Ten years after the dawn of democracy, a new survey of Grade 6 learning has shown that we have not overcome the legacy of decades of neglect and discrimination.
Although the schools are now part of a non-racial system with new curricula and learning materials, the evaluation reveals that five out of 10 schoolchildren are not achieving the expected learning outcomes in natural sciences, six out of 10 are not achieving in the language of learning, and eight out of 10 are not achieving in mathematics (‘achieving” means scoring 50% or more in a Grade 6 assessment task).
The survey, involving 34 000 Grade 6 learners from a representative sample of 1 000 mainstream public schools, was conducted in late 2004. It is the latest in a series of ‘systemic evaluations” of learning achievement that the Department of Education undertakes to gauge the state of learning. The survey also collected information on conditions that affect learning, in schools and in learners’ homes.
It gives us an accurate reflection of the condition of schooling in the intermediate phase (Grades 5 to 6). Although it was not designed to tell us how specific factors cause children to learn better, the survey does show what factors, on their own and in combination, are significantly associated with scores.
Consider out-of-school issues first
It is painfully clear that learning successfully is unequally spread across the country. On some assessment tasks, learners scored half as well on average in some provinces than in others. Families are very poor and schools are still poorly resourced in provinces that inherited large rural homelands — and their learners fared worse by far. Learners scored best in town schools and, in descending order, less well in township schools, farm schools, rural and remote-rural schools. In fact, in some tasks remote-rural learners scored almost three times worse than urban learners.
Learners’ home circumstances seem to have strongly influenced their performance in all three learning areas. In fact, the social and economic conditions at home have the strongest correlation with how well children learn. On average, children from very poor families scored a third as well in language and mathematics and half as well in science as did children from well-off families.
Poor households are unable to afford books, radios and television, and children who have access to this media and stimulation at home generally performed better on their assessment tasks. A relatively large proportion of parents in the sample reported that their children stayed home when they were unable to pay school fees and these children scored significantly lower on the three assessment tasks. By contrast, learners performed better when parents or guardians were able to pay school fees, were themselves educated and took an interest in their children’s school work and participated in school activities.
Out-of-school issues versus in-school issues
‘Learner participation” was the in-school factor most strongly associated with better performance in language, mathematics and science. Learners’ scores are higher when they interact frequently with their teachers, work together and use educational materials.
Since participation requires communication and communication requires language, it is not surprising that the most influential aspect of learner participation was the language in which learners were taught and learned. Grade 6 children performed better in all three learning areas when they learned in the home language.
There is ample evidence from other research that children who learn in their mother tongue in the early years of schooling become more competent in the foundation skills of reading, writing and number work, but the authors of the report caution other factors may also be influential, because learners who were not learning in their mother tongue and who scored low in the assessments also tended to live in rural and remote-rural areas.
The overall evidence is clear: the richer the learning environment in schools, the better children perform in their assessment tasks. Teachers clearly need adequate resources to aid them and where these were absent their learners fared poorly. Where schools had a library or book collection, an Internet connection or a teaching resources centre, their learners tended to score significantly higher.
The authors say that the availability of resources is ‘a crucial dimension of school effectiveness”. They regard it as a ‘threshold” factor that enables effective learning and teaching to develop and flourish.
Large numbers of rural schools are without basic amenities and struggle to provide their teachers and learners with informative and stimulating materials. In such schools the learners struggled to perform well.
What can we do to effect system-wide improvement?
Education systems are complex. Schools are embedded in communities that are diverse. Provincial systems of provision have different political legacies and social and language characteristics. Many role players are involved at all levels — from the learners to parents, community leaders, school governing bodies, principals and teaching colleagues and MECs.
In the education system, from national to school level, the survey evidence points to many changes that can raise the quality of children’s learning. Some changes are in the offing, but others are part of the departments’ strategies for school improvement, supported by teachers’ organisations.
First, we need to improve access to school. This means resolving the issue of school fees that prevent children from entering or completing their school programmes; ensuring that learners with special needs are able to enter school and are properly provided for; and supplying sufficient learning materials to all schools on time.
Second, we need to promote specific quality issues. Factors to be targeted include: enabling children to learn in the most appropriate language; tackling the conditions that tend to make schools in rural areas, on farms and in townships less effective sites of learning; and introducing a comprehensive policy to attract citizens into teaching as a vital and respected career, to provide high-quality initial teacher education and continuing professional development.
Third, our focus on equity has to be continued. This means significantly improving the professional and administrative support that provincial, district and circuit education offices provide to schools.
The last issue concerns efficiency. The early childhood development programme needs to deliver quality provision to all pre-school children, which is expected to lay a firm foundation for further learning, improve children’s subsequent learning performance and retain them in school.
The survey’s findings provide evidence of what must still be done to bring education provision of acceptable quality to the poorest of our citizens and raise the quality of learning in every classroom in the land.
Naledi Pandor is the Minister of Education