But unions say the new curriculum could fall flat on its face if implementation is not up to scratch
David Macfarlane
An exceptionally bold language policy forms a major part of the new school curriculum released in draft form this week. But the draft lacks any detailed budget for implementation, raising questions about how successfully and how soon the curriculum, including its language aims, will become reality in the country’s classrooms.
The curriculum “makes possible multilingualism through providing curricula in all official languages for the home language, and the first and second additional languages”, Minister of Education Kader Asmal announced when he released the Draft Revised National Curriculum Statement on Monday.
“This is the first time that kind of [language] provision has been made,” says Sue Muller, director of curriculum matters for the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa). “Old policies on language in education have lagged behind the requirements of the Constitution. If our interpretation of the minister’s statement on language is correct, Naptosa is very happy.”
“We welcome the attention given to languages,” says Pieter Martins, CEO of the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (SAOU), “as we are firm believers in mother-tongue education.”
The draft curriculum statement is now available for public comment until October 12. This is the latest stage in the process Asmal initiated last year, when he appointed Professor Linda Chisholm to lead a review of Curriculum 2005, which Asmal’s predecessor, Sibusiso Bengu, introduced in the mid-1990s.
“This is a monumental thing,” says Chisholm of the draft, “a curriculum for 10 years of schooling grades R to nine. It’s not a fly-by-night curriculum.”
There is near-universal acclaim for the achievements of Chisholm’s review committee, which completed its work in May last year. Any curriculum needs clearly to state the order in which concepts should be studied: “Learning outcomes and assessment standards need to be mapped on a grade-by-grade basis,” says curriculum specialist Emilia Potenza, “and Curriculum 2005 did not do this.”
In its original form, Curriculum 2005 assumed that every teacher could be both a curriculum developer and a writer of textbooks an unrealistic expectation, Potenza says.
Streamlining the jargon-heavy and conceptually confusing Curriculum 2005 started in January this year, with about 150 ministerially appointed educationists working on each of the eight new learning areas as well as on qualifications, assessment and implementation.
“The draft statement is a lot simpler and far more accessible than Curriculum 2005 in its original form,” says Professor Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at the University of Pretoria. “It has a great design and is genuinely meaningful. This is an important step.”
The SAOU welcomes the revised version. “It is now more realistic and user-friendly,” says the union’s Martins.
Concern now focuses on implementation, and particularly on how teachers will be trained. They face an unenviable task implementing Curriculum 2005 in its original form in grades four and eight this year and in grades five and nine next year, while simultaneously gearing up to implement the streamlined curriculum from 2004. “It’s going to be a bit like changing the tyres on a moving car,” one educationist says.
“We want the curriculum to succeed,” says Shermain Mannah, education specialist at the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), “but if implementation, learning support materials and training are not up to scratch, the whole thing could fall flat on its face.”
Sadtu also points to limitations of capacity in provincial departments. “They will have to implement,” Mannah says, “but most provinces aren’t ready they’re still restructuring and have inadequate personnel capacity.”
Jansen questions whether resources exist for adequate training. And the SAOU expresses concern “about the availability of funds for training purposes and for the much-needed learning support material. The minister was not very clear on these matters,” Martins says.
Feedback will have to focus on the “varied quality” of the draft statements across the eight learning areas, Sadtu observes. There is wide agreement among educationists and unions that some learning area statements are far better than others.
For Naptosa, the natural sciences learning area is especially problematic. “It’s thin on concepts and not coherent,” Muller says. “If you ask the question, ‘Will this learning area produce learners sufficiently scientifically literate to take South Africa off the bottom of the International Maths and Science Survey?’, the answer is no.”
Arts and culture has drawn some withering criticism. This new learning area combines drama, music, visual arts and design, media and communication, arts management, arts technology, literature and heritage.
One arts educationist says the arts and culture statement “is not usable and useful for teachers. It’s inaccessible, there’s a lack of coherence among the different disciplines, and the way the information is organised is chaotic. The statement does not appear to have been written with teachers in mind” a damaging point, given that these statements when finalised are intended to provide practical and substantial help for teachers.
But other areas receive lavish praise. Naptosa says its field tests of technology and of economic and management sciences went very well. And social sciences (which contains history and geography) is also receiving admiration. The other three learning areas are languages, mathematics and life orientation.
Quite how the process of managing feedback from the public will occur is not yet clear. “Decisions are still to be made,” says Chisholm. “We’ll need to be careful and use discretion.” Teacher unions applaud the degree of participation the process of developing a new curriculum has so far afforded, but “changes and revisions must have the same degree of participation”, says Naptosa.
Getting copies of the whole curriculum statement is proving no easy matter. The lengthy documents describing each learning area are currently available only on the Department of Education’s website (http://education.pwv.gov.za), and by the middle of the week teacher unions had not been able to download them.
One educationist comments that it’s early days, but if people don’t soon have far easier access to the whole document, this could discredit the feedback plan: “The process of pubic participation could be put in jeopardy,” she says.
Anyone who has trouble retrieving the document from the education department website should approach the department for a print version.
Thumbs up for Afrikaans, page 16