Student mobility

According to the Global Education Digest 2006 by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the number of mobile students (students who study in foreign countries and are non-permanent residents) world-wide increased by 41% from 1.75m in 1999 to 2.46m in 2004. The report states that this does not mean that more students are travelling. Rather, it reflects the rapid expansion of higher education overall, with tertiary enrolments also increasing by about 40% during the 1999-2004 period. The largest number of mobile students come from East Asia and the Pacific (701 000 or 29% of the world total) and Western Europe (407 000 or 17%). Tertiary students from sub-Saharan Africa are the most mobile in the world, with one in every 16 students (or 5.6%) studying abroad, while North American students are the least mobile with only one in every 250 students (or 0.4%) studying abroad. Sub-Saharan students mainly go to Western European countries, with France receiving 21% of African students, the UK 12%, Germany 6% and Portugal 5%. Six countries host 67.4% of the world’s mobile students, viz, 23.3% in the USA, followed by the UK (12.2%), Germany (10.6%), France (9.7%), Australia (6.8%) and Japan (4.8%). South Africa hosts 2% (or 50 000) of the world’s mobile students, while only 5 600 South African students studied abroad in 2004.

Education for All (EFA)

The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007 by UNESCO states that ‘time is running out to meet the EFA goals set in 2000. Despite continued overall global progress at the primary level, including for girls, too many children are not in school, drop out early, or do not reach minimal learning standards’. According to the report, 77m children of primary school-age are still not enrolled in school – more than three-quarters of them are in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. The children most likely to be out of school and to drop out live in rural areas and come from the poorest households. On average, a child whose mother has no education is twice as likely to be out of school as one whose mother has some education. Among the measures identified by the report to foster inclusion of all children are: abolishing school fees,
providing income support to poor and rural households to reduce reliance on child labour, teaching in children’s mother tongue, offering education opportunities for disabled children and those affected by HIV/AIDS, and ensuring that youth and adults receive a second chance at education.

Teacher shortages in Africa will bedevil Africa’s quest to achieve universal primary school education in 2015 as the continent will need five million new teachers to achieve this.

Teachers

Another UNESCO report Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015 states that more than 18m teachers will have to be recruited over the next decade in order to provide quality primary education to all children. The greatest challenge lies in sub-Saharan Africa, which will need to expand its teaching force by 68%.

In the past ten years, distance education for teacher training has become widely used in many developing countries. A study by the International Extension College in Cambridge has examined how training teachers by distance education reaches beyond the students themselves and aids development in the wider community. The research which was conducted in Guyana, Uganda and Nigeria found that:

  • Teacher training through distance education produces credible and competent teachers and promotes

change and development in the teachers, their schools and communities.

  • Distance education study was found to promote family stability, which is considered to be very important, given the critical roles and obligations of individuals in the extended family group.
  • Distance education-trained teachers became more involved in community activities such as community development associations, youth clubs, religious groups and local politics.
  • Teachers who qualified through distance education earned their communities’ respect, pride and confidence in recognition of their success in training.

A 2004 survey of Educator Supply and Demand by the HSRC and MRC estimated that 12.7% of the 350 000 educators in South Africa were HIV-positive, of which 22% (or about 10 000 teachers) are in need of life-prolonging anti-retroviral therapy. In the absence of a coherent plan to provide anti-retroviral drugs to all educators in need of it, an estimated 10 000 educators in South Africa are expected to die of AIDS within the next two years. Government appears to have sidestepped a recommendation by the study to implement a specific HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programme for teachers and is instead preparing a general ‘wellness’ programme that focuses on all health aspects.

A R700m bursary scheme, Fundza Lushaka (FL) (teach the nation), has been launched to students of quality to train as teachers to replace those teachers lost to HIV/AIDS and the private sector. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NFSAS) said the cost would average R40 000 per teacher and it will ring-fence a further R36m for the same purpose. Priority areas of study for the FL bursary are:

  • Grade R – 9: Foundation phase, African languages, English, maths and science and technology.
  • Grade 8 – 12: African languages, English, maths, mathematical literacy, agricultural science, life science, physical science, electrical, mechanical, information and computer applications technology and engineering graphics and design.

Corruption in schools and universities

Corruption has been identified as a major drain on the effective use of resources for education. In some countries as much as 80% of the total funds allocated to schools by education ministries are lost to ‘leakage’. The International Institute for Educational Planning which conducted research into ethics and corruption in education, has made recommendations for policymakers and educational managers to create and maintain transparent regulatory systems, strengthen management skills for greater accountability and increase ownership of the management process. Among them are:

  • Norms and regulations must be clear, procedures must be transparent and an explicit policy

framework is needed to stop corruption.

  • Transparency in the system can be promoted by standardising financial procedures, making staff management regulations uniform, harmonising procurement rules and adopting an agreed format for financial report production at school and intermediate authority levels.
  • If corruption is to be reduced, skills in management accounting, monitoring and auditing must be improved.
  • The public must have access to information in order to build participation, ownership and social control.

Literacy & numeracy

Between 2007 and 2011 The Netherlands will contribute R69m for a joint literacy and numeracy research programme by the HSRC, JET Education Services, the Education Policy Consortium and the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa. These organisations are regarded as the leading experts in literacy and numeracy research in SA.

Books and reading

Despite the availability of excellent children’s books, reading has become increasingly unpopular among children. A love for books not only translates into a lifelong pleasure of reading; it is also a good predictor of future educational success. Research in the UK in 1997 showed 23% of children interviewed said they did not like reading at all. By 2003 the number had grown to 35%. As a result a national programme, Reading Recovery, was implemented to help those children who were struggling the most with reading. It is aimed at six-year-olds and entails 4 months of individual daily half-hour sessions with a trained teacher costing £2 000 per child. Why? Because each child who leaves primary school unable to read will go on to cost government at least £50 000 in the form of specialist teaching in secondary school, dealing with truancy, paying social benefits to adults who are more likely to be sick and unemployed, and the fall-out from increased crime.

Futures approach to education

Pre-occupation with pressing immediate problems or just seeking more efficient ways of maintaining established practices are keeping educationists preoccupied and are leading to neglect of the long term. This is making it increasingly difficult for educationists to meet today’s challenges of complexity and change. The message from the OECD’s Schooling for Tomorrow series is that educationists at all levels should start looking beyond their immediate constraints and start rethinking education in the long term.

Computers

ICT can have profound implications for education because it facilitates new forms of learning and because young people must master ICT to prepare for adult life. A survey of computer use by learners in OECD countries revealed that some learners still lack access to a computer at school and that the number of learners per school computer varies greatly. Learners are also more likely to use computers frequently at home than at school and about half played games frequently, with about the same number using computers to look things up on the Internet and to do word processing. There is also a visible gender gap between boys and girls using computers for high-level tasks. What was clear was that learners with limited access to computers, who used them little and were not confident in using ICT were not performing well.

Educational games

The colourful Super Silly Science Game is a competitive board game that combines science and English learning with public speaking specked with the ridiculous and high drama. It was received positively when tested by schools at the annual national science festival, Sasol SciFest, in Grahamstown and Dinaledi maths and science schools have said it works best for Grades 7 and 8. Visit www.tlabs.ac.za for more information.

HIV/AIDS

A Cape Town-based NGO, Gold Peer Education Development Agency, has designed a programme for the youth to educate their peers on how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Gold (an acronym for Generation of Leaders Discovered) has a vision to see a generation of young African leaders confronting the root issues of the HIV/AIDS epidemic through uplifting their communities.

School fees

The department of education is drafting a new funding framework for public schools to subsidise well resourced schools that enrol children who cannot pay school fees and who they cannot turn away. The department was not only worried about the top-end public schools but also middle-range schools struggling to maintain standards and resources without parental involvement, that are often inferior to the funding of top-end schools.

40% of SA’s learners will benefit from fee-free schooling in 2007. Features of the pro-poor legal framework include:

  • state provision for non-personnel expenditure by ranking schools into quintiles from the poorest to the least poor and funding them accordingly;
  • the establishment of no-fee schools; and
  • an improved exemption policy in fee-paying schools.

Fee increases between 6 and 10% are being charged at SA’s private schools this year as they try to attract and retain top teachers who are their biggest drawcard. About 400 000 learners (4%) attend private schools, with black learners making up 58% of this total and Indian and coloured learners 12%.

School infrastructure

The Limpopo education department announced that schools with a shortage of classrooms will be provided with mobile classrooms while new schools were being built. 500 mobile classrooms have alreadybeen distributed.

Throughput

While only two-thirds of learners who wrote matric in 2006 passed the exam, only one in every five learners starting Grade 1 this year will pass matric in 12 year’s time. Educationist Eric Atmore says part of the answer to this problem is to start with early education, and not only with small children but also with their mothers and other caretakers. Money alone will not solve the problem but the way schools are managed and the quality and commitment, or lack thereof, of the teachers should be looked into. He sees political leadership as key to turn around the education system. There is a ‘reluctance to allow the best public schools to thrive and rise above the rest instead of trying to bring them down to the lowest common denominator’. The powerful trade union representing teachers is also standing in the way of attempts to incentivise the best teachers and to penalise the worst. Just as ASGISA had identified the six binding constraints to economic growth and has proposed special initiatives to tackle these constraints, so should the top constraints holding back SA education performance be identified and tackled.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) proposed a 6-point plan to monitor the performance of principals, teachers and pupils in the country’s under-performing schools with a pass rate of less than 20%. The team of ten will visit these schools and investigate all circumstances at the schools and produce a report to the national education minister with the reasons why each school is failing to produce. The minister would then be responsible for ensuring that the recommendations are implemented and remedial action is taken.

In 2006, 60 303 adults enrolled in Abet courses and 34 067 wrote their exams. Pass rates in the 13 fields of study ranged from 18.3% in mathematical literacy to 77% in arts and culture. Most of those enrolled were matric repeaters.

Education Trends is compiled by the Institute for Futures Research.

This Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License


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