The Minister of Basic Education, Mrs. Angie Motshekga, has received much praise after announcing reforms to the Outcomes Based Education curriculum. However, the impact of the reforms will now be dependent mainly on the ability of the department to effectively manage and resource underperforming schools.
The Minister of Basic Education, Mrs. Angie Motshekga, has said that both short-term and long term policy changes to teaching and learning will be implemented. These include:
- reducing the number of projects for learners;
- doing away with the need for portfolio files in student assessments;
- each subject in every grade to be reworked into a "single, comprehensive and concise" curriculum for teachers to follow;
- the number of "learning areas" to be reduced from eight to six;
- workbooks to be provided country-wide to ensure the "distribution of adequate learning and teaching materials";
- increased and improved use of textbooks;
- providing a "national catalogue of learning and teaching support materials" to all schools, teachers and pupils;
- the language chosen by a pupil as a "language of learning and teaching" to be taught as a subject, or as a "first additional language", from grade one and not grade two;
- externally-set benchmarking tests at grades three, six, and nine in literacy and numeracy/mathematics to take place.
The Outcomes Based Education model that was adopted by the new Government in the late 1990s received much criticism and was often cited as the explanation for poor schooling in South Africa. Now that changes have been brought to the curriculum, there is an expectation that these alone may improve the quality of education in our schools. Data published by the Institute in a Fast Facts report this month suggests that this may not, however, be the case.
The data we published is a review of how well school pupils performed in South Africa based on their race and then the type of school they attend. By type of school, the review looked at former ‘Model C' schools, former House of Representatives Schools, former House of Delegates schools, and what we have termed ‘other schools' that did not fall into any of these three categories. House of Representatives (HoR) schools were reserved for coloured pupils and House of Delegates (HoD) schools for Indian pupils. ‘Other schools' were run by the former homeland governments and the former Department of Education and Training for black pupils.
The former ‘Model C' school originated in the early 1990s. Mr. Piet Clasé, minister of education at the time, gave white, or House of Assembly schools, a choice of three models of schooling that would shape their characteristics and nature for the future. ‘Model A' would make the schools fully private. ‘Model B' would see them remain state schools, and ‘Model C' would make schools semi-private. ‘Model C' schools would receive state subsidies of about 50%, although the balance would have to be raised through fees and donations. Black pupils were permitted to comprise 50% of the student body.
By April 1992 approximately 1 900 former white schools had become ‘Model C' schools. This equated to 95% of all schools under the control of the House of Assembly.