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Education Policy

New policy changes for SA education

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:55

The Department of Education has introduced five new policies that are expected to yield positive results in the country’s education system.

The Department’s proposed changes include:

* the lowering of teacher pupil ratios,
* the rearranging of districts into smaller more manageable areas,
* the expansion of Further Education and Training Colleges,
* the rollout of internet connectivity to every school in the country by 2013
* a general education certificate Grade 9 pupils.

The national certificate examination, which comes into effect at the end of 2009, will ensure that those that decide to leave school after the grade do so with a national certificate. It will also help schools assess the readiness of pupils to go on to senior-certification level.

Pupils will write a national paper for English and maths as well as internal exams for other subjects.

Education expert Professor Jonathan Jansen told the Pretoria News that he believed that it was a very good idea to give Grade 9s a general certificate, however he expressed concerns that the other policy changes may have little impact on improving education.

"The problem is that none of these things begin to address the very serious problem of children experiencing a different education system depending on where they are placed. What we need to be worrying about is getting more children to stay in school, and those that do stay need to perform better," he said.

Delivering a speech at Wits, Pandor admitted that the South African education system still faced many challenges. “We are a system that underperforms and fails to support learners to acquire key skills for learning".

"Our performance in mathematics and science subjects is dismal and we continue to be faced by inadequate infrastructure, poor and inefficient administration in some provinces and disaffected and demotivated teachers,” she said.

Pandor however believes that there are also some positive developments that have been achieved in the past years. Among these is the increase in access to schooling for black children as well as the significant resources that are devoted to education with over 20% of the national budget going to education.

As matric exams approach, Pandor announced that the government will once again be distributing Study Mate guides with the assistance of their media partners.

Launched last year the Study Mate is produced as a newspaper supplement and will be distributed through Media 24, Avusa Media, Independent Papers, a variety of community publications as well as departmental distribution points.

The guides will focus on the Grade 11 and 12 curricula with the education department providing exam exemplars and weekly guidelines in all the major subjects.

This year's exams will mark the first time that Grade 12s write their finals based on the new National Curriculum. Having done away with the distinction between higher and standard grades, all Grade 12s will write a uniform national exam in the various subjects. Pandor does not believe that this will lower the standard of the matric exam.

Commenting on the likely outcome of this year’s results, Pandor said, "I have never predicted the outcome of the Grade 12 results, but we are expecting an improved quality in the results."

Last year, the national pass rate was standing at 65.2 percent and was below the 2006 pass rate by 1.4 percent.

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