To try to address South Africa’s teacher shortage a corporate-led initiative will place teachers in classrooms from 2009, marking the start of a drive to attract 1 500 graduates to the profession by 2013.
Next year 15 schools in Ekurhuleni will kick off the programme, hosting 60 teachers. In 2010 the programme will extend to Limpopo, before going national in 2011.
Teach South Africa, a section 21 company supported by Deloitte South Africa, Barloworld and other private sector institutions, aims to respond to the shortage of maths and science teachers, which has led to the country’s poor rankings in international surveys of maths and science proficiency.
The initiative is similar to overseas teacher recruitment programmes such as Teach for America in the United States and Teach First in the United Kingdom, which attracted thousands of teachers. It will target tertiary graduates and turn recruits into “Teach Ambassadors” who will spend a minimum of two years in the classroom.
Thiru Pillay, head of strategy and innovation at Deloitte Consulting, said the programme was intended to turn teaching into a “leadership opportunity for young change agents”. The hope is that once their two years are up the recruits will stay in education or evolve into social entrepreneurs.
Pillay was briefing delegates in Cape Town at a discussion about maths and science teaching hosted by the Zenex Foundation, a South African donor agency focusing on building capacity in maths and science education.
Panelistsn – from government, academia and the private sector – made it clear that a joint effort by government, the private sector and non-governmental organisations is required to address the problems facing maths and science teaching. These include the quantity and quality of teachers, increases in learner numbers, a higher education system struggling to adapt and language problems.
Diane Parker, chief director for teacher education and training in the national education department, said the new curriculum had increased participation in mathematics because it split the subject into mathematics and mathematical literacy.
“From having maybe 165 000 people writing matric maths we now have close to 600 000. It’s a huge increase in terms of the participation of learners and we have to have an increase in teachers.”
Parker said a “conservative estimate” was that 5 000 new teachers would be required. The problem of teacher quality was a “vicious cycle”. Because of the shortage of qualified maths and science teachers, low-performing students entered teacher education programmes and then went on to teach.
What is required are “virtuous cycles” in which the quality of teaching and learning is improved. The solution was to provide a “ledge” for teachers to stand on in terms of knowledge while they developed an identity as mathematics teachers in a way that instilled passion, commitment and a willingness to learn.
Once these issues are resolved, there will have to be a focus on language, said Professor Mamokgethi Setati, executive dean of the college of science, education and technology at the University of South Africa,.
She said mathematical problems also involved linguistic skills. Learners had to understand technical terms and this was an issue for those who learned in an unfamiliar language.
Mathematics functioned as a medium and a message, she said. At grade one maths level the message might be the numbers and how to write them, but when learners progressed to grade two the message from grade one became the medium, in that learners were expected to know and use what they had been taught to go on to the next step. If they did not grasp the original message they could not build on it.