The difficulty of rating education policies – and the work of ministers of education for that matter – is that their true successes and failures emerge only over time. By their very nature public education systems are unwieldy thereby disallowing quick fixes.
Education minister Naledi Pandor has been in office now for four years and has had the back-up of long-serving senior bureaucrats in the department. This has created favourable conditions for her to make an impact.
Add to the mix her reputation as an independent thinker, as well as her decisiveness – which has earned her respect internationally – and intolerance for slackness, her heart has certainly been in the right place to turn around a system that has failed to deliver in the last decade.
A year ago, with a B- on her report card, as published in the Teacher’s sister publication the Mail & Guardian, she was challenged to start showing results.
The year 2008 was one of action and much of what happened was in line with what Pandor’s mantra has been since 2005: quality improvements in education.
A good starting point was a renewed political commitment to Early Childhood Development (ECD) to ensure that all children who enter grade one by 2010 have had access to grade R. It was highlighted as an Apex priority and the education budget provided for an increase in the number of sites from 487 525 to 700 000, benefiting 600 000 more children.
In the critical foundation phase, grade R to three, Pandor’s Foundations for Learning campaign got off the ground with focused support for the poorest schools in the areas of literacy and numeracy.
This was in response to continuing weaknesses in the teaching of reading and writing as well as mathematics. However, this campaign will have to be sustained and its effect will be evident only in a few years’ time.
Given the pressures on the national treasury, it may not even reach beyond the neediest classrooms.
Pandor has had to face the fact that 10 years of outcomes-based education was no cause for celebration. At least she understands that if she scrapped it, just the mere suggestion of another major policy change could mean a system collapse.
Instead Pandor announced that she is putting together a team to fix shortcomings in areas such as teacher training.
This was also the year in which the National Senior Certificate, the new school-leaving qualification, was introduced. As the first national exam, it was pulled off without major hiccups. How the class of 2008 is received by the labour market and tertiary education institutions will be an indication of whether the curriculum that led to National Senior Certificate improved on vital shortcomings of the preceding one.
Pandor also managed to pull off an agreement with unions on teachers’ salaries in 2008. The occupation-specific dispensation means that salaries are linked to the profession and no the civil service in general.
It provides for teachers to receive increases based on performance, qualification, scope of work and experience.
A big issue that will dominate further negotiations with unions is how to link learner performance to the evaluation and ultimately the salary increases of teachers.
Although the department has made efforts to strengthen the teaching profession, more has to be done to address shortages.
A significant achievement – and something which will be a legacy for Pandor – is the multibillion-rand Kha Ri Gude mass literacy campaign, which took off in April. By all accounts it has been Pandor who has driven this campaign, which last year reached 360 000, oversubscribed by 60 000.
Kha Ri Gude may not be perfect – there has been criticism from NGOs and payment difficulties for the thousands of participating educators – but it is a concrete example of a plan that was put into action.
It is expected that the Further Education and Training Colleges, which have benefited from major recapitalisation, will start yielding results from this year.
By 2010 public universities will have received R5,9-billion in infrastructure development funds, targeted at refurbishing buildings, acquiring new ones and improving graduate outputs in science, engineering and technology. This is the biggest capital fund injection in 20 years and next year universities will have to pitch for another R3,2-billion, also aimed at boosting graduate outputs in scarce skills areas.
Pandor should be commned for earmarking these funds for spending in line with the needs of the country.
She is the first to concede when there are problems at schools and within the department and does not sweep things under the carpet, but tackles things head on. This minister is in charge and knows her portfolio inside out. Perhaps if Pandor has another term she could score an A as the quality improvements she has worked for become a firmer reality.