Education Scenarios for 2019 Executive Summary

2009

Fact 1 Wide Access Despite the impact of HIV and AIDS and poverty generally, the overwhelming majority of children are enrolled in primary schools, and relative to countries with similar levels of development, a high proportion of young people go onto secondary education. Fact 2 High and Equalised Education Expenditure At 5.4% of GDP, South African spending on education is high by comparable standard. Furthermore, in the past decade, the government has made significant progress in equalizing inter-and intra-provincial government spending. Fact 3 Failing Primary School Language and Mathematics Nationally, 72% of all Grade 6 learners failed a national literacy test in 2004. In mathematics, the figue is substantially higher, with 88% of all Grade 6 learners failing to achieve the curriculum standard. Given the centrality of reading, writing and arithmetic not only to all further learning, but also to most jobs in the information economy, the poor performance of South Africa's primary schools in providing basic education must constitute one of the countries most urgent problems. Fact 4 Huge Achievement Gap South Africa's levels of inequality are revealed by crosscountry testing programmes to be the highest by a large margin among participating countries. The point is illustrated by results from tests administered in the Western Cape, which show that, while four out of five children in former white primary schools read at the right level, less than half of learners attending former Coloured primary schools can read at grade level and only four children in a hundred in former DET schools are reading at the prescribed level. Fact 5 Comparative Perspective on Low Achievement The mean score on the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) place South African Grade 8 learners at the very bottom of 50 participating countries. Similar trends are evident in other cross-national studies of quality, where South Africa performs badly compared to a number of much poorer countries. Fact 6 Low Output in Higher Grade Mathematics Of the total population of 18 year olds (about 980,000) less than 140,000 pass Grade 12 mathematics, and only some 20 000 to 25 000 (2.5%) pass the subject at higher grade. Fact 7 Ineffectiveness of the educational bureaucracy The implementation of policy with respect to schools is heavily dependent on the effectiveness of provincial departments of education. While there is considerable variation across and within provinces, it is fair to say that most parts of the system exhibit low levels of functionality, while significant parts are essentially dysfunctional. For example, in her budget speech of 2007 the Minister of Education conceded that by no means the full Treasury allocation for QIDS UP had been used for this purpose in the provinces in the last year. Similarly, poor procurement and distribution of books and desks to schools leaves many schools heavily undersupplied with basic education resources. Fact 8 Shortages of Technical Skills The the government/business Joint Initiative on Priority Skills for South Africa (JIPSA) estimates that, at the current rate of production, only some 40% of the required number of artisans in engineering and related fields will be available to cope with economic needs between 2007 and 2010. Similarly, the construction and engineering industries are experiencing shortages in the managerial, professional and technological fields, and JIPSA estimates that production of skills in these fields need to be increased by some 20% in order to meet the demands of the growing economy. Fact 9 Poor Throughput in Higher Education Half of admitted students drop out of the system without receiving a tertiary qualification. The throughput rate in minimal time in engineering is around 35% at the best institutions and between 5-10% at the others. The comparable throughput rates in East African, Indian and US institutions are around 80-90%. Fact 10 Education and Unemployment Around half of all learners that spend some time in secondary school or equivalent do not find work. Initiative 1 Professionalising the bureaucracy The importance accorded by central government to the task of building systemic capacity is indicated by fact that cabinet has taken charge of directing the development of the education bureaucracy, as part of a larger process of strengthening the civil service. A cabinet legotla in June 2006 laid out a carefully structured activity plan for achieving these ends. Although the targets set by the cabinet process have proved too ambitious, there is no doubt that this process is on the right track, and already effects are being felt in some provinces. However, there is a very long way to go on this issue and a long-term commitment by central government to improving the capacity of departments of education is required if significant efficiency gains are to be achieved. Initiative 2 Literacy programmes The Department of Education has started to develop a number of policies in the area of literacy. These include a 'toolkit' for schools, which describes methods of teaching reading and writing and provides benchmarks for each school quarter and grade, a simple test for early reading which is intended for use by teachers in assessing learner progress, and the Drop All and Read campaign aimed at publicizing the need to set aside time for reading at school. However, these elements do not add up to anything like a coherent national literacy programme, and indeed the three provincial initiatives appear to be taking little direction from the national level.

IMF Working Papers, 2019

While South Africa has made significant improvements in basic and tertiary education enrollment, the country still suffers from significant challenges in the quality of educational achievement by almost any international metric. The paper finds that money is clearly not the main issue since the South Africa's education budget is comparable to OECD countries as a percent of GDP and exceeds that of most peer sub-Saharan African countries in per capita terms. The main explanatory factors are complex and multifaceted, and are associated with insufficient subject knowledge of some teachers, history, race, language, geographic location, and socioeconomic status. Low educational achievement contributes to low productivity growth, and high levels of poverty, unemployment, and inequality. Drawing on the literature, the paper sketches some policy considerations to guide the debate on what works and what does not.

South Africa spends the bulk of its national budget on education, yet the education standards of South African school pupils fall far behind countries with far lower incomes or levels of spending. What are the challenges facing the education sector that weigh on educational attainment and how can they best be addressed to bring us in line with our peers?

2009

There is a major emphasis on the education of the South African people to become responsible, participatory and reflective citizens that contribute to an emerging democracy. However, the government of SA is faced with many challenges that hinder the South African people from becoming an educated nation. This is based on the assumption that education plays a major role in improving the economic status of the nation. The education in South Africa is categorized into sectors, primary, secondary and tertiary which are interlinked through a fine thread that determines the success of individuals. Thus, in this manner education within the various categories can contribute to the building of a united, peaceful, and democratic country (Wilson, 2006). This paper sketches the challenges faced by a young democracy and the initiatives that have been implemented to improve the status of education in South Africa.

This study outlines the challenges South African Education systems is exposed to and how to mend the governance as equal partner which is likely to produce sustainable results throughout the country compared to some countries in the continent which are doing well like Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe which have got effective educational systems in place ahead of South Africa in terms of literacy to the country"s population when it comes to basic education. The dawn of democracy put education of the children in the hands of the parents so that they may able to reap the fruits of their own intentions and hard work upon the education of their children as the government in power in the country believes that people shall govern and indeed at this facet of education the parents are governing (Maluleke, Cassim & Karodia, 2016:1). The old system of school committee was characterized by racism, undemocratically and inequality and it was gender insensitive (The Educators Voice, 1996:16). The education system was highly authoritative and hierarchical. Parents and the community had little influence on what happened in the schools (DoE, 1997:7). Of course the inception of this discernment had its own challenges despite having 86.40% of the people with literacy South Africa is amongst the countries with the highest illiteracy in Sub-Saharan Africa due to a number of factors which happened during the apartheid which kept majority away from school for a number of various reasons, this had a very negative influence to the governance of schools as most of the schools found in rural areas and townships were plagued by the highest level of illiteracy in governance which had an impact to the performance of schools as they did not execute their roles as expected though they were trained after resuming office, this made some academics in power to take advantage of the system to fulfill their own interests and personal ambitions. Research by Heystek & Louw (1991:21) believes that many governors in rural and township areas have limited skills because of their low literacy level and a "negative attitudes towards activities". Study by Vilakazi (2019:18) posits that SGBs are run by unqualified parents.

South African Journal of Education

In this study enrolment numbers and levels, as well as language-in-education, were viewed from a linear, comparative perspective. In the era prior to 1994, black and white learners not only attended separate schools but the segregated schools had different policies regarding medium of instruction. Resistance to the language policy regarding black education culminated in the 1976 uprisings. This led to the scrapping of both Afrikaans and black home languages as language of instruction in black schools. After the uprisings, black schools followed a policy of decreasing bilingualism. After 1994, in the spirit of democracy, official and educational status were granted to eleven languages. Deep-seated distrust and fear, that home-language education would lead to impoverishment, social and political isolation, and disempowerment, caused the majority of South African learners to prefer English rather than their home language as language of instruction. From a linear comparison, it transpires that the language-in-education situation in the classroom has changed very little since 1994. Enrolment numbers and levels, particularly the disparities between white and black, were other points of criticism regarding the education system before 1994. Prior to 1994, compulsory education had only been fully implemented with regard to the white and, to a lesser extent, Indian and coloured sections of the population. The vision that the ANC had in 1955, that "the doors of learning shall be open", was only reflected in policy documents and laws. Both primary-school and secondary-school enrolment numbers showed an increase after the ANC government came to power. The net enrolment numbers (1995-2004) for primary education showed a decrease from 95.0% to 87.4%,but the enrolment numbers for secondary education showed an increase from 56.0% to 67.2%. Despite the latter positive statistics, it would appear that the objective of universal education has still not been realised in South Africa.

South African Journal of Science, 2012