Noreen Sitali

IT is great to see some schools getting recognition. Politics aside, the negative narrative about public schools has been taking away from the hardworking teachers, parents, and pupils. 

The education system can only be flawed with poorly performing teachers, poor work ethics, lack of community and parental support, poor control by education authorities, poor support for teachers, and very low levels of accountability, and yes - it takes a village indeed.

The large failure rate of children has been attributed to the new curriculum and the hard transition from the “tradition aims and objectives approach to outcomes-based education,” a very hard paradigm shift and when this particular cohort of pupils enters tertiary studies, it becomes apparent that they were not adequately prepared for tertiary studies.

All in all, inadequately trained teachers, inadequate support and the absence of teaching and learning resources would directly contribute to the failure of the curriculum.

Just the other day, I overheard a Grade 12 teacher from a public school stating that the concerns about the declining quality of education include the issue of under-prepared learners resulting from internal promotion practices and the need by schools to achieve high pass rates in especially Grade 12. As a result, educators at secondary level blame the educators at the preceding levels for producing learners who cannot read or write at the levels needed for tertiary study, among others, thus making their work difficult.

Considering the high rate of unemployed youth and graduates, it is essential that especially African countries must develop education systems that allow as many children as possible to go to school and to seek an education of a high-enough quality to enable them to enter the labour market and contribute to the economy in a manner guaranteed to attract investors. 

Yes, it takes a village and the community has an influence on what is happening at school and that the school is a mirror image of the community within which it is situated.  Pupils reflect these experiences and it is crucial that the focus should be on positive relationships as well as parental roles and community involvement.  Equally important is that the teaching profession should be one that takes pride in and educators need to show classroom management skills.  In this regard, curriculum change and recommendations need not always be big-bang changes.  Initially, the changes must be small across a wide range of areas.  It will especially require changing a deeply ingrained culture of inefficiency in producing learner achievement.

* Noreen Sitali is an information officer with an interest in social issues. This article was written in a personal capacity.