The government has formulated its comprehensive new curriculum for the crucial last three years of schooling without reliable data — and in some cases any data at all, educationists and teacher unions say.
One result is that education officials cannot yet say how many teachers will be needed to implement the new curriculum, nor how they will be found or trained.
Another is that the huge costs of training and of producing essential learner support materials, especially textbooks, have still to be quantified — and the money found. Stakeholders cite these as major reasons why the mooted 2004 implementation date cannot possibly be met.
Minister of Education Kader Asmal last week released the draft national curriculum statement for grades 10, 11 and 12 — the Further Education and Training (FET) band. This follows last year’s widely acclaimed revised Curriculum 2005 for General Education and Training (GET –grades R to nine).
Both the GET and FET curricula follow outcomes-based education methodologies and institute new learning areas (in the case of GET) and subjects (in FET). The FET curriculum will lead to the FET certificate, which will replace the present senior certificate examination.
Thirty-five FET subjects replace the senior certificate’s 124 subjects. Each learner will choose a minimum of seven subjects. Four compulsory subjects will come from two languages, life orientation (which includes issues of democracy, citizenship and sexual education), and either mathematics or mathematical literacy.
But more than 6 800 maths teachers — nearly double the number now in the system — will be needed to cater for maths or mathematical literacy as compulsory subjects, says Shermain Mannah, education specialist at the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu). This estimate is based only on grade 12 statistics for last year and assumes identical classes in grades 10 and 11.
On this basis, if the existing quota of maths teachers were to deal with all learners, this would create classrooms with 63 learners per teacher (in 2000, the national average was 38 learners per teacher).
”It is not a foregone conclusion,” Mannah says, ”that teachers whose subjects are to be phased out could simply become maths or maths literacy teachers.
”The very intention behind including maths literacy as a compulsory subject could be defeated if the teachers themselves are not comfortably mathematically literate.”
And the costs of teacher retraining for the whole FET curriculum — not merely maths — are ”alarming and ill-defined” at the moment, Mannah says.
Who is going to pay, she asks — individual teachers, schools or the provinces?
She estimates that an initial two-month preparation of teacher trainers to orient teachers in the new curriculum would cost more than R300-million; and training FET teachers will cost R1,35-billion over three years.
Mathematical literacy should be delayed until 2005, and in the meantime a task team dedicated to managing the implementation of the subject should be appointed ”as a matter of urgency”, Mannah says.
The curriculum is ”symbolism before substance”, says Professor Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at the University of Pretoria.
”In secondary school you don’t just walk over from one subject to another. Where are the teachers to be found to support the curriculum’s aim of increased learner numbers?”
The education department still does not know what skills teachers have or how many teachers are qualified and in what, says Sue Muller, director of curriculum matters for the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa).
”As a result it cannot project how many teachers will be needed over the next five years.”
The deputy director general for FET in the national education department, Khetsi Lehoko, did not respond to the Mail & Guardian‘s detailed questions. However, the University of Natal’s Cassius Lubisi, chairperson of the Ministerial Project Committee that devised the new FET curriculum, said: ”We failed to find data in the system on how many teachers of mathematics there are in grades 10 to 12.”
Stressing that his answers do not represent the opinions of the education department, Lubisi said that via extrapolation ”we arrived at a shortfall figure of just over 3 000 maths teachers countrywide. We know that this figure is an underestimation.”
On how many more teachers would be needed for life orientation to be offered as a compulsory subject, Lubisi said it is not possible to provide this figure: ”We need more reliable data to get a good picture here.”
It is also ”too early” to provide statistics regarding the overall training needs for the FET curriculum, he said.
”We need comprehensive data from the system on the number of teachers in the different provinces per subject, and on the qualifications and/or experience of these teachers. For that reason, the Ministerial Project Committee recommends a detailed audit of teacher qualifications.”
Public comment on the draft curriculum closes on January 31.