David Macfarlane is one of the better education journalists in the land. He has been a long time in the business and has a nose for a good story. He regularly peppers the education bureaucracies with emailed questions, from which he draws his own conclusions. He probably pays closer attention to the minister’s speeches than most others.
But, in his critique of the role of the minister of education [Opening Pandor(a)s box, January 5], we have seen a blind spot. From the ambiguous nature of the criticism, it is apparent that Macfarlane’s grasp of education matters suffers from a limited understanding of the day-to-day meaning of “cooperative governance”, and the complexities of shared responsibilities for “concurrent” constitutional functions.
He charges the minister with evading her responsibility for schooling. Yet one man’s “evasiveness” is (in this case) another woman’s understanding of the complexities of cooperative governance. And it is a deep understanding that the minister has of these matters — an understanding forged in negotiations for a new Constitution, sharpened in the chair of the National Council of Provinces, and finally (and finely) honed as minister in charge of a concurrent function.
Macfarlane’s editor certainly grasps the complexities of cooperative governance. In the Mail & Guardian podcast on the Cabinet scorecard, Ferial Haffajee is heard saying that if the minister had more centralised power to exercise at the national level, then we would have seen more action taken on improving schools. Quite.
It must be said that the minister and her national department have never evaded responsibility and the structures of cooperative governance — the Heads of Education Departments Committee and the Council of Education Ministers — are used by them to drive the process of transformation and improvement. But although the priorities for education are set at a national level, the responsibilities for improved outcomes in school education are shared concurrently with the provinces. The minister is responsible for the performance of the education portfolio as a whole, but no education MEC will deny responsibility for the effective running of schools or for the outcomes of the matric exam.
Ask them. We suggested Macfarlane ask them last year. We suggested he examine the provincial school improvement strategies to see whether standards-based accountability improves education outcomes. He did not. And in this article on the matric exam results — which reads a bit like a second Cabinet score card report — he did not yet again. Instead, we have a repeat of outdated mythologies about the manipulation of matric results.
Surely he has read the matric exam literature that has grown considerably over the past five years? Surely he has consulted Marking Matric, an excellent collection edited by Dr Vijay Reddy, and read the Umalusi literature, and in particular the papers presented at its fourth assessment conference held in June 2006? He will not find any references to political manipulation in any of these. Instead he will discover the scientific approach to moderation adopted by independent statisticians and academics, and a standardisation meeting that is conducted in the presence of higher education representatives, teacher unions and school governing bodies. Hardly the place for secretive manipulation!
He will also find in these reports the usual suspects for the rise in the matric results over the period 1999 to 2003 — the exclusion of high-risk candidates, declining standards in the question papers, increasing the ratio of standard to higher grade passes, and changes in the marking and moderating processes. But he will also find explanations for the stabilisation of results during Pandor’s term of office, including the pursuit of quality through the emphasis on mother-tongue learning and the teaching of reading, the emphasis on analysis, synthesis and written argument as the goal of schooling, the progress toward a much more demanding matric exam, with papers set at the national level, and the establishment of Umalusi as an independent examination authority.
It is therefore a matter of regret that Macfarlane refuses to credit Pandor with the revolution that is rolling through our schools in regard to free education. That he is so miserly in his praise for our introduction of full-cost service bursaries for teachers. That he has nothing to say about the bursary funding for Further Education and Training students, and the recapitalisation of FET Colleges. And that he chooses to abuse the minister’s name to create an image of Pandora, who, according to Greek mythology, unleashed all sorts of evil on the world.
Our report card on Macfarlane for this article would simply read: Could do better.
Duncan Hindle is director general of education