David Macfarlane
About 73% of grade seven learners don’t know what apartheid was, 95% know nothing about the 1994 elections and 98% are unaware of township grievances under the apartheid regime. Yet outcomes-based education (OBE) the teaching and learning philosophy that underpins South Africa’s new Curriculum 2005 for schools also produces results at least as good as the system it is replacing.
These are some of the findings of a recent attempt to quantify the effects of OBE. “Is OBE working in schools?” is the question that independent researcher Dr Louise Holman, who runs the Holman Institute for Educational and Psychological Evaluation and Research, took as the basis for research she conducted last year that focused on the foundation phase (grades one to three) and the senior phase (grades six to nine).
Her central finding is that grade ones perform as well as grade twos tested in 1998, who at that stage had not been exposed to OBE; and grade sevens perform as well as current grade eights (the latter have not had exposure to OBE so far). On this basis Holman concludes that “the overall picture is extremely good”.
At the same time she expresses reservations about levels of writing, reading and numeracy in the foundation phase. And whether the gap between good and weak learners is reducing is also a concern: in the foundation phase the gap is narrowing, but in the senior phase it is widening. This “applies to all academic areas, including knowledge, preparations for future exams and thinking skills”, says Holman.
Holman admits to a serious limitation in her findings: “The results are … skewed towards ‘advantaged’ schools and the research should not be evaluated as a random sample of learners or schools.” Sixty-five schools and 2 803 learners across all provinces formed Holman’s research sample but she says only 15% of the schools she tested could be classified as “disadvantaged”. She concedes that including more disadvantaged schools in the sample would vastly change research findings.
That OBE works best in well-resourced schools with highly trained and motivated teachers was a point powerfully stressed in last year’s report by the Curriculum 2005 Review Committee that the minister of education appointed. Professor Linda Chisholm, who chaired the committee, points out that even in such schools there is a dire need for higher levels of writing, reading and numeracy skills and the need is correspondingly greater in disadvantaged schools.
Chisholm, who now chairs the ministerial project committee for streamlining Curriculum 2005, comments on Holman’s survey: “The one question this sort of assessment can’t answer is why these or any other results are achieved. The answer must rest with teachers.
“A more open curriculum, such as Curriculum 2005 is, expects more of teachers. Those who are already well-trained and qualified will perform well. But if you have an open curriculum and teachers aren’t trained, then you have a problem. The issue returns again to teacher training and development, as last year’s review committee report repeatedly stressed.”