Out of a group of 100 Grade 1 pupils, only 40 will reach Grade 12. Of those, 28 will pass matric and four will enter university. Of the four, only one will graduate.
This is the likely outcome for pupils in SA’s education system as revealed by Eugene Daniels, a former district director in the Western Cape and now head of education at the Citizen Movement for Social Change.
Daniels was speaking on Wednesday at the Education Insights and Action Summit in Joburg, hosted by the movement – an initiative founded last year by Dr Mamphela Ramphele aimed at deepening democracy and promoting active citizenship.
The summit was attended by education interest groups consisting of people from the government, business, NGOs and faith-based sectors, among others.
Daniels said the challenges that the youth of 1976 fought against were still relevant today.
He said the problem now was that people were no longer active participants in creating the kind of state they want to live in.
“We can’t blame our government unless we start changing ourselves. Every five years we line up to vote and we sit back… That’s not people governing,” he said.
Daniels said even though the district he headed in the Western Cape was considered to be among the best because of its 82 percent matric pass rate, he still “lost sleep” because only one in 10 of the 82 percent of pupils who passed were likely to get jobs.
He said that even with those who did pass, the quality of their results was “mediocre”.
Daniels said what needed to happen was for pupils to be taught in a personalised manner best suited for each child’s style of learning.
He also raised the issue of inadequate teacher training, saying that teachers needed to be trained in subject content.
“They’re been oriented, but not trained,” he said.
Ramphele also raised her concerns about the crisis in the education system, saying: “Eighteen years after democracy, we have an education system we’re not proud of, an education system that destroys the future of our young people… That’s a great source of sadness.” She said the country still bore the scars from its history and that woundedness was hindering progress.
“Our woundedness as a nation is keeping us back. How else do you explain the fact that our education system is worse than Swaziland’s or Malawi’s…
“It’s unsettling to have this recurring cycle where we fight for freedom, we achieve it, but don’t use that freedom as a foundation to build our nation.
“What happened in 1994 is that we didn’t take ownership… We undermined what it would take to build this nation,” she said.
The Star