JONATHAN JANSEN | First up, we need a change in education minister

With the seventh democratic elections around the corner, media houses are calling to ask what advice one would give the next government on education. Because this is our seventh political rodeo, I have learnt some hard lessons about making idealistic statements about what should be, when you know for a fact that pipe dreams are not policies. So here is a hard-nosed assessment of what needs to be done and what is likely to succeed, or not, with respect to schools.

First, we need a change of political personalities heading up education. Minister Angie Motshekga has been in the job for far too long, with the result that she has shown no urgency to deal with the compounding crises in education, such as the explosive finding that 81% of our grade 4 children do not understand what they read. That this damaging revelation has not led to the firing of the minister or at the very least a “drop everything and let’s remedy the problem” approach by the head of education, tells you that political sclerosis has long set in among the leadership of basic education in the country.

The coalition government that is coming would do well to get in an energetic minister who has the capacity to acknowledge that our school system simply does not work for the majority of our children. A change of minister might be just the boost our failing school system needs.

Second, we need an urgent reprioritisation of investment in favour of the foundation years of education for at least the next 20 years. The political energy and financial resources devoted to senior high school have to be diverted to the early years, starting with quality preschool education. Here a simple goal driven by the president and the minister could make a huge difference — that every child entering grade 1 will be able to read in their home language. This requires an intensive retraining of teachers in especially numeracy and literacy in early childhood education and the foundation phase. The effect of such a simple step will be revolutionary, and I guarantee that the long-term results will show in the revitalisation of the school system.

We need to place teachers-in-training inside functional schools under exceptional mentor teachers for 70% of the day, and bring them to campus for only 30% of the time where they learn theory on a need-to-know basis and in relation to their teaching practice.

Third, a new minister needs to stop building schools and make huge investments in technological infrastructure in, especially, our underserved communities. This is, and will be, the century of disruptions (climate change, future pandemics, social uprisings and so on) and we cannot afford to go through future lockdowns of any kind where yet again the 20% of privileged schools move seamlessly to online and hybrid education and the rest remain stranded with printed materials for download if they’re lucky. A recent study by Vodacom, titled “Connected Education: How digital technologies can transform education in Sub-Saharan Africa”, shows how countries in East Africa, which spend less on education, are steaming ahead in connecting their schools, leaving the relatively well-resourced South Africa far behind (except for the Western Cape). A new minister must prioritise digital technologies in education, starting with simple things like zero-rating of web-based educational content.

Fourth, a new minister must work with universities to radically change their model of pre-service teacher education once and for all. We need to place teachers-in-training inside functional schools under exceptional mentor teachers for 70% of the day, and bring them to campus for only 30% of the time where they learn theory on a need-to-know basis and in relation to their teaching practice. At the moment, thousands of pre-service teachers are wasting their time learning abstractions in lecture halls that often have little to do with becoming competent teachers, dealing with the practice of teaching and learning.

Fifth, a new minister must bite the political bullet and give schools and parents the option of having their children taught in English from preschool through high school. (Dear Afrikaans-speaking people, for once this is not about you, so stop choking on your breakfast). There are all kinds of good reasons to teach in the indigenous languages and transition in grade 4 to English. But right now our children are failing to read and write in any and all languages, so why burden them with two or three instructional languages while educational progress and economic opportunity depends solely on fluency in English? I can hear the fury when politicians read this column, but here’s the hard truth: I do not know a single parliamentarian who has their child in an African language public township school, even as they rant and rave about “our languages” for political currency. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Sixth, a new minister must root out the corruption in education. The construction mafia that stands in the way of removing pit latrine toilets must be identified and arrested when they interfere with removing this blight on the education landscape. The selling of teacher and principal appointment and promotion posts in provinces like KwaZulu-Natal must be taken on and resolved. Turning a blind eye to such blatant corruption, despite ministerial reports revealing the rot means underqualified educators will continue to fill teaching and leadership posts for decades to come, unless taken on. A minister with political balls will act to stop this form of corruption in our schools.

Will any of this happen under this political regime? I seriously doubt it, because the leaders of a likely coalition government (such as the ANC and the EFF) do not care a damn about the education of the poor; there is 30 years of evidence to back up this statement. The change is more likely to come from the bottom up and the middle out and that is where I will be putting my energy for now.