The group's research highlighted a number of points, one of which was the mention of a "silent crisis" in local schools, showing that South Africa had one of the poorest education systems in the entire world.
Responding to the group's publications, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has dismissed reports that the country’s education system is deteriorating, noting that “the facts” point to improvements against all “relevant” metrics of education system performance.
In a statement released on Thursday, (13 April 2023) the department said it had noted the reports but broadly dismissed them as one-sided and inflammatory, adding that it was a much more like a political analysis.
The sector was not invited to respond or at least to provide information on work being done to address the challenges raised in the reports. This means the reports are one-sided and overtaken, in some parts, by work done up to now.
The department says that work currently being done within the sector had already caught up too many of the points raised in the reports, adding that the CDE neglected to give readers an update on the developments within the sector.
Some of the points raised by CDE include:
- After a year of school, more than 50% of Grade 1 learners don’t know all the letters in the alphabet. 78% of Grade 4 learners could not read for meaning in any language.
- South Africa is the single biggest learning underperformer relative to GDP per capita among low and middle-income countries.
- Some teachers lack the capabilities to teach better, with the proficiency levels of South African teachers (41%) rank far below that of their peers in Kenya (95%) and Zimbabwe (87%). 79% of Grade 6 maths teachers in the country scored below 60% on a Grade 6 maths test.
- Despite findings of criminality, no government official implicated in the 2014-2015′ jobs for cash’ scandals have been prosecuted or suspended.
Furthermore, in the reports the CDE also called for the dismissal of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga as well as the leadership team within her department.
The DBE said that calling President Cyril Ramaphosa a “weak president” and seeking the resignation of minister Angie Motshekga made the publishing of the reports a political move, while the use of certain terminology, such as likening the corruption within the system to state capture, emphasised this.
In another political move, the CDE reports weave a narrative of “state capture” onto our education system, going back to the Ministerial Task Team report of 2016 dealing with corruption relating to school-based appointment processes.
They continue, “The appropriation of the language of “state capture” into the education space is unfortunate and inappropriate, given that “state capture” has a particular reference to a serious problem our country has experienced, and applying it inappropriately empties it of its value.”
Developments and Progress made
Speaking on some of the progress made within the sector, the department said that it has now reached a point of universal school attendance for 7-15-year-olds in South Africa.
“Early learning opportunities have been rapidly expanding in recent years: Only 40% of 5-year-olds attended an educational institution in 2002, compared to nearly 90% in 2021.”
On corruption, it said that the department cooperated fully with police investigations of possible criminality and has drafted reforms to school appointment processes which are now contained in the draft Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill.
In the context of expanding access to schooling, the department noted that the average performance of South African learners has been amongst the fastest improving in the world, this is according to all three independent international assessments of learning.
They added, “These quality advances have supported consistent improvements in the outcomes of the National Senior Certificate examinations. The percentage of all youths who complete the National Senior Certificate has increased from less than 40% in the early 2000s to over 60%.”
The department said that the CDE reports raised many valid points – but that it “opted for an inflammatory tone, one-sided negative analysis, and a politically charged stance, ultimately missing an opportunity to contribute to a shared agenda for improving education in the future”.
