‘Myopic gambling’ with the future of education

The government’s ability to implement its massive new school curriculum effectively is again under serious interrogation. This follows Minister of Education Kader Asmal’s quiet announcement on Monday February 24 that implementation of the Further Education and Training Curriculum (FET — grades 10, 11 and 12) will be delayed until 2006.

When Asmal released the FET curriculum statements for public comment in October, his intention to achieve full implementation in 2004 caused widespread alarm and incredulity among teacher unions and other educationists. The Mail & Guardian reported then that major questions remained unanswered.

These included how many new teachers would need to be found and how many in the system retrained; how the huge costs of retraining and of producing adequate new learner-support materials, including textbooks, would be met; how quality textbooks could possibly be produced, and teachers trained in their use, in under a year; and who would provide teacher training.

After Asmal met the Council of Education Ministers on Monday, the Ministry of Education announced that the council had agreed FET implementation should be delayed until ‘all the necessary measures are in place. The new curriculum will be introduced to classrooms in 2006.”

But further questions now need answering, says South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) general secretary Thulas Nxesi. The delay means that even more learners will be caught in a ‘transitional, limbo group”.

The limbo concerns, in the first instance, this year’s grade 10s, who are the first cohort to enter the grade after exposure to outcomes-based education (OBE) methodologies from the start of their schooling until grade nine. ‘Reared on OBE, they [grade 10s] are now back to traditional teaching and learning methodologies,” Nxesi points out.

The M&G reported in March last year that this year’s grade 10s — and their teachers — would face this limbo because no new OBE curriculum was in place to greet them in 2003.

But the delay in the implementation of FET means that this transitional limbo group will be vastly extended, and will include next year’s grades 10 and 11, and grades 10, 11 and 12 in 2005. ‘This is myopic and irresponsible bureaucratic bungling,” Nxesi says. ‘You can’t gamble with the future of the nation by sticking to timelines without reference to the readiness of the system.”

Sadtu is calling for ‘an incremental implementation of FET over the next three years”, Nxesi says.

Like Sadtu, the National Professional Teachers’ Union of South Africa (Naptosa) is sounding alarm bells about teacher training for the new FET curriculum. ‘Where is the capacity for training on this scale?” asks Sue Muller, Naptosa’s director of curriculum matters.

‘The Department of Education can’t cope alone, and higher education — which is funded by public money and so has an obligation —seems to have decided it’s not interested. But they [higher education] can’t keep playing ostrich.”

Muller says there can be no decisions about the extent and variety of teacher training needed without a national skills audit. ‘Even 2006 for implementation is optimistic. Naptosa believes 2009 would be better.”

The education department’s Deputy Director General for FET, Khetsi Lehoko, told the M&G: ‘Accurate data on teacher supply needs to be obtained to assist effective planning … Complete, verified data should be available by June 2003.” Lehoko also acknowledges that ‘a massive specialist teacher upgrade in subject content” will be needed.

‘Higher education institutions and other providers will need to be engaged to prepare for this teacher development exercise. This engagement is planned for completion by September 2003.”

Lehoko says ‘subject statements [for the new FET curriculum] have to be revised quite substantially following the public inputs. This will interrupt and cause delays to the preparation of textbooks. Publishers have indicated that quality texts can be completed and ready by June 2005.”