The Human Sciences Research Council has found that the quality of education in South Africa fares badly in comparison with that of other poorer countries.
Cas Prinsloo, the chief research specialist at the education research unit, said on Wednesday that trends in international and national pupil performance showed "dismal" performance in mathematics, science and literature.
He said the reasons were complex, pointing to poor teacher training, a lack of skills, poor support for pupils in their homes and shortages of educational resources.
Prinsloo said national comparative pupil assessments and trends in international maths and science surveys, partic- ularly at grades 4 and 8, showed that South Africa was "at the bottom of the log". Research by the University of Pretoria on reading and literacy also showed that "we compared dismally".
Continues Below ↓
"It found that nine out of 10 African pupils did not achieve the most basic benchmark in reading literacy tests."
He said some of the reasons included pupils' poor literacy levels at home, where parents could not "foster a love for reading and learning, or help with homework".
School-based issues included a lack of textbooks and pupil support materials and teachers who lacked training.
"I think it is partly a teacher training issue, where about 20 years ago there were 150 or so teacher training colleges. The change to the new dispensation, with the amalgamated universities and universities of technology, reduced this to 25 teacher training institutions.
"Some capacity to train teachers was lost and we have more theoretical than practical exposure to class work and methods."
Prinsloo said the research also revealed some positive things.
"In the present dispensation, there are backlogs in pupils' knowledge and sometimes even the teachers' foundation know- ledge is suspect, but our teachers want to get it right.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
