Assessing the Department of Education’s (DoE) performance this year is no straightforward business.
One thing the DoE definitely gets a positive mark for, though, is its launches. With practised pomp and fanfare, it gets the message across very clearly that its newest project or body is significant. Three that stand out this year are the launch of the new quality assurer, Umalusi; the 50 FET colleges; and the Girls Education Movement, which has begun to raise awareness of gender-related inequalities from Parliament to classrooms across South Africa.
But what is harder to gauge is the success of these projects and bodies. Those just created clearly don’t have a track record to judge by, but the performance of the better established ones is equally hard to evaluate. Mega achievements have been registered since apartheid education ceased to be — but how far are we towards the ultimate goal of an equitable, accessible and quality education system?
There have been many quiet successes. There are the millions of learners and educators who go about their business reliably and successfully each day. The matric exams this year have also (so far) been a quiet success, with hardly a blip registering on the Fiasco Radar. And while this radar has picked up some sizeable blips from the higher education sector, the merger process is inching forward.
There have also been many quiet failures. The two bookends on the periphery of the education system — Early Childhood Development and Adult Basic Education and Training — continue to suffer from neglect. Some commentators suggest that these sectors are not just stagnating — they’re going backwards.
Burning issues like HIV/Aids education, the commonplace practice of corporal punishment, evidence of racism — both insidious and overt — continue to make themselves felt at education institutions. While the DoE’s Annual Report for 2002/3 lists among their achievements an HIV/Aids education programme, the publication of Alternatives to Corporal Punishment and the Values in Education programme as among its achievements, the question remains — how successful are they?
Similarly, the effectiveness of the DoE’s ‘Action Plan”, arising from the Review of School Funding earlier this year, remains to be seen. The measures are intended to overcome key barriers to education experienced by so many of the country’s poorer children. Among other strategies, the plan is to allocate greater resources to the poorest 7-million learners over the next three years.
But perhaps the really positive development to take note of in the year that’s been has little to do with the DoE itself. It is the
growing determination among school communities to insist on their Constitutional rights.
Children have a right to a free, quality, basic education. They and their caregivers are beginning to mobilise and demand it.
With an election year just around the corner, the government’s ability to substantially meet these demands is going to be the acid test.