The government’s position on the South African education crisis is in need of a major overhaul. That is what the University of Sussex’s Dr Yusuf Sayed stated at a presentation entitled "Understanding the education crisis: critical reflections on education policy since 1994" at Rhodes University’s Department of Humanities on Tuesday.
The government’s position on the South African education crisis is in need of a major overhaul. That is what the University of Sussex’s Dr Yusuf Sayed stated at a presentation entitled "Understanding the education crisis: critical reflections on education policy since 1994" at Rhodes University’s Department of Humanities on Tuesday.
Dr Sayed said that education policy after apartheid needed to adjust along with changes in the new government’s priorities of equality, social justice and transformation. The talk focused on schooling policy only – mainly the South African Schools Act and teacher education strategy choices.
Poor performance of school pupils, an insufficient teacher base, lack of teacher attendance and a severe shortage of formal training for teachers (only 36% have the required basic knowledge for the job) has resulted in an education crisis that has been ongoing since 1994.
However, Sayed noted that over time performance has not worsened, meaning the situation is “potentially salvageable”. The presentation focused on the vast amount of policies that have been proposed since 1994. Dr
Sayed termed this “policy mania” – as 160 policy documents have been put forward, at an average of 12 a year.
This means that teachers are not able to engage critically with all of the policies. This has been the government’s approach to the crisis, which has avoided making much-needed changes to the system. He said that a two-tier structure – where schools are placed into different quintiles and funded accordingly – could have been avoided if the government had not focused solely on ‘Model C’ schools.
This focus on middle class schools was to the detriment of poorer schools. The government’s solution has been to increase monitoring and surveillance, by creating performance agreements. Sayed’s proposed solutions for solving this crisis included getting back to basics – focusing on teaching scholars to read and write and dropping subjects such as life orientation – and recovering mass mobilisation whereby the population becomes actively involved in education.
After his presentation, the floor was opened to questions.
Vice Chancellor of Rhodes, Dr Saleem Badat, and other academics engaged in a debate about why the education system is in its current state, and further solutions were brought forward.
Sayed is currently in Grahamstown working with Prof Robert Van Niekerk at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER). They are developing programmes of research and teaching on education policy.
