Class rooms not yet a place for basic education for allWith South Africa still struggling to improve education standards, a new report has called on the government to consider using local languages as a medium of instruction in schools.
The 'Report of the Public Hearing on the Right to Basic Education' by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), examined the host of challenges facing educational transformation in the country. Among the many problems - from poverty to classroom violence - it noted a glaring problem: 42 percent of children in rural schools had difficulty understanding their teachers.
"An inadequate command of language, whether by the teacher, the learner or both, constitutes a serious barrier to effective schooling and education," said the report, which synthesised the views gathered from public hearings held in 2005.
English is the home language of only 8.2 percent of the population, but is an "aspirational" language. Many parents want their children to be taught in English from as early an age as possible.
However, "research has proven many times children who learn in their mother tongues in the early stages of schooling have a better chance of passing matric. They are not disadvantaged because they start learning other languages and concepts a little later," explained Linda Chishom of the SAHRC.
"Vernacular instruction lays a foundation of understanding, from which transition into second and third languages becomes much easier. Those who start by learning foreign languages often find understanding and conception of issues difficult, and their performance is always the worst," she noted. South African has 11 official languages.
Each December, with the release of the national matric results, South Africa goes through a painful bout of soul-searching. Despite the government's commitment to education, over the past three years the pass rate has fallen. In 2005 the failure rate hit 30 percent.
The SAHRC report pointed to the continuing problem of poverty, and race and class-based inequalities in access to learning resources.
"There are currently stark imbalances in the quality of education experienced by learners," it noted. "The disadvantaged lack the means and social power to speak out and claim their rights. Poverty reinforces exclusion. Social cohesion is not being promoted. Townships, the poor and rural households are being marginalised within the dominant discourse on education."
Teaching standards came in for particular criticism at the public hearings. The report said many teachers were untrained and under-qualified, a situation which renders them incapable of implementing the needs of a complicated new curriculum. By 2008 there is projected to be shortfall of around 34,000 teachers.
Salim Vally, a coordinator and senior researcher at the Education Policy Unit of the University of Witwatersrand told IRIN that the SAHRC findings were an eye-opener.
"There is a big crisis in relation to the teachers. They face problems of morale and poor motivation, which affects the delivery of basic education because it fuels truancy and generally irresponsibility," he said.
"However, the biggest challenge is the high number of untrained and under-qualified teachers who cannot deliver because they do not understand the needs of the curriculum," Vally noted. "The government should consider giving bursaries for continuous teacher training programmes. It should also implement in-service training programmes for those already within the service."
Reproduced with the kind permission of IRIN
Copyright IRIN 2006
Photo: Copyright IRIN
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