Dr Aaron Motsoaledi was the MEC of education in the Northern Province until 1997. This was at a time when Curriculum 2005’s (C2005) outcome-based approach was piloted and the authorities were planning its implementation.
He left the portfolio, but not the provincial government and returned as MEC of education to the renamed Limpopo department of education at the end of 2004.
This gave him a unique long-term perspective over what was once the education authorities’ flagship initiative to turn around South African education.
The conditions on the ground were not ideal when outcome-based education (OBE) was piloted in 1997 and introduced in 1998. There were severe
budgetary constraints. When you think back what was going on in the “mind” of the provincial department of education on the eve of the C2005 implementation? What challenges did you face?
Considering that OBE needs a lot of work and resources, Limpopo was in a very bad situation. Remember that we had just had to merge seven departments of education into one. (These were the various race-based and homeland-based departments of education that existed before 1994 in the area now known as Limpopo and which had to be merged into one department.)
In 1997 the process of rationalisation and redeployment started. It was a complex process and things did not go well. Limpopo had the lowest per capita expenditure per child in the country. But our money – 97% of our expenditure – was locked in personnel.
The only way to equalise with other provinces was to move teachers around (through the rationalisation and redeployment process), but no one wanted to move.
So as far as resources went, Limpopo did not do well in the launch of the curriculum. We also had a huge personnel shortage such as curriculum advisers.
We have just started to address that. Last year we appointed 200 curriculum advisers. These are the people who have to advise educators, particularly in rural areas. As a result of these circumstances, the implementation of C2005 was quite disastrous.
What do you tell a learner or parents who say to you: “The government used me or my child as a guinea pig to test drive curriculum change”?
Curricula all over the world change all the time. When you have change, human beings are affected. But I don’t know why people look at change as a bad thing. It can be good. I remember curriculum changes in my time. I was in matric when the medium of instruction changed from Afrikaans to English. Actually this helped us. Similarly, when I was in medical school there were changes that benefited students. So parents should not always feel change is negative. I would really encourage them not to look at it like that.
What were the major obstacles in making it work for South Africa?
It is a sophisticated curriculum, which needs a lot of resources because it encourages more practical work. But I would talk about challenges rather than obstacles.
what has the education system gained through outcome-based education?
Learners are participating more actively. It has shown shortcomings among our teachers. Teachers can no longer sit at their desks – they have to be active and alive. They have to be on their toes because we are teaching learners to reason. Teachers also have to write more reports (to track learners’ progress). This has been a good thing.
There have been major criticisms on the impact OBE has had on the literacy and numeracy levels of children, particularly the misconceptions about what teachers should and should not teach. Do you think this is valid?
Yes, there are those misconceptions. But they are not the fault of the OBE policy. What happened in Limpopo was that teachers thought OBE meant teaching in English. So in Limpopo many schools started to teach in English even in grade one. We addressed this by making it a punishable offence not to teach in the mother-tongue.
But where did this misconception come from?
In Limpopo it started like this: parents whose children received very poor Bantu education started enrolling at former model C schools. Before 1994 these schools were out of bounds. Obviously because of the nature of these schools – they were better resourced – those children improved very quickly. Those rural folks saw that and thought that this was because these children were taught in English.
They saw English as the solution and at the same time OBE came to the fore. I have asked teachers about this personally. Many of them said we thought OBE meant teaching in English. They thought it was modern and democratic. I have heard of the parents of kids in grade R being told by teachers they should speak English to their children. This anecdotal evidence provides backdrop a to the misconception.
There is no OBE policy document that teachers should not teach reading and writing. Reading and writing are very important. The main purpose of education is to teach children to read and write. Every child must be given this opportunity. If you ask teachers where the misconceptions came from they are not sure how it developed.
What role has the availability or absence of textbooks played in the success or failure of OBE? Some experts believe that C2005 created the idea among teachers that they should not use textbooks.
Before OBE we have always had textbooks. But because of logistics, budgets and the reluctance of principals to say (they needed books) there have been problems getting books to schools. But this mindset suggesting that you won’t have 100% if you don’t have textbooks is problematic. We have been saying if you did not receive books, you can still teach. But some teachers believe you cannot teach if you don’t have books. We also have to ask why are our kids doing so badly in international studies compared with the rest of Africa when we have more books here than in most other countries on the continent.
Teachers and the varying support they receive remains a talking point in curriculum circles. Are teachers too dependent on training? Are provincial departments too inadequate in the training they provide? What is the real issue?
I agree that there is too much emphasis on the training of teachers. I think a school’s performance depends more on leadership. You will find two schools in one area. One school will do well and the other poorly and they would have had the same training.
So there is an overemphasis on the need for training. We always seem to put obstacles in the way. On our side we accept that teachers do not always have the content knowledge – in particular in maths and science. This is why we reopened our maths and science teacher training college, Mastec. Teachers can go there to improve their content knowledge. But OBE does not change your content knowledge; it changes your method (of teaching).
Looking back, do you think OBE was the right thing to do?
Absolutely. There was no way we could continue with Bantu education after 1994. What we are experiencing today in terms of skills shortages are the effect of Bantu education 50 years down the line.
Even though I grew up during Bantu education, my teachers weren’t taught under Bantu education. My own father was a teacher and he had content knowledge. Those are the kinds of teachers who taught me. Our current educators were born under Bantu education. We must give them another opportunity and create a new generation of South Africans.
Has OBE failed?
No, absolutely not. OBE has serious challenges, but it has not failed.