SA education standards too low - Oprah

The children of those of us who benefitted from apartheid do still also benefit even if they were born after. Somehow this is not obvious to some people.

I think the government genuinely wanted to fix the education system. And many good schools have remained good. The problem has been and remains bringing everything up to standard. I agree that for all it's massive flaws the previously white curriculum and the old teaching/testing methods should have been maintained simply because they were already there.

I do believe there should be grades of teachers, just as you get graded (or at least used to) in blue collar jobs. There shouldn't be only one pay level for teachers. But it's easy to determine if someone is a master welder or simply adequate, and put them on a pay grade accordingly. It's more difficult to decide who is a good teacher. And then the best teachers must be the ones to teach the students who need the most help.

Apache said:
Why do people complain about bantu education and these okes all went to varsity and got degrees and what have you. Its not like blacks where not allowed to study, looks like they had ample opportunities to excel during the dark days of apartheid....
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You obviously have no clue on how that worked. These guys, a small handful, were pulled up by the efforts of the universities. None were even close to ready for university when they came out of school, unless they'd received further education outside of school during their school years. Just accept the fact that bantu education was garbage and was intended to be garbage.
 
Indeed... there was a "purge" of qualified teachers in the late 90's.

Recently the spectre of unqualified teachers has been touched on again. I remember an article recently where Angie Motshekga actually admitted to over 4000 unqualified teachers in KZN alone. One can only wonder how these unqualified teacher's learners are meant to cope.
 
Apache said:
Lol good one ;). I suppose Blade tried and is a "doctor" now. Love to know what his thesis was on.

EDIT:
from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Nzimande#Education



Why do people complain about bantu education and these okes all went to varsity and got degrees and what have you. Its not like blacks where not allowed to study, looks like they had ample opportunities to excel during the dark days of apartheid....
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Huh? Surely you are not serious.
Here is something for you to ponder
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The schools reserved for the country's white children were of Western standards and the education was both mandatory and free. 30 % of the black schools did not have electricity, 25 % running water and less than half had plumbing. The education for Blacks, Indians and Coloured was not free.[1] In the 70's the per capita governmental spending on black education was one-tenth of the spending on white.[3]
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Those black people that managed to get a decent education should be applauded for being able to swim upstream. Odds were clearly stacked against them. When people like Oprah talk about matriculation requirements being too low I doubt that they take cognisance of the fact that many matriculants today still have to swim upstream(a serious indictment to the ANC) . This is largely thanks to the legacy of inequality in education in particular and in general society.

I for one went to a miserable high school that had no electricity, lab, library, running water, flushing toilets, broken windows, missing doors, no desks (had to bring your own stool from home and use your lap as a desktop). But it was still better than being under a tree on a scorching sunny day.
But, if you have determination you succeed despite of all of that. Worse part we had no maths teacher for standard 8 and 9 and only got a teacher half way through matric year.
 
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The schools reserved for the country's white children were of Western standards and the education was both mandatory and free.
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I never went to a school in SA as such, was born and schooled in the Transkei but I remember my parents having to pay for school fees, it was never free.
When the school needed equipment, Round Table or Lions were approached and a plan was made to get the funds, again not for free.

We also had people from all walks of life, black , coloured, chinese and Indian, white people were an endangered species as was often the joke.
 
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I would love someone to do a comprehensive study on bantu education, comparing it to what the anc is dishing out at the moment. And by education, i mean the whole shebang, facilities, textbooks, teachers, curriculum etc.
 
Hemps said:
I never went to a school in SA as such, was born and schooled in the Transkei but I remember my parents having to pay for school fees, it was never free.
When the school needed equipment, Round Table or Lions were approached and a plan was made to get the funds, again not for free.

We also had people from all walks of life, black , coloured, chinese and Indian, white people were an endangered species as was often the joke.
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In South Africa the fees at white government schools were basically nominal until the early 80s. All textbooks and exercise books were provided. Parents had to provide pens, uniforms and some other things.

When money was needed for something normally some event was held or a sponsored prize was sought for a raffle.

The fact is that black schools in South Africa were invariably dismal, under-equipped and poorly staffed. Also as tensions escalated it became dangerous to go to school.

joelus said:
OK, having looked around a bit I see that there were a lot of teacher retrenchments around 97, which I guess is what you were referring to...
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It looks like we may have actually had an over-supply of teachers at the time.
 
Hemps said:
I never went to a school in SA as such, was born and schooled in the Transkei but I remember my parents having to pay for school fees, it was never free.
When the school needed equipment, Round Table or Lions were approached and a plan was made to get the funds, again not for free.

We also had people from all walks of life, black , coloured, chinese and Indian, white people were an endangered species as was often the joke.
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I was at school in SA. It was never free. ( and I was never in a private School and I was in 8 diffrent schools over the country. ) Yes Mandatory.
The Books were free but if you did not give it back in the condition you got it in you had to pay. We had to buy books in Biology and extra math books.


The books you wrote in was given to you. You still had to buy the black hardcover books. And only the first one. If you needed more or more than one in a class you had to supply the rest.
( Not saying its bad just stating what my experience were. )

We also had to buy those stupid expensive school uniforms. Thank goodness that was looked at.

@Noxibox
Oversupply of teachers in 1997? I do not think so. In my class was 45 to 50 children. I think someone though that there was going to be more people wanting to be teachers sooner.
 
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Mila said:
I was at school in SA. It was never free. ( and I was never in a private School and I was in 8 diffrent schools over the country. ) Yes Mandatory.
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I bet you were not in school in the 50's, 60's and even early 70's when this Bantu education policy was applied.
 
JungleBoy said:
I bet you were not in school in the 50's, 60's and even early 70's when this Bantu education policy was applied.
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No I wasn't .. I'm ancient but not that ancient.. yet. I edited My post. Like I said not disputing it, Just saying what we had to buy and what not. :)
 
Mila said:
No I wasn't .. I'm ancient but not that ancient.. yet. I edited My post. Like I said not disputing it, Just saying what we had to buy and what not. :)
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Ok...I see.;)
BTW, what Internet browser are you using? Some of your spelling is really funny :D
estra math books
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LOL
 
Apache said:
Yes, stupid policy.
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I would like to know what their reasoning was behind this move and what the teacher situation was like in those days.
It may be that in certain 'white/urban' areas there was an over abundance of teachers per school while in other 'black/rural' areas there was a lack of teachers.
It would make sense then to retrench teachers in order to make funds available for teachers in under represented areas.
I would like to know if the retrenched teachers were given options, for example, an option to move to an area where they are needed.

It's difficult to say it was 'stupid' without knowing the actual situation on the ground.


Edit: It appears these retrenchments were voluntary , not enforced.

...an agreement was reached at the Education Labour Relations Council concerning, amongst other things, a process of voluntary retrenchment whereby teachers would be permitted to apply for voluntary severance packages. This agreement was reached on 30 April 1996 and was referred to by the parties in this Court as “Resolution 3”. On 31 May 1996 Resolution 3 was published for notice in Regulation Gazette 5711 (published in Government Notice R912 in the Government Gazette 17226) in terms of section 12(6) of the Education Labour Relations Act 146 of 1993 by the Minister of Education. On 1 July 1996, the terms of Resolution 3 were extended in terms of the same provision of that Act to all employers and employees covered by that Act.[3] The voluntary severance package arranged was set out in section 1.9(a)(i) of that agreement that provided:

“Any educator may volunteer for a severance package ... in order to allow educators who prefer to leave the service, to do so and to create room for the absorption of educators who are in excess.”


[6] The process required applicants to complete an application for voluntary severance that then had to be forwarded to a series of functionaries for approval. The chairperson of the governing body or head of the educational institution in which the applicant worked, the Regional Director of the provincial education department, the director of personnel administration in the provincial education department and finally the second respondent, head of the provincial education department, all had to approve the application.
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http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2001/6.html

So if thousands of teachers were retrenched it's because thousands of teachers chose to resign, actually. It was an offer of goodwill on the part of the government since the teachers could just have easily been fired or forced into retrenchment.
 
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Indeed... the government's intention was stated as a redress of an imbalance of teacher deployment. It was described as voluntary, but I have been told it was an aggressive heavy handedness that was practiced. Schools with a certain ratio of pupils to teachers were marked for redeployment... these "excess" teachers were to be then sent to rural areas.

In practice, teachers were expected to move across the country, at their own expense, with reduced pay as decided by the government. There was no taking into account of language barriers, and in some instances teachers were expected to teach different subjects to what they had been teaching. There was no distinction made between administrative staff and actual teachers. Numbers were tallied and thus the axe fell.

On paper it sounds noble and voluntary, but I have been assured it was everything but that.

There was indeed a clause attached to the voluntary packages that prohibited teaching once accepted.

What happened thus was an exodus of trained skilled teachers... the rural areas did not benefit and the whole system suffered as a result of this policy. Also, black teachers in rural areas also took the packages, which made those areas even worse.

EDIT:

Here is a link that was emailed to me... some reading... http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=3812
 
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Flame me. We need to go back/ forward to where children receive books and study material as part of state funding. Where you only need a pen , brain , a classroom and discipline to achieve good marks.

The issue I see with giving handbooks is that they are not treated as something of value. So they are trashed ( I have no clue how to address this seems like a thing that needs to start at home ) we were moered and it seemed to have worked. :D but we have other views now.

20 billion of wasted money could have gone a long way to building schools and buying books.
 
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Teacher distribution was always a problem, even under the old government. There was not only teacher preference for particular cities, but for specific schools in those cities. So you had some schools getting their pick of teachers and others only getting those that couldn't get a job anywhere else. So the fact some schools had higher pupil to teacher ratios doesn't mean there were not excess teachers.

My friends who are teachers in the UK say they have a similar situation there. New, inexperienced or simply bad teachers are sent to the worst schools, and their only goal is to gain sufficient experience to get hired into the better schools. No-one intentionally ends up stuck in the horrible schools.

Maybe there was no shortage, but that appears to have been the perception:
The Hofmeyer audit of teacher training estimated that about 25 000 new teachers
being trained each year, a large amount in comparison to the number of students
and schools in need of their services at the time (Appleton et al., 2006b).
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kilobits said:
Here is a link that was emailed to me... some reading... http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=3812
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Well now according to that it was voluntary was not aimed at white teachers. In fact it says a major flaw is that it was offered to all teachers and as a result senior, skilled teachers in rural took the option. Of course I'm not sure whether to trust the article when I see a statement like "The situation is more difficult in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, the two provinces which do not have ANC provincial governments. In these cases there is a political motive to delay providing basic information and data, and in implementation change, in addition to the other reasons.". That screams ANC propaganda piece.
 
Indeed it was voluntary...

BUT

A lot of urban schools were selected because of the teacher / pupil ratios. A lot of these were white schools and these teacher's choices were voluntary retrenchment or re-deployment as decided by the department.

Take it or leave it.

So voluntary yes...
 
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