Durban - Three decades and millions of rands later, trying to retrain teachers in South Africa was not working, a report on teacher education said, affirming existing research.
Even when schools were well-managed and teachers had access to sufficient resources, the quality of teaching and learning could not rise above the ceiling imposed by low teacher capacity, the report produced by respected research organisation Jet Education Service said.
While this ceiling might be high in some schools, in the majority, teaching was often ineffective and pupils fell further behind each year.
The greatest opportunity for improving the quality of schooling in the country lay in ensuring that new teaching graduates were properly trained, it argued.
Jet embarked on an extensive investigation of initial teacher education, with the forum of education deans of universities and the Basic and Higher Education departments.
“While there are undisciplined teachers who don’t make the best use of time, the majority are doing the best they can, and would dearly love to be more effective.
“The cause of poor performance, by and large, lies not with teachers but with the (apartheid-era) teacher education system that produced them,” the organisation said.
The problems included:
* Low levels of English proficiency among teachers and pupils.
* A lack of adequate ways to teach basic numeracy and reading, which saw pupils using rudimentary methods to calculate complex arithmetic operations, and large numbers of pupils reached Grade 5 essentially illiterate.
* Low levels of subject knowledge among teachers.
* The assumption that all qualified teachers were capable of teaching all subjects. There were too many teachers teaching subjects in which they did not specialise.
The training of existing teachers (referred to as in-service education and training) had proven ineffective in addressing these problems.
The Jet report described the Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree as the bridge between generally poorly prepared matrics, and newly qualified teachers embarking on a career of teaching.
“This is the point that holds the most promise for breaking the cycle of mediocrity which bedevils schooling and exerts a heavy brake on both the personal development of most citizens, and the production of knowledge and skills needed for a more vibrant economy,” it said.
Basic Education Department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said there were no silver bullets in an environment as complex as education. In-service training was designed to complement other teacher development initiatives.
“The majority of our teachers are between the ages of 45 to 55. We need to support them by re-skilling them to give us the outcomes we desire. This is done while the new generation of teachers is getting the training recommended by research,” Mhlanga said.
The Mercury