Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

Yes, Mmusi, but all begins with reconfiguring the South African curriculum

19 January 2022 | Story Dr Bekithemba Dube | Photo Supplied

Opinion article by Dr Bekithemba Dube, Senior Lecturer: School of Education Studies and Programme Head: Foundation and Intermediate Phase, University of the Free State.

Mmusi Maimane’s view on the need to increase the South African pass rate from 30% to 50% has received mixed response from various stakeholders. Among them are the teachers’ organisations, including the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu). These two organisations stated that Maimane was using the country’s education system as a “national campaign for his political ambitions” (City Press, 10 Jan 2022). In response to the teachers’ unions, Maimane noted that “Teacher unions have always rejected the idea of continuous teacher assessments. Our argument is that we need to ask better of our teachers so that they are not passing pupils at 30%. So, of course the unions are going to try and defend their position because it will reflect badly on some of their members, which is not a reflection of all their members.” The conversations between the teachers’ organisations and Mmusi Maimane indicate ambivalence about the reciprocal relations between politics and education. The conversations also highlight how political influence can either build or destroy an education system. A basic observation of moving subject pass rate from 30% to 50% (depending on how one interprets it) generates conflict rather than a collective approach to addressing the pressing curriculum issues in South Africa. This article, informed by post-colonial theories, and more particularly the concept of the third space (first space being Maimane, second space being teachers’ unions, and third space where I believe the two should operate from to reconfigure relevant curriculum in South Africa), seeks to unpack the two conversations in relation to pass/subject rate in South Africa in the international context and to zero in on an argument for the need to configure the curriculum with best practice.

Unpacking Maimane’s comments

Unpacking Maimane’s comments, he raises five issues in his argument for moving subject pass rate from 30% to 50%, namely the country’s developmental aspiration; motivated, qualified, and ambitious teachers; global economy; and finally, better pay for teachers. Summing up his observation, he notes that “education is the way out of this economic mess. The 4IR economy requires specified hard skills. Our teachers are the frontline workers in the quest for economic prosperity. We must reward good teachers. We must remove bad teachers and attract new talent”. The premise of his thinking touches on crucial elements that are pertinent for the South African child in relation to the global competitors and economic emancipation. There is a sense from his sentiment that educating a child is not only for South Africa, but that this child should be equally competitive with his or her peers in the global market. Thus, telling the world that our subject pass rate is 30% is a mockery of our education system. It brings a false sense among learners that if one gets 30% for a subject, he or she has passed the subject, but a combination of all subjects with 30% cannot make one secure university placement. Thus, the critical question to which the Department of Basic Education should respond is what the rationale is behind a 30% subject pass? What does this 30% reflect on South African education compared to international standards? What harm is there to move from a 30% to 50% pass rate? Once these questions have been answered, perhaps new conversations can emerge, and the discussions will come from an informed position.

Interestingly, the unions’ response to Maimane’s comments is premised on an inadequate explanation of what exactly is meant by 30%. The response does not address other issues raised by Maimane, such as development of the country, motivated, qualified, and ambitious, global economy, and surprisingly, the issue of salaries. However, Maimane’s sentiments are seen as coming from someone with a dying political life and using education as political oxygen for survival. What if Maimane’s comments were from someone belonging to the ANC, and not the DA or EFF – would it have gone this far? Again, why is the response targeted at his person and political affiliation rather than contextualising his argument in light of global trends of academic excellence in the quest to improve economic zones? What is the difficulty or harm in moving from 30% to 50% subject/overall pass rate? The response to these questions will be of interest in shaping educational conversations in South Africa. While the unions are entitled to their positions as representatives of teachers, it is prudent to also see the damage that a 30% subject pass rate or overall pass rate is causing to learners, such as failure to access university and compete with their international counterparts.

30% is a reflection of a failed curriculum practice

Cognisant of the foregoing, moving into the third space as suggested above is critical. This is a place where all people involved in the issue meet at a neutral space to juxtapose the trajectories of education. To begin the conversation in the third space, an acknowledgement is necessary that education is key to any development, and a compromise on this has an everlasting impact on national building. Once this is understood, the educational stakeholders can enter into honest conversations about the relevance of 30%, as none of us as parents would be happy with a 30% subject pass rate. From my angle, the 30% is a reflection of a failed curriculum practice, not only in South Africa, but in most African countries with nationalised education systems. Narrowing this to South Africa while also applicable to other African countries, is an indication that we have detained learners for 12 years, and to please learners and parents, we comfort them with a 30% subject pass rate. Third space allows us to interrogate such a practice in order to map best practices for our children, economy, and contribution to humanity through education. To me, 30% is an indication that some learners are not supposed to be doing the curriculum that is forced on them in schools. The CAPS document as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ curriculum is no longer relevant, rather a fluid and contextualised CAPS is now required. The latter speaks of a curriculum that does not seek to channel learners through one avenue, such as passing Grade 12 and going to university. There is a need for a curriculum that does not detain learners in subjects in which they have no interest or are not capable of doing. Rather, various courses – not subjects – should be introduced alongside the main curriculum practices. Critical courses, which are in short supply in South Africa, should be taught as early as Grade 7 as a course where a learner can be awarded a diploma for a critical skill of their choice. This means bringing some TVET courses to basic education, such as building, welding, civil engineering, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, software engineering, among other courses. This would allow learners to get recognised qualifications along with their Grade 12 results, cognisant that some learners with passion and good skills in some courses mentioned above may not have access to TVET colleges and universities because of a 30% subject pass rate. The foregoing requires a revamp of the education system so that after 12 years of basic education, learners have something practical to show rather than having all learners moving in one direction and getting nothing at the end of Grade 12. I am of the view that an increase from 30% to 50% is indispensable, desirable, and doable and above all, that TVET courses should be taught from Grade 7 to 12, so that learners with an interest in practical subjects have recognised courses for their livelihood, even if they do not perform very well in Grade 12.

News Archive

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students

2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:

We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.
We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.
We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.
We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.
We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.
We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.
We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept