South Africa is trying to make educational equity a reality through the implementation of an outcomes-based curriculum which publicly states what all learners should know and be able to do, loosely coupled with a policy of inclusion which expects all children to be actively engaged in learning in schools. Yet we should not only be implementing a new approach to the curriculum, we should be driving the necessary organisational improvements in the school system for which outcomes-based reform should be a catalyst.
Outcomes-based reform is driven by the translation of outcomes into educational practice by teachers. The particular translations of outcomes into assessment, curriculum and school organisation remain to be seen and most likely will be unique across local school communities. But one thing remains constant across all schools: all learners must be provided with equitable opportunities to meet the outcomes. The central goal of a school organisation then becomes the fostering of enabling conditions and the provision of resources so that all learners can successfully achieve the outcomes.
What do classrooms, schools and districts that provide these opportunities for all learners look like? This question prompts for the design of standards for guiding educational equity and quality across classrooms and schools. It is the responsibility of districts and departments of education to engage with teachers and schools in the process of designing opportunities to learn standards. These standards should describe the learning conditions required so that all learners have an equitable and fair chance to meet the outcomes, no matter where they go to school.
They also challenge officials to be reciprocally accountable to teachers by providing conditions and resources to meet the new expectations of policy. This means that officials must provide well-equipped school facilities with electricity and water, quality curriculum documents, ongoing professional development focused on curriculum study and evaluation, quality learning materials and support in sufficient quantities, and formative evaluation systems that use classroom data. Opportunity to learn standards are one measure to evaluate and monitor educational equity by describing what opportunities should exist in every school.
Curriculum policies and financial formulas are not enough when we have rural schools with substantially less learning materials and resources than urban schools. If the government mandates that all children must meet the outcomes, then the government must also make the support and resources available to teachers so that they may assist learners to do so. This is a key feature of a reciprocal accountability system and of outcomes-based reform that puts equity in quality and access to education at the forefront. ‘All children” really does mean all children if we are truly serious about equity in education and not just reproducing a system that in the end accepts different outcomes from different children.
Don Glass is based at the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand