[Lapg] Pockets of Excellence Needed Africa PERM2005

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Pockets of Excellence Needed

Sunday Times (Johannesburg)

COLUMN
November 13, 2005
Posted to the web November 14, 2005

Johannesburg

Its matric results have improved from a dismal 18% in 1998 to 91% in 2003 
(dropping to 85% last year). Through creative fundraising, it will soon 
have a media centre, and has a science and biology lab and a Home Economics 
Centre "which is today known as Technology Centre and permakitchen".

A range of academic streams and active sports clubs complement a programme 
of visits that have taken learners as far afield as Robben Island, the 
Pretoria Police Museum and KwaZulu-Natal's sugarfields "where we learnt a 
lot about science and biology". Students enter Olympiads and at least six 
are on tertiary bursaries.

Yet the object of the school's pride is its vegetable gardens and sites for 
permaculture and agro-forestry. Not only do they supply and train 
surrounding schools, but the post office, police, clinics and others have 
benefited. Boreholes, rain-harvesting, and a whole environmental policy 
have enthused and mobilised the village.

It seems churlish, in the face of this, and while another generation of 
matrics face their exams, to remind ourselves that education in our country 
is indeed in crisis and our youth have an uncertain future.

However, recent headlines have screamed the failure of our education system 
to make the grade. Huge disparities exist between former (white) Model C 
schools and township and rural schools, which are often no more than 
warehouses or sinkholes where almost half drop out. In these schools, maths 
and science, as well as literacy, are way below par. Teachers' morale is 
poor; they suffer policy overload and ill discipline, many lack training 
and few newcomers enter the profession.

Researchers report an overwhelming sense of "sadness" in young township 
dropouts, the products of the second stream of a dual education system. 
Even where learners can squeeze their way into tertiary education, there is 
dropping out and unemployment. For 60% to 80% of learners, education 
condemns them to a life of poverty and exclusion on the margins of the 
second economy. They are overwhelmingly poor and black.

Just when their lives should be full of opportunity, their future 
evaporates in front of our young people's eyes.

What can we do?

It seems to me that we must first acknowledge the problem and name it. 
Schooling hasn't worked. It's a crisis because we need skills to grow at 
6%; because we need all citizens to have routes to progress through study 
and hard work.

Crisis doesn't mean disintegration -- or necessarily mean chaos (although 
consider the Eastern Cape: its recent three-month "go-slow" by teachers, 
the slashing of school nutrition, administrative hostility, disorder and 
disregard for pupils in the schools!).

We have budgets, a diligent department and a minister who sees the need to 
stabilise and focus. There are programmes like the 400 Dinaledi maths and 
science schools. There is the R1.5-billion recap of FET vocational 
colleges. There are new measures for teacher support.

Yes, we expect government to deliver. But the blame game won't help. The 
problem really is apartheid's legacy, and will take more than one 
minister's term to fix. We must go beyond shouting at politicians, 
certainly not at teachers, nor blame Model Cs. Complacency or defensive 
laagers won't work.

There is too much improvement to do: long term, complex, way beyond 
schooling alone. Joint efforts with focus are the hardest to do.

Jonathan Jansen [dean of Education at the University of Pretoria] has 
suggested that teacher support is needed above all. Everything possible 
must help teachers to teach, to improve their knowledge, their time on the 
job, their focus and sense of worth. Effort, clear materials and 
infrastructure are there to enhance the magic and graft of teachers and 
learners in the classroom.

The Development Bank of Southern Africa has moved to expand its involvement 
in education, to consider a high-level think tank to contribute to ideas 
and to explore practical (investment) projects from Early Childhood 
Development to student loans. This is a challenge to the public to do the 
same -- to commit, to renew involvement, to mobilise, and to strengthen 
structures and systems so that they really work.

We need to get together and discuss our solutions. Where are the pockets of 
excellence that are really working -- such as Piet N Aphane High -- and 
why? How do we build them and others like them?
Relevant Links	
Southern Africa
South Africa
Education
	

Earlier this year the Department of Education held a national consultation. 
Perhaps it is time for another get-together, where we can acknowledge the 
depth of the problem, where we can listen and re-focus. The future of our 
new generations depends on it.

Bloch is an education analyst with the Development Bank of Southern Africa

Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed 	
Top | Site Français | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | 
Subscribe 	
Copyright © 2005 Sunday Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by 
AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). Click here to contact the copyright 
holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make 
other authorized use of this material. 	
Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement.