By DESTINE NDE
‘UNLESS SPEEDY adjustments are made, schools around the world will become irrelevant,’ lamented Mr George Ferreira. He was speaking to me in his office at Willowmore Secondary School, where he serves as principal, and also teaches Afrikaans and Life Orientation. But before I turn to our conversation, I first have to provide some context.
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While growing up – as I did — in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the West African country of Cameroon, it was constantly drilled into our young minds that ‘Education is the key to success’. This statement was displayed on every object that could capture our attention. Wherever we turned our eyes, they soon fell on those same words which, for open and ambitious minds such as ours, were immensely hopeful: on the covers of textbooks, on the school gates, on the sides of school buses, on administrative buildings, and on billboards along certain streets.
Our parents, elders, teachers and rulers repeated this over and over again. It was the main theme in television programs for the young, and a favourite subject for prominent public speakers.
But does this statement still hold true today? Can one still assert with total confidence that education is the key to success? Or, as the American philosopher, educator and social critic John Dewey famously wrote in 1897: ‘Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself’?
The mere fact that this question can be asked at all without seeming embarrassing or absurd is a cause for wonder as well as concern. How is it possible that a proposition which was universally accepted as true and sound just two decades ago can now be rejected as false and unsound?
The supporting evidence abounds. In Africa, for example, most graduates and many other intellectuals at all levels are either unemployed or barely surviving by picking up crumbs as unskilled labourers.
While South Africa is meant to be an African economic giant, and supposedly has a highly developed education sector, it also has the highest recorded unemployment rate in Africa, and one of the highest in the world. More specifically, according to a researcher at the University of Stellenbosch, the unemployment rate of South African university graduates has more than doubled over the past 16 years, from 5.8% to 11.8%, and the unemployment rate of people with secondary education has increased from 27.1% to a staggering 42.5%.
If this is not sobering, then I don’t know what is. However, the conversation about it has been muted. By contrast, in the developed West, the seeming mismatch between education and the labour market has been persuasively articulated and widely publicised.
To give one example, Robert Kiyosaki, the American author of the best-selling book Rich Dad Poor Dad, has written another book titled Why A Students Work for C Students. Its message is simply that more practical people tend to make all the money, and employ only a few people who are exceptionally smart, leaving the rest to languish in the vast pool of the unemployed, or the pool of manual labour.
Given all this, it would seem as though things have generally been reversed, or turned upside down, so that what used to be at the top is now at the bottom, and — I quake with fear — what used to be true is now false.
How did it come to pass that a statement that was previously so pregnant with hope and glowing with alluring prospects has suddenly suffered a miscarriage, and is now laden with doubt and despair?
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On 6 September, the new minister of basic education, Siviwe Gwarube, reportedly held meetings with various international partners, in an effort to ‘reinforce South Africa’s commitment to enhancing the education sector through global collaboration’.
According to a statement issued by the Department of Basic Education, she met with the Director for Education and Skills of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Andreas Schleicher; the UNICEF country representative, Christine Muhigana; the European Union (EU) Ambassador, Sandra Krama; the Japanese Ambassador, Ushio Shigeru; and the chief representative of JIKA, Kaoru Okada.
Key focus areas included Early Childhood Development (ECD); quality basic education literacy, numeracy and technological education teacher development, career development and curriculum standards; the empowerment of adolescents, particularly girls, in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM); and the strengthening of teaching practices and promotion of skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The statement concluded: ‘The ongoing meetings have highlighted South Africa’s ongoing commitment to leveraging international partnerships to enhance its education system and address the needs of all learners in a rapidly changing world.’
This point to a key issue that clearly underpinned these discussions, namely that education systems are no longer aligned to the needs of the global economy. This is precisely the cause of the crisis in education that we have hitherto been trying to bring into the light.
Mr George Ferreira, principal of Willowmore Secondary School. Image: Destine Nde.
I recently visited Willowmore Secondary School to discuss this issue with Mr Ferreira. He is a very experienced educator who,for many years, has served in various senior positions in the National Department of Basic Education as well as the Department of National Education in the Northern Cape. Two years ago, he returned to his home town of Willowmore to take up his current position.
When asked to comment on the current state of the education sector, he said simply: ‘We are chasing the wind!’
Asked to elaborate, he confirmed that the South African education sector is not achieving its desired goals. First, far too many learners drop out and do not achieve satisfactory pass marks in matric. For example, of the 112 learners at Willowmore High who wrote matric in 2023, only 83 passed, and only two have been admitted to higher educational institutions. ‘Most of them,’ he explained sadly, ‘did not meet the admission requirements.’
Second, education systems are longer aligned to the jobs market – in other words, they no longer provide learners with the skills that present-day employers need or want.
I then asked: ‘In your opinion as an experienced educationist, what can be done to alleviate this crisis and return the education sector to its previous valuable and indispensable role?’
‘To improve anything,’ began my interlocutor, ‘one must first understand the causes.’ He then named two cardinal problems as the most insidious among all others:
- Failures of Early Childhood Development (ECD). A succession of stakeholders play vital roles in young people’s lives, from conception all the way through to higher education. ‘This starts during the first nine months, before birth, when a foetus needs proper nutrition, and continues with essential stimuli during children’s first three years in their own homes before they start to attend early learning centres.’
- Failure to achieve functional literacy and numeracy. ‘It is crucial for these competencies to be in place by the end of Grade 3.’
As regards the first, Mr Ferreira believes all pregnant women should be placed in compulsory prenatal programmes, and thereafter in compulsory postnatal developmental programmes. ‘For this is where we already start losing the battle. It’s all about nutrition and support from 0—3 years. It’s far too late to perform miracles in Grade 12.’
As regards the second, he proposes: ‘Rigorous tests should be performed at the end of Grade 3. If learners fail to achieve the required standards in literacy and numeracy [reading and basic arithmetic], they should be held back.’
He adds that reading is the cornerstone of all academic success in particular and life in general, whereas an inability to read is the ‘hotbed of all troubles’.
‘Were you satisfied with your school’s matric results of last year?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he answered truthfully. ‘I hoped for 80%, and only got 74%.’
‘What have you done, or are you presently doing, to improve the school’s performance this year?’ I asked.
‘A pass mark in Home Language is key,’ he said, and that is Afrikaans, my subject. So I have introduced a lot of reading and writing exercises, including how to write summaries, and how to read adverts and cartoons. I also let learners watch video lessons by other professionals.’
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After our conversation, I looked in at learners who were busy writing the last paper of their preparatory examinations, and wondered: Are they still chasing the wind? Would the A students among them still end up working for the C students, or the other way around?
As I left the school, still uncertain about the future of education, but not discouraged or despairing, I had to agree with Mr Ferreira: a series of educational stakeholders play vital roles in children’s lives, from their homes, through their schools, to further education and training, and eventually to the start of their working lives in their various communities. And the early years are the most decisive.
You and I fit somewhere in this narrative. We all have roles to play, whether large or small, in turning the current state of affairs around, and addressing the deficiencies in education and the misalignment between the world of education and the world of work. Yes, the world has taken a decidedly practical turn, but it could never tear itself completely away from the theoretical, and it cannot survive without education.
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FEATURED IMAGE: Grade 12 Learners at Willowmore Secondary School writing their preparatory exams. Image: Destine Nde.