By Steuart Pennington
If you have a passion for fixing education in South Africa this is a VERY practical, VERY useful book. If you have an interest in education here are some numbers that you need to know:
The Joint Education Trust (JET) tells that of the estimated 22589 public schools (down from 26789 in 2000), and 2500 independent schools (both high fee and low fee
- 5% are World Class, with a significant number in the top 1000 schools globally
- 15% are functional as places of learning
- 80% are dysfunctional as places od learning, not necessarily failing, but significantly under-resourced
SA spends 6.8% of GDP on Education (UK 5.2%, Germany 5% and Australia 5.1%) of which 4.9% of the total budget is spent on infrastructure, the rest on salaries and services of 460 000 teachers and the 9 320 staff in the DoE – teachers won’t be committed or inspired if the infrastructure is falling down around them! (see table below)
Enrolment (2023 figures) and pass rates – Grades 1- 10 average 1.1 million learners per cohort, this drops to 775 630 in Grade 12 with 702 950 actually writing matric, 615 429 passing (half the number that started in Grade 1) with +/- 290 000 achieving a university entrance and about 60% dropping out in their first year.
Pupil teacher ratios are 30:1 in public schools and 16:1 in independent schools
Hygiene in schools 2023 figures (total state schools 22589).
The proportion of learners achieving Bachelor passes (enabling university entrance) has moved from 13% (1996) to 38% (2022). 50% of learners paid no fees in 2009, compared to 75% vin 2021.
The challenge
Over the past seven years I have worked in 16 under-resourced schools in the Midlands of KZN, mostly through the NGO ‘Partners for Possibility’ which facilitates a year-long programme in which business leaders partner with ‘no fee’ public school principals with the objective of working together to improve the functionality of the school as a place of learning. We focus on five areas;
- Principal leadership development
- teacher capacity and training
- infrastructural dignity
- education technology
- improved learning outcomes.
During this ‘partnership’ we achieved remarkable results with improved enrolment, infrastructural dignity restoration, enhanced leadership capacity and teacher training, and in particular matric pass rates exceeding 90%, many off a low of 30%. Over 7 years I personally have developed a deep understanding of the challenges confronting Basic Education and the work of your Ministry.
The book by Jansen and Black explains in a readily understandable manner what will happen if we don’t fix our schools – the consequences; what we are doing wrong – the mistakes; what we have learnt from experience – good practice lessons; and what our strategy should be going forward (see below); and how to run school improvement workshops – a template. It includes 2 CD’s with filmed narratives from schools that work
Available from On the Dot
ISBN 978-1-920434-62-5
First published in 2014, relevant to-day.
