School reform requires outrage followed by action
18 April 2023
Jonathan Jansen’s thoughtful review of The Silent Crisis, Centre for Development and Enterprise’s (CDE) new series of five reports on education reform, is a useful contribution and overall an encouraging endorsement from one of the country’s leading education voices (‘What powerful report gets right and wrong about education in SA’, TimesLIVE, 6 April 2023). He raises a number of important issues, and he is certainly correct that data and statistics — no matter how compelling — are not enough to get the government to act.
When we highlight that only 37% of grade 5 pupils have some basic mathematical knowledge, or that more than half of grade 1 pupils do not know all the letters of the alphabet after a year of schooling, the department of basic education (DBE) just shrugs its shoulders.
When we point out that South African pupils came third from bottom in the most recent international Trends in Mathematics and Science Study and last in the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, minister Motshekga’s office says that this is old news.
So yes, it is true that we need more than compelling evidence to effect change. This is why in CDE’s new reports on education we are calling for pressure from below to effect change, starting with next year’s election. We looked at many cases of schooling reform in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere in the world, and it was clear that success resulted from a combination of effective leadership and voluble pressure from below.