage of these resources. The management of resources also includes the deploying of teachers. Ineffective deployment can be seen when there are large classes combined with too many breaks in period for teachers. (Van der Berg et al., 2011) Smaller classes can help facilitate better learning as teachers can pay more attention to each student and better cater to the general learning progress of the students in each class.
Socio-economic
South Africa has reached high educational attainment relative to other emerging countries, but education quality has been low and very uneven. Racial inequalities as a result of the Apartheid brings about the discrepancies between blacks and whites. Some of these discrepancies affect the quality of education for certain schools, as seen below.
Blacks are dropping out of schools earlier
Blacks are dropping out of schools earlier
- Their less years of schooling attributed to 28.5% of the higher poverty incidences as compared to whites
- Previous fragmentation of education system during apartheid continues to shape the current education system.
- Research by the Human Sciences Research Council reveals that in the first year at university 40% of South African drop out. Only 15% managed to finish their degrees while Blacks made up the majority of the dropouts. (Arendorf, 2013) (View video below)
Basic facilities
In 1994, more than 15000 schools lack water and electricity. Now based on the department’s track records since 2009, 1800 schools still lack basic facilities such as electricity, clean running water, buildings and phone lines. Hence, even though there have been improvements in most schools, there is still a considerable number of schools lacking the basic facilities and hence making it difficult for smooth running of the school and conducive learning
- Although some progress has been made, many schools from disadvantaged areas still suffer from important infrastructure backlogs, which have largely been inherited from the apartheid era.
- The number of schools without water or without toilets has been divided by 5 between 1996 and 2010 and the proposition of overcrowded classes (over 45 learners) declined from 55% to 25%. Yet, provision of school infrastructure remains a serious challenge as for instance 77% had no computer centre, 60% had no library in 2010, 7% still had no water supply, and overall 23% were deemed to be in poor or very poor condition, among which two thirds were located in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
- The persistent shortage of textbooks illustrates the practical problems faced by the South African government.
- Statistics from SACMEQ (2007) database show that only 36% of learners had access to their own mathematics textbook. The low textbook availability is the main reason why learners are not allowed to take them home.
- In Limpopo, 22% of schools that ordered textbooks received nothing in 2008 (Department of Basic Education, 2011b, p. 125), which mainly reflects delivery failures of local authorities. There seem to be fewer problems when procurements are made to schools for purchasing learning materials directly, while using funds from the department (Department of Basic Education, 2010b).
- While wealthy provinces such as Gauteng and Western Cape display excellent coverage, most provinces, especially the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu- Natal, are still lagging far behind (e.g. 60% of schools have a computer centre in Western Cape versus only 10% in Eastern Cape).
Teachers
Teachers in previously Bantu education schools were given poor training during the era of apartheid.
In the post-apartheid period, there was restructuring of the higher education sector teacher training sector whereby the government decided to move the teacher training under higher education.
- This meant that teacher training is no longer a separate faculty committed to training teachers but was now considered a unit in a larger university faculty.
- As universities are less likely to have a professional focus and will usually have an academic approach. There is heavy emphasis on educating the teachers instead of equipping the teachers with pragmatic skills such as classroom management. As a result this new change compromised the effectiveness of the teachers. (Clarke, 2010)
- Teacher training colleges were also relocated to urban areas. The difficult access and deprived bright rural children the opportunity to become teachers who were dedicated and passionate of their profession.
- Unlike South Africa, many post independent African state have shifted their focus to these rural areas whereby they gather pools of aspiring teachers for future teacher development. The enthusiastic teachers in the rural of schools of Zimbabwe help motivate the students to learn.
- The content matter of a particular subject is considered as the syllabus. The curriculum is a set of courses and their respective content offered in universities and schools. However there appears to be confusion over what was considered is considered a syllabi and a curriculum, hence there was much discussion on changing the curriculum instead of improving the various syllabus.The system undergone drastic changes to accommodate the new curriculum too rapidly, losing the effective aspects of the previous system. On the other hand, Zimbabwe did not follow South Africa’s tabula rasa route but instead chose to gradually introduced the new curriculum over a decade during the 80s. Zimbabwe’s method managed to maintain continuity and stability for the students and teachers, something which South Africa has failed to do so and ultimately causing the current education system to have fundamental flaws.
- Unfortunately not many South Africans choose the path of teaching due to closures of teacher training colleges. Little funding and constant news reports on the incompetence and below-standard qualifications further highlights the negative perceptions of teachers, eroding away the prestige of the profession and making it even more undesirable.
The current school act is seriously flawed due to the influence by devalued experiences obtained from the nation itself or neighbouring countries such as Botswana and Zimbabwe and overseas consultants. (Education Department , n.d)
- Educators such as teachers and principals and schools not located in urban areas were not the main focus of this policy, eventually compromising the quality of the education provided.
Only a mere 18% of black teachers are professionally qualified graduates. (The Economist, 2010).Hence professional skills needed for teachers to perform high quality work are clearly lacking.
Furthermore, a majority of the teachers also spend less than half of the mandatory 6.5 hours in class in a day. (The Economist, 2010). Only two thirds take up 46% of their time to actively teach. On Fridays, hardly any of the teachers come to school to teach. (Bauer, 2011)
It is evident that they lack the passion and commitment to the job, and as a result the outcomes will be undesirable. However this situation may change for the better as President Jacob Zuma’s government have been considering of re-establishing a schools’ inspectorate. (The Economist, 2010).
Access to extra funds
A result of such challenges in education for the Blacks is that the progress of African students is worse than other racial groups such as coloured, Indian and White students. Almost 58.5% of whites and around 51% of Indians enter higher education. The rate for coloureds is 14.3%, while blacks are even lower at 12%. (SAinfo, 2013)
Now it is not really about one’s race but the socio-economic background affecting the quality of the education they receive. Furthermore the current education system structure is still largely similar to the on during the Apartheid era. Hence the different education system results in the unequal opportunities for different races. (Timæus, Simelane & Letsoalo, 2011).
(Below is a video of people in South Africa campaigning for better schools.)
- Parents with children enrolled in previously white schools are mostly middle income earners. Thus they can help raise extra funds for the schools through school fees and other charges. As a result, more teachers can be employed and complementary facilities to be built to enhance the students’ learning. On the other hand, African children come from families with lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Furthermore this has partly to do with apartheid. During apartheid, blacks were being oppressed. A white child had 16 times more funds from the government as compared to a Black. (The Economist, 2010).
A result of such challenges in education for the Blacks is that the progress of African students is worse than other racial groups such as coloured, Indian and White students. Almost 58.5% of whites and around 51% of Indians enter higher education. The rate for coloureds is 14.3%, while blacks are even lower at 12%. (SAinfo, 2013)
Now it is not really about one’s race but the socio-economic background affecting the quality of the education they receive. Furthermore the current education system structure is still largely similar to the on during the Apartheid era. Hence the different education system results in the unequal opportunities for different races. (Timæus, Simelane & Letsoalo, 2011).
(Below is a video of people in South Africa campaigning for better schools.)