A confidential Education Department report has highlighted the spectacular failure of a high-level campaign to boost the performance of grade three and six learners in maths and literacy.
The report, “2008 Annual National Assessments — Grade 3 and 6 results”, in the possession of the Mail & Guardian, reveals that most of the 663 000 learners in grades three and six from eight provinces who wrote national tests in maths and literacy last year achieved marks below 50%.
Sixty percent of grade three learners achieved results below 50% for maths and language literacy. The performance of 75% of the grade six learners in literacy was also below 50%.
“In mathematics performance was slightly worse,” says the document. The tests were written in the 11 official languages but the Northern Cape did not participate “mainly due to communication that did not reach them on time”, department spokesperson Granville Whittle said.
To fix the mess, the department is rushing to produce 45-million workbooks for learners, teachers and parents at a cost of R522-million, to be delivered to schools early next year.
Questions are being raised about whether suitable materials can be developed in such a short time.
Early last year the department embarked on an intensive Foundations for Learning campaign to improve grades R to six learners’ literacy and numeracy skills. It produced directives for teachers on what should be taught, how it should be taught and the resources needed.
This unprecedented intervention comes after South African learners were revealed to be the worst performers in international maths, science and literacy tests.
The campaign entailed grade one to six learners writing standardised national literacy and numeracy tests, starting in November 2008. By 2011 all learners must achieve at least 50% in these tests.
Last year 336 321 grade three learners and 326680 grade six candidates from more than 7 000 schools were tested.
In the grade three maths learners had to interpret simple bar graphs and add amounts in rands and cents. In literacy they had to draw conclusions from a text and understand the use of tenses.
The report says grade three learners performed reasonably well in tasks involving “visual cues likes pictures, posters and diagrams”. But performance declined for higher-level abilities, including drawing inferences from a text and working with fractions and simple proportions.
The report says this could “suggest delayed cognitive processes”.
In all the tests the percentage of learners functioning at the 50% to 69% level — the campaign’s target by 2011 — was lower than 34%. The percentage of those in the 70%-100% category ranged from about 3% for grade six maths in Limpopo to 26% for grade three literacy in Free State.
Said Martin Prew, head of the Centre for Education Policy Development: “Most children arrive in school illiterate and leave functionally illiterate. That is a serious indictment of our profession and of the nation.”
It was necessary to explore ways of raising the content knowledge level of teachers.
Education expert Salim Vally of the University of Johannesburg described the results as a scandal.
“If the department cannot get its act together in early childhood development, we’re doomed — We must hold school management, district officials and the state accountable and ensure proper teacher training.”
Asked if testing was introduced too soon, Whittle said: “Measurement to produce evidence that will inform practice can never be too soon. The tests are part of the department’s initiative to establish solid foundations for learning.”
Back-peddle on R522-million tender
The basic education department was back-pedalling this week following a groundswell of resistance to a “fundamentally flawed” R522-million tender calling for the development, printing and delivery of 45-million workbooks to schools by the time they reopen in January.
A departmental committee has been probing the tender process, which yielded 25 bids, following calls from the Publishers’ Association of Southern Africa to re-advertise it with more realistic time frames.
The committee briefed director general Duncan Hindle on Thursday, but the final decision about whether the tender should go ahead be adapted or withdrawn rests with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.
Department spokesperson Granville Whittle said the department could not comment on the tender’s timeline until a decision was taken about its status. But publishers and education experts believe the timeline should be extended to the start of the 2011 school year.
Brahm Fleisch of the Wits school of education said: “You have to cover topics in the right order. So if you develop 1 200 lessons [over six school years], you need to plan every lesson very carefully — how it relates to the previous one and the next one.”
One publisher warned that “it is a politically driven thing. Consequently, the whole of South African education will get shoddy worksheets prepared in record time”.
The tender calls for the development of 30-million full-colour workbooks in 11 languages so that each learner from grade one to six will have both literacy and numeracy exercise books for use on every school day of the year.
It also includes 15-million parents’ guides to ensure children work at home. The tender is part of the Foundation for learning campaign.
SA way behind
South Africa is consistently at or near the bottom in international rankings of maths, science literacy.
Grade four and five learners achieved the lowest score of 45 national education systems in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study of 2006, which measures trends in children’s reading and literacy.
Grade eight learners attained the lowest average test scores in maths and science in 1999 and 2003 in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. South Africa no longer participates in this test.
Grade six learners, who participated in the Southern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality project between 2000 and 2002, ranked eighth in reading and ninth in mathematics of 14 countries — behind Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique.