The department of basic education is forging ahead with plans to offer pupils a three-stream curriculum in grades 10 to 12 which will include academic, vocational and occupational subjects.
The plan is aimed at encouraging pupils to move away from pursuing a purely academic programme and consider a vocational or occupational path because not all matrics go on to study at higher education institutions.
Subjects offered include art and design, hairdressing and beauty, office administration, agricultural studies, bricklaying, plastering, plumbing, upholstery, woodworking, motor mechanics and welding.
Rufus Poliah, the department’s chief director for national assessment and public exams, told a parliamentary briefing on Tuesday it planned to implement standardised assessments at the end of grade nine.
“Part of the assessment regime at end of grade nine would be an inclinations assessment where every pupil will be assessed on whether his inclination is towards the academic, vocational or occupational curriculum.”
He said pupils would decide, with their parents, the one they wanted to follow in grades 10 to 12.
Poliah said the department was piloting a number of vocational and occupational subjects in schools.
“Our director-general and minister have accepted that part of the problem of our system is that we are squeezing all our pupils into an academic stream when they will flourish if provided with opportunities in the occupational and vocational streams.”
He said part of the curriculum strengthening process to be implemented in 2025, was developing vocational and occupational curricula for grade 10s.
Poliah said: “One of the criticisms levelled against the South African curriculum is that it is too broad and lacks depth. They say our curriculum is a mile wide but an inch deep.”
He said the department had a “content map” that focuses on what is “core” in a phase.
What is needed is an inquiry-based curriculum that develops pupils’ skills and knowledge on how to access information and how to use it.
— Professor Labby Ramrathan, University of KwaZulu-Natal
He said this process “has caused us to move away from content and knowledge coverage to focusing more on skills development”.
“We are focusing on reducing content and looking at competencies.”
Poliah said a consultation process has under way.
“In 2025 we hope to begin our modernised and strengthened curriculum, which will be competence-based and will look at knowledge application.”
According to Poliah, a missing element is “soft skills” such as attitudes, values and character development.
“This is what the new framework is going to focus on. How you develop the individual holistically and not just measure performance in an exam in terms of how much of knowledge he has gained.”
Director-general of basic education Mathanzima Mweli said countries that have better economic growth “ more pupils following the vocational and occupational streams”.
He quoted Singapore, China and India, where 50% to 60% of pupils chose these paths.
“The majority of our pupils must be offered vocational and occupational streams rather than academic streams or programmes.”
“Technical schools are expensive to establish and it’s going to take time, but that’s the direction we need to follow,” Mweli said.
Prof Labby Ramrathan from the University of KwaZulu-Natal said “the diversification of school education in grades 10 to 12 is needed for pupils to follow a path other than higher education”.
But he said “locking” pupils into a stream was not useful to them nor to “the agile work fields”.
“It is unclear how this ‘inclination assessment’ would be conceptualised and how the outcome would be used in the streaming process.”
Ramrathan said the review of the curriculum during the pandemic and the trimming of the annual teaching plans, “perhaps confirms that the curriculum is packed with knowledge content”.
“What is needed is an inquiry-based curriculum that develops pupils’ skills and knowledge on how to access information and how to use it.”
He said, while he agreed that SA needs to move away from knowledge acquisition for the sake of knowledge, “we need school education to be educative, responsive, relevant and inquiry-based”.
Professor Elbie Henning from the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus said it was useful to see which areas pupils were inclined towards at the end of grade nine because they would have an affinity for it by then.
“It’s time we have a three-stream curriculum for grades 10 to 12. “
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