Nothing Short Of Radical Reform Will Solve The Education Problem

HERE we are again at exam results time.

And once again we see a mass wringing of hands deploring the state of the education system generally and the performance of the teachers in particular. Of course there are some bad teachers (there are actually some dreadful ones but nobody ever sacks them – you can be dismissed for a lot of things as a teacher but not being able to teach is not one of them).But there are also a whole lot of very good hard-working ones out there and they should be congratulated on doing a difficult job conscientiously.Their main problem is that what they are forced to teach is often utterly unrelated to the needs of their pupils.Governments have always used the curriculum as a means of social control.The British, in colonial times, were particularly good at this.They needed an educational filtration system; only the finest should be able to get through their colonial schools to help them run ‘their’ colonies.So they set up a series of annual hurdles – standards, remember the name? – designed to trip up all but the best.The great majority fell, as intended, unwanted by the wayside.Apartheid South Africa took this over and raised it to an art form.Through its complex system of standards and administrations receiving widely differing resources, it was able to design a system that admirably suited its rigidly stratified society.The system was tailor-made to create failure for the under-resourced majority and success for the privileged minority.In 1988, I recall, no student in the Administration for the Caprivians could get standard 10 science (the pathway to success) because there were no standard 10 science teachers.Why? Because no Caprivian could get standard 10 science.So perfect and so simple.(It wasn’t quite perfect of course, a few whites failed the maths but in any system you have to put up with a bit of collateral damage).So what happened to the apartheid curriculum at Independence? Well, nothing very much.The old system, tailor-made to generate failure, was adopted lock, stock and almost barrel.Except that 11 administrations were reduced to one.In fact, in the interests of ‘quality’ some of the standard hurdles, I recall, were actually raised a bit.But, importantly, to create an impression of reform, the names were changed – ‘standards’ became ‘grades’, to give the whole thing a modern transatlantic flavour.So why do we now throw up our hands in horror when 17 000 children are on the streets after grade 10.The system is performing exactly to specification.The 17 000 statistic, however, hides something much more sinister.Many, very probably the great majority, of the 17 000 have dropped out not because the subjects are too difficult for them, but because they cannot read or write in English or do simple sums.There is no concrete evidence for this because the Ministry has no testing processes, but ask the teachers and they talk many at grade 8 unable to read and write well enough to make progress with their learning.And they will tell you that this is particularly bad in places where English has been the teaching language from grade 1.The reason for this is simple to understand.Reading, writing and arithmetic are the basic skills that children have to pick up in the first three years.If they have not mastered them by then they get no further opportunity in the curriculum.In the past they would not have been allowed to proceed beyond the first three years unless they had mastered these skills but that is no longer the case; they can now only repeat only one of the years.And so probably as many as 40 per cent, so we hear, reach the end of grade 7 effectively illiterate and innumerate.We have the worst of all possible worlds.So what is to be done? Clearly the old 1930s colonial curriculum has to go.It is no good just giving it a lick of paint as in the latest reform.It has to be replaced by one that is fundamentally redesigned for success rather than failure.There are lots of examples around of many different kinds.In fact all countries with a more advanced economy than Namibia have done something like this; it is an essential pre-requisite for development.They all have curricula which operate simultaneously at different levels in a particular grade; if a grade 7 child still needs help with basic reading skills then that should happen – in grade 7.If a grade 7 child is turned on by simultaneous equations, then that too should happen.And it will save a lot of money.Failing children costs the country over N$200 million a year.On average a grade 10 child takes 11 and a bit years to get to the end of grade 10.One in five of all grade 8 seats is occupied by someone who is repeating – the sole reason for all the admission problems we see year after year.All children could be admitted up to grade 12 at almost no extra cost.This would not, as many fear, lead to a drop in standards (can they drop further?).It would probably not lead to an immediate rise in the top standards at grade 12 though it will in the longer run.But it would mean that vastly more children would learn to read and write and, above all, there would not be the annual 17 000 carrying into the world the stigma of failure.So forget the ETSIP reforms.Nothing will really work until the foundation is right.* Andrew Clegg has lived in Namibia since 1991 when he came to train science teachers for the Ministry of Education.He is now a consultant and trainer working mainly in Africa and the Middle East.Of course there are some bad teachers (there are actually some dreadful ones but nobody ever sacks them – you can be dismissed for a lot of things as a teacher but not being able to teach is not one of them).But there are also a whole lot of very good hard-working ones out there and they should be congratulated on doing a difficult job conscientiously.Their main problem is that what they are forced to teach is often utterly unrelated to the needs of their pupils.Governments have always used the curriculum as a means of social control.The British, in colonial times, were particularly good at this.They needed an educational filtration system; only the finest should be able to get through their colonial schools to help them run ‘their’ colonies.So they set up a series of annual hurdles – standards, remember the name? – designed to trip up all but the best.The great majority fell, as intended, unwanted by the wayside.Apartheid South Africa took this over and raised it to an art form.Through its complex system of standards and administrations receiving widely differing resources, it was able to design a system that admirably suited its rigidly stratified society.The system was tailor-made to create failure for the under-resourced majority and success for the privileged minority.In 1988, I recall, no student in the Administration for the Caprivians could get standard 10 science (the pathway to success) because there were no standard 10 science teachers.Why? Because no Caprivian could get standard 10 science.So perfect and so simple.(It wasn’t quite perfect of course, a few whites failed the maths but in any system you have to put up with a bit of collateral damage).So what happened to the apartheid curriculum at Independence? Well, nothing very much.The old system, tailor-made to generate failure, was adopted lock, stock and almost barrel.Except that 11 administrations were reduced to one.In fact, in the interests of ‘quality’ some of the standard hurdles, I recall, were actually raised a bit.But, importantly, to create an impression of reform, the names were changed – ‘standards’ became ‘grades’, to give the whole thing a modern transatlantic flavour.So why do we now throw up our hands in horror when 17 000 children are on the streets after grade 10.The system is performing exactly to specification.The 17 000 statistic, however, hides something much more sinister.Many, very probably the great majority, of the 17 000 have dropped out not because the subjects are too difficult for them, but because they cannot read or write in English or do simple sums.There is no concrete evidence for this because the Ministry has no testing pro
cesses, but ask the teachers and they talk many at grade 8 unable to read and write well enough to make progress with their learning.And they will tell you that this is particularly bad in places where English has been the teaching language from grade 1.The reason for this is simple to understand.Reading, writing and arithmetic are the basic skills that children have to pick up in the first three years.If they have not mastered them by then they get no further opportunity in the curriculum.In the past they would not have been allowed to proceed beyond the first three years unless they had mastered these skills but that is no longer the case; they can now only repeat only one of the years.And so probably as many as 40 per cent, so we hear, reach the end of grade 7 effectively illiterate and innumerate.We have the worst of all possible worlds.So what is to be done? Clearly the old 1930s colonial curriculum has to go.It is no good just giving it a lick of paint as in the latest reform.It has to be replaced by one that is fundamentally redesigned for success rather than failure.There are lots of examples around of many different kinds.In fact all countries with a more advanced economy than Namibia have done something like this; it is an essential pre-requisite for development.They all have curricula which operate simultaneously at different levels in a particular grade; if a grade 7 child still needs help with basic reading skills then that should happen – in grade 7.If a grade 7 child is turned on by simultaneous equations, then that too should happen.And it will save a lot of money.Failing children costs the country over N$200 million a year.On average a grade 10 child takes 11 and a bit years to get to the end of grade 10.One in five of all grade 8 seats is occupied by someone who is repeating – the sole reason for all the admission problems we see year after year.All children could be admitted up to grade 12 at almost no extra cost.This would not, as many fear, lead to a drop in standards (can they drop further?).It would probably not lead to an immediate rise in the top standards at grade 12 though it will in the longer run.But it would mean that vastly more children would learn to read and write and, above all, there would not be the annual 17 000 carrying into the world the stigma of failure.So forget the ETSIP reforms.Nothing will really work until the foundation is right.* Andrew Clegg has lived in Namibia since 1991 when he came to train science teachers for the Ministry of Education.He is now a consultant and trainer working mainly in Africa and the Middle East.