According to research done by the UK Department for International Development in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Zambia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, a large proportion of primary school teachers experience low job satisfaction and poor motivation levels, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, millions of children are not being taught properly and do not receive an education that is even minimally acceptable. Most schooling systems face a teacher motivation crisis that has serious implications for achieving the MDG target of basic education for all by 2015. The research report notes that teacher motivation is low due to -
While each country study presents recommendations for improving teacher job satisfaction and motivation, the following four priorities are key to improvement in almost all the reports:
According to a pioneering global study of academic salaries conducted by the Boston College Center for International Higher Education in the US, academics in Saudi Arabia are the best paid globally, while those in China are the worst off. The average academic salary across 15 countries surveyed is US$4 050 per month in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars. Overall, making comparisons using the World Bank PPP index, the study finds that China pays academics the lowest salaries at all three levels surveyed (viz, entry points to the profession, national averages, and the highest levels of the academic job ladder). Canada pays academics most generously at the entry level, while average and top-level salaries are highest in Saudi Arabia. The overall average monthly salaries of the countries surveyed are in descending order: Saudi Arabia ($6 611), Canada ($6 548), US ($5 816), Australia ($4 795), New Zealand ($4 490), the UK ($4 343), Germany ($4 333), Japan ($4 112), South Africa ($4 076), France ($3 905), Malaysia ($3 107), Argentina ($3 054), Colombia ($2 826), India ($1 547) and China ($1 182). The average entry-level salary across the 15 countries was $2 888 per month while top-level salaries averaged $5 318 a month. ‘The remuneration of the academic profession is central to the success of the higher education enterprise everywhere and is also critically important to individual academics around the world.’ Although they are paid the worst at all levels, in terms of percentage increase in salary from entry-level to the top of the salary scale, ‘Chinese academic salaries register the most robust growth in the group, at 170%, while Germany shows the lowest increase in salaries moving up the employment ladder, at 39%,’ the study finds. The average change from entry to top-level salaries for the 15 countries is 94%. South Africa ‘offers some surprises’ – it is placed 10th on the ranking of entry-level salaries but rises to 5th position in terms of top-level salaries. ‘This significant spread in salary levels between the entry and top positions on the academic employment ladder is outdone only by Saudi Arabia.’
The European Commission (EU) has recently launched a new web portal called Study in Europe (www.study-in-europe.org) to promote universities across the EU to students from other parts of the world. Europe has more than 4 000 higher education institutions, from top-level research establishments to small teaching-focused colleges. The new site has text in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian and provides information about the range of courses on offer in European higher education institutions. Details of 32 European countries, their universities and what is required to live and study in them are available on the web site, including admission procedures, costs, scholarships and the higher education environment in Europe.
According to a World Bank publication entitled At the crossroads: Choices for secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa, ‘the challenges of education development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) at the beginning of the 21st century are urgent and unprecedented’. It is argued that today’s African youth will live and work in changing societies that are increasingly open and democratic, driven by technology, forming part of global networks of production and trade. Since the existing, high-cost secondary education systems in SSA were designed to educate a small elite, these systems ‘will not be able to provide a much greater proportion of SSA’s youth with an education that effectively prepares them for work and for further education and training in societies with labour markets that increasingly demand advanced knowledge and skills, and that put a premium on the lifelong ability to learn and acquire new skills’. According to the report, virtually all SSA countries need to address ‘the triple challenge of expanding access, improving quality, and ensuring equity’. Although the state of secondary education varies significantly across SSA, many countries share some key features:
‘Sub-Saharan Africa faces the challenge of developing a strategy for secondary education that fits its current development context. Such a strategy will have to be parsimonious in resource use; recognize the bottom-up, sequential nature of education development; be closely aligned with national development priorities; strengthen school autonomy; ensure effective central direction and support; and build public-private partnerships reflecting relative competences for action.’
A new World Bank report entitled Accelerating catch-up – tertiary education for growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, notes that tertiary enrolments in SSA more than tripled between 1991 and 2005, expanding at an annual rate of 8.7% – one of the highest regional growth rates in the world. However, public funding did not keep up and spending per student plummeted over 25 years from an average of US$6 800 a year to just US$981 in 2005 for 33 SSA countries. The report which draws on 16 background studies of tertiary education in SSA, describes the region’s ‘remarkable economic turnaround’ after two decades of stagnation. Gross domestic product growth in the region accelerated to over 6% on average from 2002 to 2007, as a result of macro-economic stability, market reforms and growing global demand for Africa’s natural resource-based commodities. ‘If this surge is to evolve into a virtuous spiral that stimulates even higher – and sustained – growth rates in a substantial number of African countries, significant investment in physical and human capital is needed over an extended period.’ However, Africa’s stock of secondary and tertiary-level skills is small and its quality highly variable and undermined by mortality from infectious diseases and by emigration. ‘African nations will need to produce a larger pool of good quality tertiary graduates and postgraduates, and to produce them particularly in the disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) fields relevant to a country’s chosen strategy for economic development.’
A recent review by the OECD of South African education has praised ‘impressive forward thinking’ and post-apartheid reform, but has also called for improved management of change in higher education and a reappraisal of university funding. It suggests studies into factors affecting student performance in the face of high drop-out rates, a proactive approach to preparing and integrating new students, and pedagogical training for junior academics. In the foreword, OECD Director of Education, Barbara Ischinger writes that ‘Since democracy in 1994, impressive progress has been made in education legislation, policy development, curriculum reform and the implementation of new ways of delivering education, but many challenges remain in many areas, such as student outcomes and labour market relevance.’ Successes that are mentioned in the review are, for instance, South Africa’s gross enrolment ratio that grew from 13% of 20-24-year olds in 2000 to 16% in 2006, with a target of 20% over the next five years. In terms of equity, three in five of the nearly 750 000 students in 2006 were black Africans and only a quarter were white – a reversal of the proportions prior to 1994, and 55% of students were women. However, at the same time, only one in 10 South Africans had a tertiary qualification in 2006 and poor success rates and patterns in higher education mean it is not producing sufficient numbers or types of graduates the economy needs. The country faces challenges in terms of higher education participation rates, success rates, outputs in terms of fields of study and qualification levels, equity, quality, funding, and the capacity to meet transformation goals.
The Minister of Education Naledi Pandor and 23 public higher education institutions have recently adopted The Policy Framework on HIV and AIDS for Higher Education Institutions in SA which will guide tertiary institutions to improve their current HIV and AIDS prevention programmes. The policy framework recognises that tertiary institutions must act to prevent new HIV infections and provide access to treatment, care and support for staff and students infected or affected by the epidemic. Young people in higher education institutions are facing peer pressure, alcohol and drug abuse, said the minister, adding that she was hoping to see chancellors taking a leading role in the implementation of the policy framework.
It is often argued that one of the biggest challenges of the South African education system is to improve the performance of learners who are far below par, especially in mathematics and English. A recent HSRC study on the value of extra tuition at Grade 8 has concluded ‘that for most Grade 8 learners, it is probably too late for meaningful interventions and that mastering basic content of these subjects should be accomplished at the Foundation Phase of schooling (Grades 1-3)’. Nonetheless, the study showed a larger increase over time in the performance of learners who more regularly attended mathematics tuition sessions compared to those who did not attend as regularly. In terms of English tuition, the improvement in project-school learners’ performance generally exceeded those of control-school learners. However, the findings of the study were not consistent across learning areas and school pairs, and the effects were not as significant as hoped for. Factors that played a role in learning were: the knowledge, practices and teaching methods of teachers; time spent on tasks; classroom sizes; parent-learner dynamics; language ability; motivation level; not being too young or too old for the grade; books at home; exposure to opportunities to write; good access to mathematics text books; not being expected to do excessive home chores; a sense of responsibility, punctuality and discipline; watching appropriate TV content within measure; and benefiting from using a personal computer.
According to an overview of the state of education in South Africa by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), ‘South Africa is still a long way off from creating an education system that produces the skills required’. Although some gains have been made towards creating a better educated population through improved access to education, the gains are ‘overshadowed by the widespread failure to improve the quality of such education’. The SAIRR notes that the quality of education in South Africa ‘received barely a passing grade from the Global Campaign for Education’, being ranked 50th among 156 developing countries with an overall mark of 52 out of a maximum of 100. Six factors which affect a country’s education system were analysed to arrive at the final mark. For the first of these factors, political will, and measuring whether a country’s government was sufficiently committed to free and adequately-resourced education, South Africa received a mark of 70. In the case of growth in enrolment, which assessed whether enrolment has increased, South Africa received a mark of only 25, while for the quality inputs, an indicator looking at whether teaching and learning were given adequate support through adequate classroom infrastructure, teaching materials and teacher training, South Africa received a mark of 39. For equal opportunities which looked at whether children of different genders and from different locations had equal opportunities to access education, South Africa received a mark of 62, while for the level of transparency and accountability of the country’s government, South Africa received a mark of 44. Lastly, for achievement of universal basic education, measuring how widely education is provided to and accessed by the population, South Africa received a mark of 57.