Critical questions about the state of education in South Africa have emerged following the release of the country’s education statistics this week. One prominent educationist has called on the national Department of Education to explain “what the hell is going on”.
On Tuesday Minister of Education Kader Asmal released Education Statistics in South Africa at a Glance in 2001. The statistics reveal that between 1999 and 2001 the number of learners in ordinary public and independent schools decreased by 4,7% or nearly 600 000; students and teachers decreased by 3,1% or 11 000.
The report is based on statistics from South Africa’s 33 894 education institutions and took two years to compile. “The collection of educational statistics is a mammoth undertaking,” said Asmal. “It is thus a comprehensive picture of the system at a particular point in time [2001].”
The statistics indicate that the South African education and training system catered for 13-million learners and 400 000 educators. Ordinary public and independent schools catered for 87,4% of these learners.
The public higher education sector catered for 665 367 students in 2001. About 400 000 were at university and 200 000 at technikons. Enrolments in these two sectors increased by 18 000 between 1999 and 2001.
“This is a snapshot report and so trends are not presented — but the tertiary system is growing again and this is important because at one point [late 1990s] there was some concern about downward [enrolment] trends,” said George Subotsky, director of the University of the Western Cape’s Education Policy Unit.
At Tuesday’s release Asmal commented that “growth” in higher education needed to be monitored.
The education department’s Higher Education Deputy Director General Nasima Badsha told the Mail & Guardian on Wednesday: “We are concerned about a situation where some institutions grow very significantly over a short period of time without having a clear sense of where the additional resources are going to come from. They then run the risk of compromising quality.”
She confirmed that it remains government policy that tertiary student numbers must grow, but said the government needs to watch the proliferation at certain institutions of courses and programmes they could not sustain.
Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at the University of Pretoria, says that the statistics “should sound serious alarm bells” about “where all these kids [from the schooling system] have gone”.
“It is clear that millions of young people are being failed by the education system,” said Salim Vally, the coordinator of the Education Rights Project based at the Education Policy Unit at Wits University.
“The social consequences — besides the obvious issues of crime and anti-social behaviour —Â are that we are now developing into a nation of functionally illiterate people.”
The statistics show that the transition between primary and secondary school is when most of these children drop out of the education system.
In 2001 the total number of students enrolled in grade seven was seven million. In the same year those enrolled in grade eight numbered one million.
In addition to this is a gender disparity. “South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that has more girls in high school than boys,” said Jansen. “This has been a slippage that nobody has looked at.”
In 2001 50,2% of the 11,7-million pupils in ordinary and independent schools were girls.
“I think in the transition from the end of primary school to the beginning of high school is the age that a whole lot of young boys drop out into gangs and very dangerous sub-cultures. That is also why South Africa is experiencing a swelling of its prison population.
“The government hasn’t been successful in retaining students in the secondary education phase,” said Jansen. “The question I have asked government officials is: ‘What the hell are they going to do about this?’”
“The social consequences of this in a climate with 40% unemployment are really devastating and this is a national emergency,” said Vally.
He said the reasons for the high drop in educators was “HIV/Aids and the quasi-marketisation of education — the number of state-paid educators is decreasing and responsibility is being placed on school governing bodies [SGBs] to pay educators’ salaries,” he said.
The 2000 School Register of Needs, a report released by the education department in 2001, shows that at that time state-paid educators had decreased by 23 342 while SGB-paid educators had increased by 19 000. The average fallout of educators was 4 000. Now this figure has nearly tripled.
Director General of Education Thami Mseleku said the exodus of teachers was a result of the department’s requirement that teachers be qualified.
The report shows that there was a 1,9% increase in the number of students in further education and training colleges. “For the first time this publication includes tables and graphs on the former technical colleges,” said Asmal.
On Wednesday the ministry formally corrected a statistic in the report to the effect that 60% of grade one students do not reach matric. This was “based on a rudimentary and non-scientific analysis of throughput rates from grade one to grade 12.
“This analysis would have required that we use data on grade one enrolment from the late 1980s to compare with grade 12 enrolment in 2001. This analysis was not possible due to the lack of reliable pre-1994 data.”