EFFECTIVE education is the lifeblood of a country’s future.
The government thinks so too, since it punts this undeniable fact from every political and public platform.
Just this past Friday in its internal draft report at the ruling party’s lekgotla, while admitting it failed dismally to meet its delivery targets, rooting out corruption and reducing unemployment, it boasted proudly of significant progress in improving, among other things, the education sector.
That the government is serious in its intentions of boosting education cannot be denied. They do realise the importance of it, but the policies they introduce to achieve this continue to boggle the mind.
The perception – and remember perception is reality in the public mind – is that government education policy makers during the past two decades have been intellectually challenged.
When the Outcomes Based system was introduced, education experts and practitioners, as one, warned the government it would fail.
It failed miserably and government eventually backtracked, sadly only after much damage was done.
Yet, still on the books is that matrics can attain a pass with a 30% exam mark. While this policy has obviously raised matric pass percentages to accommodate political drum rolls of success, the dumbing down of quality and standards can never, ever, be equated to progress.
If anything, this merely provides further impetus to the slump towards worthlessness of our matric certificates, so the motivation for this policy in terms of ‘improving’ education escapes one.
Free pass madness
And now we have an additional creation of madness, the ‘free pass’ policy coming into effect this year which, again, is collectively condemned by experts, academics, teachers, principals and teacher unions.
Pupils may only fail once as they pass through four schooling bands – Grades R to 3, Grades 4-6, Grades 7-9 and Grades 10-12.
In essence, therefore, any disinterested pupil prepared to sit out an extra four years will eventually be allowed to write matric exams. Thus, the core principle of promotion through knowledge attainment – the cornerstone of effective education – is in one fowl swoop being replaced by a meaningless ‘intelliginse’ by persistence approach.
The negative impact this will have on the teaching profession and the credibility of qualifications, is clearly evident.
One assumes the education authorities’ brains trust must have had some inspirational rationale to cook up this strategy, but finding any benefits proves to be elusive.
Unless, of course, National Teachers Union Deputy President Allen Thompson’s assertion is correct, that the only reason government is implementing the policy is ‘to save money’.
If this is indeed so – a willingness to sacrifice our children’s education for the sake of financial considerations – then we are in trouble.
What must be understood is that brick and mortar developments and statistical manipulation do not constitute education improvements.
Strategies enhancing knowledge does.
