SA education standards too low - Oprah

kilobits said:
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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I'm afraid that's how it normally should work with teaching. Schools pre-exist and you have to go work at the ones that require teachers. That's why in the UK it's the young, inexperienced teachers that are put the through the gauntlet.

A more sensible approach would have been to offer them the payout for moving to a rural area for some minimum contract period. At the very least there should have been no payout for quitting. Don't like the deployment options, then fine, quit teaching, but you don't get any money for doing so.

Problem is that the government appears to have thought there were more than sufficient teachers, plus plenty being produced by training colleges, and that the existing teachers were more dedicated to their job than they actually were. And what they probably did is pay those teachers moving costs to go overseas. Of course they would have been in a for surprise if they went to the UK, because foreign teachers also get shoved into the worst schools until they've proven themselves and can get a better school to take them on.

But the bad move was made, so now work has to be done to fix things.
 
noxibox said:
I'm afraid that's how it normally should work with teaching. Schools pre-exist and you have to go work at the ones that require teachers. That's why in the UK it's the young, inexperienced teachers that are put the through the gauntlet.

A more sensible approach would have been to offer them the payout for moving to a rural area for some minimum contract period. At the very least there should have been no payout for quitting. Don't like the deployment options, then fine, quit teaching, but you don't get any money for doing so.

Problem is that the government appears to have thought there were more than sufficient teachers, plus plenty being produced by training colleges, and that the existing teachers were more dedicated to their job than they actually were. And what they probably did is pay those teachers moving costs to go overseas. Of course they would have been in a for surprise if they went to the UK, because foreign teachers also get shoved into the worst schools until they've proven themselves and can get a better school to take them on.

But the bad move was made, so now work has to be done to fix things.
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Add to that to many curriculum changes, the problem is that the teachers simply didn't want to cope with the big system shock.
 
Nicodeamus said:
Add to that to many curriculum changes, the problem is that the teachers simply didn't want to cope with the big system shock.
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that is no lie. I know a few older teachers. As a teacher when you start you ' inherit' some teaching aids and you build up years and years of your own. And the new stuff were given to them and they had nothing to go on. Yes they were given a few guidelines by the department, but they kinda had to learn the new things with the kids. :(
 
My brother just started his first year at a government school. He spent his primary years at a school where they do the UK curriculum.
He is in Standard 6/grade 8 at the moment. They are learning things that we did in Standard 3 or 4. So much has changed in 13 years.
 
Toilet_Duck said:
My brother just started his first year at a government school. He spent his primary years at a school where they do the UK curriculum.
He is in Standard 6/grade 8 at the moment. They are learning things that we did in Standard 3 or 4. So much has changed in 13 years.
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Come again!

Are they behind the old SA curriculum?
 
Never forget 'freedom before eduction'. Many in the ANC still believes this freedom still needs to happen, hence education will not happen.

Back in the 90s all government employees could apply for voluntary severance packages, the string attached was that you could never work for government again. SA is still paying the price for this. The impact on education, medical profession, police, etc. was catastrophic.

My father worked as a nurse for Correctional Services and took the package in 96 (I think). Two years ago it was decided to make exceptions on the 'not work for government again rule' an he got a full-time job at a government hospital in George (after working freelance for years). Unfortunately he passed away a month later.
 
VJB 449 said:
Never forget 'freedom before eduction'. Many in the ANC still believes this freedom still needs to happen, hence education will not happen.

Back in the 90s all government employees could apply for voluntary severance packages, the string attached was that you could never work for government again. SA is still paying the price for this. The impact on education, medical profession, police, etc. was catastrophic.

My father worked as a nurse for Correctional Services and took the package in 96 (I think). Two years ago it was decided to make exceptions on the 'not work for government again rule' an he got a full-time job at a government hospital in George (after working freelance for years). Unfortunately he passed away a month later.
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You know the ANC was warned in 94 to not get rid of the institutional knowledge, this seemed to be the case in most governmental organizations,
 
Can someone explain to me what the 30% 'pass' mark is? What does it actually entitle you to other than "you have completed school".
What do you require to get into medicine, comm law, physio, etc etc

There is a difference between that and the demand for university spots which means that if a degree is sought after you need a high entrance mark ditto if a job is in demand and pays well you need a high mark. Those are the things that drive the median mark attained up.

In Australia the ultimate outcome looking at University candidates and graduates is excellent, despite there being no 'pass mark' as such because the economy dictates that the best will succeed in getting into those courses which ultimately lead to the best jobs , research positions and/or academic careers.

Education has to go hand in glove with the economy. It is no use crying about an arbitrary meaningless pass mark when there is no better outcome for getting 50% instead of 30%.

I can go deeper into how it works here if required, but even without a 'pass mark' the standard of graduate is at the highest in world, great surgeons, IT people, management and teachers etc that is at the very top. It is a cycle.
 
noxibox said:
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.


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.
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Uwc, fort hare, thousands of graduates ever year. All black.
 
kilobits said:
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...
Click to expand...

And now the education system is in a mess, and there is still a shortage of teachers in rural areas and parts of cities.
 
OzzieCapie said:
Can someone explain to me what the 30% 'pass' mark is? What does it actually entitle you to other than "you have completed school".
.
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It means the job market is now flooded with illiterate 18 year olds you have to employ.
 
It means the job market is now flooded with illiterate 18 year olds you have to employ.
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Near where I live in East London, there are out of work people waiting to be picked up by anyone, I see yesterday there are about 20+ youngsters there with them, scary stuff.
 
OzzieCapie said:
Can someone explain to me what the 30% 'pass' mark is? What does it actually entitle you to other than "you have completed school".
What do you require to get into medicine, comm law, physio, etc etc

There is a difference between that and the demand for university spots which means that if a degree is sought after you need a high entrance mark ditto if a job is in demand and pays well you need a high mark. Those are the things that drive the median mark attained up.

In Australia the ultimate outcome looking at University candidates and graduates is excellent, despite there being no 'pass mark' as such because the economy dictates that the best will succeed in getting into those courses which ultimately lead to the best jobs , research positions and/or academic careers.

Education has to go hand in glove with the economy. It is no use crying about an arbitrary meaningless pass mark when there is no better outcome for getting 50% instead of 30%.

I can go deeper into how it works here if required, but even without a 'pass mark' the standard of graduate is at the highest in world, great surgeons, IT people, management and teachers etc that is at the very top. It is a cycle.
Click to expand...

Yes. Everything is better in Oz, except maybe the internet forums...
 
check this out for a vicious cycle, i'll take it from a science POV since there is where my experience lies...

student gets into varsity, studies something like maths/physics/comp sc. Student is not really equipped to be at university, but the university hopes it can remedy the situation over a year or two. Anycase, student plays the system by copypasting in comp sc., memorising proofs instead of understanding them in maths, or submitting reports rather than understanding underlying concepts to pass physics. After 6/7 years, student is a master at playing the system and somehow manages to receive a BSc. (a 3-year course mind you).

Now because the student cannot get into honours course for his major since he was not supposed to have received an undergrad degree in the first place, he decides to do some education post grad certificate such as a PGCE. He goes back to school and teaches maths/physics/comp sc., the very subject he did not understand during his university tenure.

I will leave you with imagining the obvious implications; this may be a contributing factor as to why schools who usually have dismal science pass rates persist to have dismal pass rates in sciences.

tl;dr - because schools do not ready their pupils for university, the very same pupils return as teachers with insufficient knowledge in their subject of choice perpetuating under prepared pupils for varsity.
 
battletoad said:
check this out for a vicious cycle, i'll take it from a science POV since there is where my experience lies...

student gets into varsity, studies something like maths/physics/comp sc. Student is not really equipped to be at university, but the university hopes it can remedy the situation over a year or two. Anycase, student plays the system by copypasting in comp sc., memorising proofs instead of understanding them in maths, or submitting reports rather than understanding underlying concepts to pass physics. After 6/7 years, student is a master at playing the system and somehow manages to receive a BSc. (a 3-year course mind you).

Now because the student cannot get into honours course for his major since he was not supposed to have received an undergrad degree in the first place, he decides to do some education post grad certificate such as a PGCE. He goes back to school and teaches maths/physics/comp sc., the very subject he did not understand during his university tenure.

I will leave you with imagining the obvious implications; this may be a contributing factor as to why schools who usually have dismal science pass rates persist to have dismal pass rates in sciences.

tl;dr - because schools do not ready their pupils for university, the very same pupils return as teachers with insufficient knowledge in their subject of choice perpetuating under prepared pupils for varsity.
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This sounds more like a university problem as opposed to a school problem. A university that allows copying and pasting is no good.
Also, when I was at university, they excluded students that didn't progress at the required pace. The student battling with maths and physics was therefore able to try his luck elsewhere like in the commerce or humanities faculties... I wonder if they still do this.
 
At CPUT, we had an interesting question for a Java test (2nd year course). This was a couple of years ago.

The question was, I suppose, there to test math ability.

The question:
You have 3 rand. Rulers cost 25 cents and pencils cost 50 cents.
You buy 5 rulers and you also buy 5 pencils. How much money do you have left?

I am not joking! If I can, I will find that paper and scan and post it for a laugh.
 
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