AgangSA calls for radical overhaul of basic education to ensure South African children get a global Top 10 education

"AgangSA is championing excellence and accountability in education, so that every child can get a quality education and the best chance of success in life". Professor Mills Soko, AgangSA Policy Director

AgangSA calls to raise Matric pass rate to minimum 50% lead to Department of Basic Education consultation on reform of the system  

Radical AgangSA proposals would set minimum standards for all aspects of the education system so that parents can hold Government accountable, hire 15,000 teachers with degrees and bring in performance-related pay

AgangSA today called for radical changes to the Basic Education system if South Africa is to bring to an end the country's continuing education crisis.

Professor Mills Soko, AgangSA's Policy Director, submitted a detailed proposal to the Department's public consultation on reforms of the education system, which focuses on a series of measures that will restore excellence and accountability to the profession. 

The Department launched it's consultation two weeks ago in response to growing pressure from civil society, including AgangSA's repeated calls to raise the pass rate to a minimum 50%, introduce better teacher training and upgrade of school infrastructure, including the provision of libraries and IT facilities, and the eradication of mud schools and pit toilets.

Professor Soko said: "AgangSA is championing excellence and accountability in education so that every child can finally get a quality education and the best chance of success in life. Every teacher deserves the best training and everyone deserves a proper school to study and work in, with textbooks, libraries, electricity and computers."

"We have long called for the Matric pass rate to be raised to a minimum of 50% and we welcome the government's response to consult the public on this, but there is much more to be done.

"It is almost 20 years since freedom, yet ANC governments have allowed generations of young people to be lost from a basic education system that has collapsed into crisis. How else can you explain that our children get the 133^rd worst education in the world? Enough is enough, this is a betrayal of one of the core values of the struggle at it must end."

Successive ANC governments have lacked coherent policies and the political will to ensure that learners are equipped with an education that prepares them for success in life. The massive, systemic failures in the basic education system mean that:

• A 2012-2013 World Economic Forum study rated the South African primary education system a lowly 133^rd out of 148 participating countries;
• Of the class of 2012 66% or over 745,000 of students did not pass matric and of those who did pass their matric only 10% were eligible for varsity;
• In the same year Grade 6 learners averaged only 43% in Literacy tests and 27% in Numeracy tests;
• A report published recently by Transparency International revealed that almost half of all learners in South Africa did not have a desk and chair of their own, 40% did not have access to the necessary textbooks, 15% of schools were without electricity and 10% lacked water supply.

Professor Soko said that AgangSA's submission to the Department set out new policy proposals that AgangSA would implement in government and that together would reform and transform the basic education system:

"We can transform the education system so that our children get a 21^st century education that is amongst the Top 10 in the world. We must bring accountability to education so that learners, teachers and parents know what to expect and can work together to achieve excellence". 

"This must begin by raising the pass rate if we are going to expect excellence from our teachers and learners. Minimum standards should also be applied to all parts of the basic education system so that parents can hold Government accountable.

"We can better support dedicated teachers by restoring pride to the teaching profession with better training, fast-tracked leadership programmes and performance related pay.

"AgangSA will recruit 15,000 new teachers drawing on the thousands of unemployed graduates across the country and aim for the day when all teachers have relevant degrees. 

"And we will roll out a schools upgrade programme to eradicate mud schools, fix basic infrastructure and build libraries to provide young people with proper learning environments."

Notes to editors

Key proposals from AgangSA's submission to the Department of Basic Education's consultation on reform of the education system

AgangSA draft basic education policies are currently in consultation prior to finalisation for inclusion in the party's Election Manifesto. Proposals include:

PUT STUDENTS FIRST: We will conduct subject-specific competency tests of all teachers; provide intensive teacher training and link pay increases to competency/qualifications; introduce minimum standards for new teacher hires with an eventual goal of all teachers having bachelor degrees.

FILL TEACHER VACANCIES: We will hire 15,000 more teachers with a focus on unemployed youth with bachelor degrees; provide allowances for working in rural areas and scarce skills (e.g.maths).

UPGRADE INFRASTRUCTURE: We will eradicate mud schools, fix basic infrastructure and build libraries to provide our youth with proper learning environments.

SET MINIMUM STANDARDS: We will define minimum standards for all elements of the education system so parents know what they should expect from government and can hold it accountable.

Furthermore, AgangSA believes that effective transformation of the education system in South Africa requires a focus on transforming leaders. We plan to do so as follows:

FOCUS ON CHILDREN: We will establish high expectations for all learners; and entrench a "cradle to career" focus that is centred on creating and developing personalised learning paths and integrating and aligning all elements of the political system to serve the needs of our children.

FOCUS ON TEACHERS: We will encourage a relentless focus on the processes of teaching and learning in classrooms. Doing so requires re-igniting belief, passion and commitment in teachers by focusing on teachers' personal development. It also requires the creation of new paths for ambitious young people to be attracted into education and retained in the profession. To this end, we will:

• Encourage and stimulate the growth of ‘Teach South Africa' working with ‘Teach For All'.
• Develop teacher internship training opportunities for school graduates in high-performing schools.
• Provide incentivised fast-tracked leadership training.

FOCUS ON SCHOOL LEADERSHIP:  We will simplify systems of accountability to reduce the burdens of paperwork and increase the time spent by teachers in direct teaching contact with learners. In addition, we will introduce greater autonomy and increased accountability within a clearly defined transformative teaching and learning framework for school leaders and teachers.

FOCUS ON RESTRUCTURING SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES:  We will develop a number of parallel systems of schooling that cater for diverse needs and opportunities and ensure that a variety of schooling options are available to enable children to move from cradle to career. At the same time, we will restructure existing schools to create smaller focused ‘schools within schools' that will create and develop quality opportunities for all children.

In addition to the afore-mentioned improvements and transformational reforms to the education system, we will implement multiple parallel action-based strategies. These will include the following:

• Lengthening school days to broaden and deepen learning.
• Restructuring school time and space carefully to begin to address the real existing academic deficits.
• Cascading peer training for all teachers and professional development relating to targeted academic intervention in all schools specifically for mathematics and languages.
• Restructuring Life Orientation as a subject to develop: mindfulness; greater focus on internalising values; peer helping; "circles of healing"; and children as agents of change in community development. In doing so, we will aim to consciously build actively engaged citizens and, thereby, develop the social capital needed for continued economic and social growth and development in South Africa.
• Creating and developing educational communities of practice district-by-district to enable the peer review process to become a reflective tool and enabler for real school change.
• Developing the capacity of school leaders and governors to create, take ownership of, and implement focused school improvement plans.
• Distinguishing between instructional and operational leadership roles and responsibilities within schools.
• Focusing on educational leadership development in all districts with a specific priority focus on instructional leadership.
• Creating and accelerating business mentoring and coaching to support operational leaders.
• Focusing relentlessly on what is happening in the classroom and prioritising instructional practice.
• Focusing on learner-centred teaching by defining clear expectations for lesson structures, tools and techniques and establishing peer classroom observation and feedback as a primary self-regulating mechanism.
• Developing teachers to ensure appropriate differentiation in teaching and learning that takes into account learning styles, multiple intelligences, abilities and difficulties.
• Structuring and implementing an effective performance management system for schools that cares for teachers and triggers and enables teaching and leadership growth and development.
• Prioritising the implementation of strategies to integrate computer technology and access to the Internet for all schools.
• Finally, we will introduce the following projects and initiatives to improve education outcomes in the country:
• Establish and develop applied educational national and regional leadership institutes that will accelerate the processes of educational transformation.
• Identify, train, support and fast track instructional leader champions in all schools, district-by-district.
• Introduce new legal options for new school systems to be initiated, supported and monitored. For example, we will create provision for "contract schools" targeting access to quality education to be funded as public schools.
• Inject funding and human resources into Dinaledi Schools within a differentiated framework. These schools will be categorised in terms of history and performance and for each of these categories school development plans will be developed and supported with incentivised goals and intentional monitoring.
• Develop a national map of all NGOs working in the education field and actively pursue collaborative public private partnerships with clearly aligned focus.
• Build a national structured volunteer programme cascading into school districts to encourage people to be actively involved in specific areas identified to assist with transforming schools.
• Expand and upgrade the current ANA system for grades 3, 6 and 9 to be more comprehensive and diagnostic. We will ensure that all detailed results are shared with schools, teachers, learners and parents.
• Introduce national annual benchmarking tests for grades 10 and 11 in mathematics, science, values integration and English.
• Establish a national information technology (IT) implementation task team to map all IT integration pilot schemes across South Africa and develop and implement a five-year plan for integrating and scaling parallel streams of work to ensure access to enhanced learning opportunities using computer technology for all children.

Statement issued by AgangSA, October 8 2013

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