Open letter to Minister of Basic Education Ms. Siviwe Gwarube

Dear Minister

I’m writing to you at a time when Teachers’ union SADTU threatening a national protest – targeting Treasury and your departments in Pretoria – due to ongoing budget cuts. With this backdrop and noting Minister Steenhuisen’s recent praise for your achievements, I thought it might be helpful to offer some constructive ideas for the future of Basic Education in South Africa.

First, credit where it is due. Under your leadership

• A R9.8 billion tender that could have jeopardized school feeding schemes was stopped, protecting meals for our most vulnerable learners.
• 98% of identified school pit toilets have been eradicated—if this figure is accurate, that’s a remarkable step forward in restoring dignity and safety.
• Over 800 Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres have been registered, benefiting 27,000 children and 3,100 staff—a big win for early learning.

I thought it would be useful make some suggestions on the future of Basic Education in SA (I have based my numbers on the most recent Institute for Race Relations ‘South Africa Survey 2024’)

Now, a bit of my background: 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 yearlong program 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.

But first some numbers (excluding Public Higher Education and Universities):

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 (as this article will reveal)

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 your department – teachers can’t be committed or inspired if the infrastructure is falling down around them!

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 – a positive development.

But there are red flags:

1. Children with no schooling in 2022: 5.8% Black; 1.9% Coloured; 1.1 Asian and 0.2% White
2. Early Childhood Development (2023 figures)
3. 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 – a bad story.
4. Pupil teacher ratios are 30:1 in public schools and 16:1 in independent schools
5. Hygiene in schools 2023 figures (total state schools 22589) – a bad story
6. Post School Institutions

SETA – Sector Education and Training Authority

TVET – Technical Vocational Education and Training

CET – Community and Education Training Colleges

My observations:

1. 30 – 40% of learners drop out at Grade 10, for a variety of reasons:
   • No hope of passing their matric
   • Being held back by the DoE because they are unlikely to pass matric
   • Family pressure to contribute to domestic chores and earn some basic income
   • Child headed household responsibilities
   • Loss of interest realising that classroom based learning is inappropriate for them
   • Teenage pregnancy
2. There is in an obsession with the view that University is the only real option for tertiary education, very little is known of the services that SETA’s, TVET and CET’s offer. The 60% university dropout rate probably results in no further after school education taking place – with unemployment and unemployability being the consequence.
3. There is very little, if any, career guidance and counselling taking place in grades 10, 11 and 12. Teachers simply don’t know what opportunities exist and what institutions there are, other than universities, that provide for tertiary education opportunities (some 364 as above). I have yet to meet a DoE Circuit Manager who can add value in this regard.
4. Grade 12 revision in preparation for matric is made impossible by most schools closing at 13h00 with taxi’s arriving to take learners and teachers home.
5. Most ECD facilities are privately run, and while your Department does provide registered ECD facilities with a basic monthly allowance of R17 per child, most parents have to pay extra which they can ill-afford, discouraging them to make use of ECD, rather stay at home with a guardian.
6. The lack of sporting facilities and sport coaching is chronic, how can we ever expect to become a proud sporting nation when approximately half our schools have no sporting facilities at all, and those that do are very limited with little or no coaching? (See my letter to Minister Mackenzie https://www.sagoodnews.co.za/open-letter-to-minister-of-sports-arts-culture-mr-gayton-mckenzie/)

Six suggestions for a better future

1. There is a superb, locally developed, online  career guidance progamme EDUvelopment which offers a comprehensive range of life skill courses and career guidance resources, including personality and career assessments, aptitude tests, subject choice advice, and bursaries information. It is easy to use, and in the schools where it has been implemented the success of learners as they pursue after school career opportunities is remarkable
2. Require that schools create space to allow their Grade 12’s, in preparation for matric, to revise in the afternoons, with teachers facilitating the exercise and the Circuit manager monitoring it. Offer Saturday school as well.
3. Streaming & Employability: given the dropout rate in Grade 10 at +/- 40%, and given the fact that we have 364 post school vocational, technical and artisanal training institutions (in addition to our 26 universities) surely the way to improve the employability of our school leavers is that they should be streamed at Grade 10 into institutions where they have a real chance of successfully completing a post school qualification, either at a university OR at a vocational, or technical, or artisanal facility. We should emulate Germany/USA/Japan where +/- 50% of school leavers enter ‘Uni’ for intellectual/academic pursuits, or the UK where 38% enter ‘Uni’, or Malaysia at 40%, with the balance acquiring ‘employability’ skills in ‘Colleges’ that are relevant to the country’s economic growth priorities.
4. Infrastructural Dignity: In the schools that I have been involved in the state of the infrastructure is nothing short of shocking: broken windows, unusable toilets, 50 year old blackboards, dilapidated desks, non-existent libraries, non-existent computer facilities and no sporting facilities are commonplace in most under-resourced schools. Hopefully your legacy will be to change this. You can’t do it on a 4.9% budget allocation.
5. Principal and Teacher Development: Again, in my experience most of the principals I have worked with have been significantly overburdened by a shortage of teachers, limited administrative assistance, a minuscule budget for printing and maintenance combined with unrealistic expectations on behalf of the Circuit Manager. Being a Principal is a lonely job, I know my Dad was one! If they are fortunate enough to partner with a business leader through the NGO ‘Partners for Possibility’ run by CitizenLeaderLab it’s highly likely they will undergo a transformational experience which will result in the functionality of their school being significantly improved. ‘Partners for Possibility’ is involved with 2000 schools in all 9 Provinces. Please Minister, widen the net.
6. Early Childhood Development: The figures vary in terms of the number of children attending functional ECD centres versus rudimentary care centres. Hopefully the Bale Pele initiative will conclude with a plan to have a functional ECD centre with decent facilities and proper development initiatives within walking distance of every rural South African village with a 95% attendance of our 2-5 year-old toddlers.

Conclusion

Minister, the numbers are against us, and in many instances seem likely to get worse. You’ve already taken bold steps. I hope that your legacy will be to reform our basic education system with the single objective of improving the employability of our youth. If you do, entrepreneurial endeavour, SMME growth, and our economic prospects will look bright. Hopefully, in that regard, some of the suggestions above will resonate.

P.S. Please talk to Minister of Labour Nomakhosazana METH regarding labour legislation reforms and the phasing out of Equity/BEE legislation, which currently compensate for our legacy of poor basic education while denying merit based employment practices, besides being a significant disincentive to both local and international investment and job creation. Creating jobs requires a propensity for ‘risk’, getting a job requires gaining a relevant skill, our labour legislation fails to recognize that as do many of our empleomania suffering civil servants.