More than half of South Africa’s maths and science teachers are underqualified, but imminent changes in the education system are set to create an even bigger deficit in qualiÂfied instructors, making it more difficult to improve maths and science results for learners.
A recent report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise says that phasing out the senior certificate and replacing it with the national senior certificate next year will almost double the number of maths pupils from 275Â 000 to more than 500Â 000. Higher grade and standard grade maths will fall away. These will be replaced by a mandatory version that is somewhere between the two grades in degree of difficulty and will be coupled with another compulsory subject, matheÂmatical literacy.
Under the senior certificate system maths — standard grade or higher grade — has been an elective subject. Under the national senior certificate system, only science will remain optional, placing tremendous pressure on schools that previously did not offer maths as a subject.
The report says that while South Africa spends proportionately more on education than many other developing countries, its learners perform far worse in international tests because the country’s public education system is inefficient, teachers are unevenly distributed throughout the school system and other resources are not being used effectively.
Content knowledge and teaching techniques are often substandard with teachers spending 40% of their total work time, instead of the expected 85%, teaching. Being a highly unionised sector, efforts to introduce accountability in terms of performance have been difficult.
Only 550 potential maths or science teachers graduated from South African universities last year and many are likely to fall prey to the attractions of private employment, emigration and other options.
Of the 467Â 958 learners who wrote senior certificate exams, 8,5% wrote higher grade maths and 5,1% passed. Only 2Â 406 (0,5%) African learners passed higher grade maths with a C or higher symbol. Although the number of Dinaledi schools, which pay science and maths education extra attention, has increased, the precise impact has been difficult to ascertain. Higher grade passes achieved by Dinaledi schools went from 3Â 331 in 2004 to 3Â 909 last year, while the number of schools went up from 102 to 400 during this period.
The report proposes a more comprehensive and system-wide initiative if Naledi Pandor’s department of education is to achieve its goal of doubling higher grade maths and science passes in the next few years.
It also recommends that teachers should be recruited immediately from overseas (for example, from India) to make up for the shortfall.
It further recommends intense training and negotiation with the union to ensure that teachers spend more time teaching.
‘Without the essential measures the Centre for Development and Enterprise is suggesting, we see no realistic possibility of improving the output of our schooling system,†said executive director Ann Bernstein.