When is it better to try to fix a policy that is not working, and when is it better to abandon it?
Policy changes in education should never be taken lightly, because they have enormous implications for the daily work of teachers. In many countries, and in South Africa, dedicated, competent teachers have an ever- increasing workload and high levels of responsibility for relatively low salaries.
Almost any changes to policy, good and bad, add to the burden experienced by teachers. For teachers who are not competent but who are trying to do a good job, policy changes can be confusing and undermining. For teachers who don’t care about their work, policy change can be a useful excuse for poor performance.
It’s tempting for new governments or new ministers to want to make bold changes, but often it is better to try to work with what is there and give it time to work. In South Africa, with the devastating legacy of Bantu education, it is increasingly clear that there are no quick fixes with regard to educational problems.
Outcomes-based education (OBE) was introduced as an educational panacea. Almost immediately a large range of problems became apparent. The education community has been divided about whether these problems are caused by poor implementation of a good policy, or whether OBE is an inherently flawed policy. The department of education has tried to solve some of the problems of the OBE curriculum, without completely moving away from OBE.
The problems with OBE
A good curriculum is designed by thinking carefully about how the body of knowledge or subject in question is organised and carefully selecting key knowledge areas and skills to be mastered.
A good syllabus document then provides guidance to teachers about these knowledge areas and skills, including what order they need to be taught in (in some subjects order is more important than in others), how they can be taught and how much time should be spent on each of them.
An outcomes-based curriculum does not start by looking at a subject as a body of knowledge. Knowledge is valued only to the extent that it enables learners to achieve specified outcomes.
In the original version of OBE in South Africa, the curriculum was designed to enable teachers to teach content of their choice, as long as they believe it enables learners to master the outcomes. In later revisions, curriculum designers selected knowledge, but still used the learning outcomes as the starting point. The first approach was clearly a disaster as most teachers simply had no idea what to teach.
But the second approach is also flawed, as it is inconsistent with the integrity of subjects. Because outcomes are the driving feature of the curriculum, an outcomes-based curriculum tends not to provide advice to teachers in terms of sequencing and pacing – the idea is that, as long as learners “master the learning outcomes”, it does not matter what order they are taught in.
But in many subjects, order is very important. Even where it is not very important, offering advice to teachers about sequencing means that teachers do not have to design an entire learning programme by themselves – something that their working day does not allocate time for.
Teachers can then concentrate on the essence of their job – trying to help learners master the knowledge specified in the curriculum. It also means that if one teacher takes over from another, the new teacher can easily see what has been taught.
The outcomes-based curriculum puts the teacher in an inappropriate role – that of a curriculum designer.Teachers should know what needs to be taught at each level and what children need to understand and be able to do.
The professional autonomy of teachers should not be seen in relation to what they teach, but rather, in relation to how they can ensure that the specific learners in their care master the specified knowledge.
Highly skilled teachers may appreciate having the autonomy to experiment with sequencing, or introducing additional textbooks or learning resources. But even highly skilled and dedicated teachers do not have the time to design a curriculum or learning programme.
A system that has a national examination needs a nationally specified syllabus – or teachers are forced to guess what is in the exam, and have to design their own syllabus based on what they think will be in it.
Adding complexity
The department of education has moved away from OBE in some ways. The revised Curriculum 2005 had more content specification than the original. Perhaps, then, the problems can be solved with no political grandstanding. Certainly, it appears undesirable to introduce yet another policy reform, which may serve to further demoralise teachers.
Curriculum statements for each subject specify learning outcomes and assessment standards. For some subjects, content is embedded in the assessment standards. For others, a shortlist of content is included. In all cases, the starting point is the learning outcomes, and not the subjects as representatives of bodies of knowledge.
Learning programme guideline documents are then supposed to provide guidance to teachers about how to design a learning programme from the curriculum statements. While additional guidance to teachers is clearly welcome, particularly in a context in which many teachers are underprepared, the assumption that learning outcomes are the drivers of the curriculum make these documents unnecessarily complex.
They assume a considerable role for the teacher in curriculum design. Work schedules listed in appendices of some of the documents list learning outcomes and assessment criteria in relation to each week of the year, showing that this system is not less prescriptive, but that what it prescribes is less than helpful.
On top of the curriculum statements and learning programme guidelines, there are subject assessment guidelines that provide information about the number and types of assessment tasks that teachers should use in each subject, as well as general advice about assessment and some additional specifications about content to be assessed.
The effect is that instead of a single syllabus document, there are three separate lengthy documents. This is confusing for teachers.
The learning programme guidelines suggest that one of the steps that teachers must take in designing a learning programme is to identify the content to be taught, through an analysis of the assessment criteria. So instead of content being clearly specified, teachers have to hunt for it!
Because outcomes are supposed to be the driver of the curriculum, assessment criteria are supposed to be the indicators of progression. But in many instances the assessment criteria are identical or virtually identical from one grade to another, and in language they are virtually identical across the three different language levels (home language, first additional language and second additional language).
The learning programme guideline documents argue that content is to be found in assessment criteria. While this is certainly the case in some subjects – generally the more hierarchical ones, such as mathematics – it is not the case in all. Even where content is present in the assessment criteria, this does not seem to be the clearest and most straightforward way of specifying content to teachers.
None of this should imply that there is nothing of value in any of these documents. All of them contain some useful discussion and specification. Because content is embedded in assessment standards, no advice is provided about sequencing and pacing.
Some people say that curriculum documents don’t really matter because teachers don’t use them and they teach from the exams. But then why should we spend so much time and money – and cause such confusion among teachers – developing such complex ones?
And surely it is desirable in any education system to have a well-articulated, intended curriculum, so that teachers are not constantly playing a guessing game with examination setters?
Further, the lack of an official move away from outcomes-based education means mixed messages are being sent to teachers from different officials at different levels.
Time for change?
We appear to be in a conundrum: telling teachers now to abandon outcomes may be extremely demoralising. The last thing South Africa needs now is yet another policy reform. So perhaps the approach of gradually moving away from OBE without explicitly stating that this is being done is the best option, and arguably it is what the department is doing.
However, OBE has damaged our already weak education system. Instead of solving the problems that it caused, we are simply adding layers of complexity.
OBE is likely to increase educational inequality. Unskilled teachers who have some mastery of their subject may be helped by a strong syllabus that provides guidance about what to teach – in conjunction with decent textbooks. For teachers who are not dedicated, or who are weak, curriculum policy may be irrelevant.
Having a good, specified curriculum will not solve all the problems of our education system and having a professional, dedicated teacher cadre is the single most important factor in a good education system. Although education policy changes should never be taken lightly, it is time to officially move away from outcomes-based education.
Stephanie Matseleng Allais is a freelance educational researcher. She can be contacted at [email protected]