School principals and education analysts have welcomed moves by the Department of Basic Education to introduce a national policy on the promotion and progression of learners in grades 1 to 9.
Currently there is no national policy for promotion and progression in these grades, but last week’s Council of Education Minister’s (CEM) meeting agreed to the publishing of a draft policy for public comment. The CEM also approved a seven-level rating scale to provide clear standards or benchmarks for making judgments on learner performance.
According to Dr Martin Prew, director of the Centre for Education Policy Development, the move is a step in the right direction as the issue hasn’t been clear in the past. “There are broad guidelines in place, but nothing official,” Prew told the Mail & Guardian Online.
“As things stand schools can only hold a learner back one year in each phase, which has its own set of problems.”
Prew said that while it is often more difficult for repeat learners to engage with the work for the second time, retention and promotion of learners in its current form is not without its problems.
“For instance, evidence suggests that overage learners are known to create more disciplinary problems than others but promoting learners based on cohorts just escalates the problem.
“You could very easily have the problem where learners progress through the grades thanks to the age cohort promotion but when they get to the senior level they are just not prepared for the work. We have the situation where lots of kids are pretending to be able to read, for instance,” said Prew.
Principals polled by the M&G agreed with Prew that any new policy on the matter would have to include more support for the affected learners.
“The current guidelines pay lip-service to adequate support for learners who have to repeat the grade but in reality we are faced with large classrooms so it is difficult to give them the support they need,” said one Western Cape principal.
“Education is not a lottery, so it shouldn’t be left up to teachers to decide when a learner is ready to progress to the next grade. Children, teachers and parents should have clear and comprehensive guidelines on what is needed to progress,” said David Millar, Western Cape chairperson of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA.
This was echoed by the principal of a school in Limpopo, which has 1600 learners.
“Age promotion doesn’t work. Learners who are promoted in this way are not properly equipped so we have done away with this policy,” he told the M&G Online.
“This problem starts in primary school and what we need is support from early on. Hopefully this new policy takes this into account.”