/ 3 April 2011

The need for Needu

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga formally launched the controversial education evaluation authority, the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (Needu), at a high-profile event last month in Pretoria.

The launch was attended by senior government officials, academics, teacher unions, school governing bodies and a range of organisations involved in the education sector.

The primary objective of Needu is “to conduct the monitoring and evaluation of schools, districts and provinces including the national department”. Needu was established about three months ago, but officially launched only last month.

Past attempts to set up a similar credible and functional teacher assessment structure did not work, mostly because of a failure to get buy-in from teacher unions, which are the major stakeholders. The unions felt the evaluation instruments were defective because they did not prioritise teacher development and provinces lacked capacity to implement them effectively.

Motshekga said Needu links well with the system of performance and monitoring instituted by the presidency in 2009 to provide a strong measure of accountability and service delivery.

“When we mapped the Education Roadmap in 2008 we resolved to ensure effective evaluation of all teachers based on the extent to which learner performance improves,” Motshekga said. The key goal was to provide quality teaching and learning at all schools across the country, she said.

Among other speakers were the former acting head of Needu, Ronald Swartz, and the inspector general of the government of Flanders, Lieven Viaene, who shared his country’s evaluation system and offered advice. “Needu must clearly be independent and should listen to all stakeholders, particularly teachers,” he said.

Swartz said evaluation should be based on equity and be developmental. It should take into account the socioeconomic situation in the country. He said teachers should not “allow their conditions to control them”. Rather they should use them to achieve their objectives.

Swartz took a swipe at the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), saying it had deviated from its original mandate of being proactive in providing solutions to the challenges facing education. Today, he said, it appears the union and its members are involved in the kind of activities that do not contribute positively to the country’s education system.

Recently, schooling in Soweto was disrupted when members of Sadtu bunked classes and went to court to support a principal accused of assaulting a learner. Two years ago they embarked on a wildcat strike, again disrupting schooling in several Soweto schools.

“Although Sadtu [national] leadership ‘distances’ itself from the actions of these elements, it still does not take disciplinary action against them,” Swartz said.

The launch was preceded by a conference at which education experts from research and academic institutions presented papers on assessment models that Needu could adopt. Speakers came from organisations such as the Joint Education Trust, the Centre for Education Policy Development, the Human Sciences Research Council and the National Alliance of Independent Schools Associations.

Teacher unions Sadtu, the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa and the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysers-unie (SAOU) gave Needu the thumbs-up but with conditions. They almost unanimously called for Needu to desist from concentrating solely on teacher compliance with the system, saying the focus should also be on district offices, which have consistently failed to service schools.

Points highlighted included: the need for Needu to put teacher training and development at the centre of its functions and incorporate the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign. Staff, particularly school evaluators, should have the right attitude, qualifications and commitment. “The quality of people who are appointed to serve in Needu will go a long way to help it achieve its objectives,” said an SAOU ­representative.

John Volmink, chief executive of Needu, said every child deserves access to a national system of quality education and this could be achieved only if every stakeholder commits to the vision of providing this quality education. He said that by establishing a Needu, the state is providing all the partners with a mechanism to promote and improve quality at schools.

Volmink said central to the notion of quality education is accountability, which must be “understood, institutionalised and renewed”. He said that “teachers have a natural aversion to ‘the inspectorate’ in whatever form or guise it might come”. However, the need for accountability “is both necessary and inescapable”.

He argued that there is a clear connection between accountability and teacher development, adding that the one cannot exist without the other. Volmink said Needu will “identify weakness or barriers to good functioning schools or areas that need improvement and prioritise these with clear improvement strategies linked to set time frames”. The findings and recommendations will be fed to the teacher development unit in the basic education department.