The government was setting itself up for failure if it introduced its further education and training (FET) curriculum for grades 10 to 12 in 2006, the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) said on Tuesday.
Naptosa president Dave Balt was commenting after Education Minister Naledi Pandor’s said on Monday that, as far as she was concerned, the deadline remained 2006.
Pandor said the nine provincial education departments would give her a full report next month on their state of readiness and ability to put the curriculum in place.
”Naptosa is not convinced that the 2006 deadline is feasible without compromising the quality of delivery and Naptosa does not believe that the system is ready to deliver,” Balt said in a statement.
He said several of the subject statements, for example, life sciences, were still incomplete.
”The biological knowledge to be taught to grades 10 to 12 is limited to a single page. Teachers are likely to find it difficult to make sense of it.”
”Although ‘integration’ is one of the principles for OBE [outcomes based education] curriculum design, the knowledge is relegated to a single page… and does not enable integration of learning outcomes and knowledge… Some fundamental debates around outcomes-based assessment have not yet taken place. The present focus is exclusively on forms of assessment and does not take into account the need for criterion referencing — a fundamental tenet of OBE,” he added.
Balt said Naptosa was not convinced that 2006 was sufficiently far away for there to be time to develop and test an appropriate external assessment for grade 12.
”What will the consequences be for teachers if there is no reliable instrument on which to base the awarding of the … qualification?” – Sapa