Progress on the Education for All (EFA) goals

According to the 2009 EFA Global Monitoring Report by UNESCO, ‘there has been remarkable progress towards some of the EFA goals since the international community made its commitments in Dakar in 2000’. The report states that some of the world’s poorest countries have demonstrated that political leadership and practical policies make a difference. However, ‘business as usual will leave the world short of the Dakar goals’. It is argued that significantly more has to be done to get children into school, through primary education and beyond. In addition, more attention has to be paid to the quality of education and learning achievement. The report also states that ‘progress towards the EFA goals is being undermined by a failure of governments to tackle persistent inequalities based on income, gender, location, ethnicity, language, disability and other markers for disadvantage’. It is argued that, unless governments act to reduce disparities through effective policy reforms, the EFA promise will be broken.

Some of the main findings of the report with regard to progress on the six EFA goals are the following:

Goal 1 – Early childhood care and education

• Child malnutrition is a global epidemic affecting one in every three children under the age of 5 and undermining children’s ability to learn. Slow progress in tackling child malnutrition and ill health, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, is undermining progress towards universal primary education.
• Major global disparities in provision continue to divide the world’s richest and poorest children. In 2006, pre-primary gross enrolment ratios averaged 79% in developed countries and 36% in developing countries, falling as low as 14% in sub-Saharan Africa.
• In some countries, children from the wealthiest 20% of households are five times more likely to attend pre-school programmes than those from the poorest 20%.

Goal 2 – Universal primary education

• The average net primary enrolment ratios for developing countries have continued to increase since Dakar. In sub-Saharan Africa the average net primary enrolment ratio increased from 54% in 1999 to 70% in 2006, while in South and West Asia, the ratio increased from 75% to 86% during the same period.
• In 2006, some 75m children (of which 55% were girls) were not in school, almost half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on current trends, millions of children will still be out of school in 2015, the target date for universal primary education. Projections for 134 countries, representing approximately two-thirds of out-of-school children in 2006, suggest that some 29m children will still be out of school by 2015 in these countries alone.
• While children from the wealthiest 20% of households have already achieved universal primary school attendance in most countries, those from the poorest 20% have a long way to go.
• In 2006, some 513m learners worldwide, representing 58% of the relevant school-age population, were enrolled in secondary education – an increase of almost 76m since 1999. Despite progress, access remains limited for most of the world’s young people. In sub-Saharan Africa, 75% of secondary-school-age children are not enrolled in secondary education.

Goal 3 – Meeting the lifelong learning needs of youth and adults

• Governments are not giving priority to youth and adult learning needs in their education policies. Stronger political commitment and more public funding are needed.

Goal 4 – Adult literacy

• An estimated 776m adults (or 16% of the world’s adult population) of which two-thirds are women lack basic literacy skills. Most countries have made little progress in recent years. If current trends continue, there will be more than 700m adults lacking literacy skills by 2015.
• Between 1985-1994 and 2000-2006, the global adult literacy rate increased from 76% to 84%. Nonetheless, 45 countries (primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia) still have adult literacy rates below the developing country average of 79%. Nearly all of them are off track to meet the adult literacy target by 2015.

Goal 5 – Gender parity

• Of the 176 countries with data, 59 had achieved gender parity in both primary and secondary education in 2006 – 20 countries more than in 1999. At the primary level, about two-thirds of countries had achieved parity, while only 37% of countries had achieved gender parity at secondary level.
• There is a confirmed worldwide trend towards more female than male enrolments in tertiary education, particularly in more developed regions and in the Caribbean and Pacific.
• Poverty and other forms of social disadvantage magnify gender disparities in education.

Goal 6 - Quality

• International assessments highlight large achievement gaps between students in rich and poor countries. In developing countries there are substantially higher proportions of low learning achievement.
• More than 27m teachers work in the world’s primary schools, 80% of them in developing countries. Total primary school staff increased by 5% between 1999 and 2006. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 1.6m new teacher posts must be created and teachers recruited by 2015 to achieve universal primary education, rising to 3.8m if retirement, resignations and losses due to AIDS, for example, are taken into account.

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Halting the brain drain in Africa

Universities across Africa are running out of academics. Although the scale of the crisis and reasons for it may differ between countries, all are affected. According to Prof Goolam Mohamedbhai, Secretary-General of the Association of African Universities, one thing is certain: the continent must ‘think outside the box’ if it is to succeed in developing a new generation of scholars. At a University Leaders’ Forum titled Developing and retaining the next generation of academics, recently held in Ghana, higher education heads and experts brainstormed potential initiatives that would help to develop a cadre of young academics for the continent. Among urgent actions that university leaders at the Forum agreed were possible and should be taken at the institutional level were:

• Establish the nature and size of current and future academic staffing needs at universities.
• Involve university leaders in tackling the next generation problem.
• Develop or improve succession and staff development strategies, policies and programmes.
• Work to grow postgraduate student numbers, to enlarge the pool of potential academics, as well as to improve postgraduate success rates and identify students with academic promise.
• Grow the diversity of postgraduate students, including by addressing gender imbalances.
• Create working environments more conducive for postgraduates, especially doctoral students, including office space, teaching opportunities and funding or scholarship support.
• Improve conditions for young academics, including competitive pay and pension schemes, easing heavy teaching workloads and creating opportunities for research, publication and conference attendance.
• Strengthen PhD supervision and mentoring, among other ways by providing skills training for supervisors and mentors and by drawing on retired or partly affiliated professors.
• Identify research, training, scholarship and fellowship opportunities and make them known to young academics.
• Simplify employment contracts and processes and make contracts more flexible.
• Provide programmes for pedagogical training and skills upgrading.
• Ensure effective administrative leadership and staff development units and programmes.
• Strengthen higher education quality and establish or improve quality assurance units.

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The 2008 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results

The 2008 NSC examination results, recently released by the DoE, have attracted considerable attention and debate in the media. The credibility of the results, particularly of the mathematics results, and the successful implementation of the new curriculum are seriously questioned. Although it is almost impossible to compare the 2008 NSC examination results with the matric results of previous years due to the totally new curriculum, certain aspects of the results can, with caution, be compared, viz, the number of Grade 12 learners enrolled, writing the exam, passing the exam, passing the exam with endorsement or admission to a degree study, and passing mathematics.

Grade 12 learners enrolled
According to the 2008 School Realities published by the department of education (DoE), 595 216 learners were enrolled in Grade 12 in 2008, down from 626 358 in 2007, but still exceeding the number of enrolled Grade 12 learners for the 2000-2006 period. Since 2003 the number of learners enrolled in Grade 12 has been increasing steadily, with the exception of 2008.

Grade 12 learners writing exam
Although 588 643 Grade 12 learners registered for the 2008 NSC examination, only 533 561 candidates wrote the full examination and were finally resulted. This means that 61 655 learners (or 10.4%) enrolled in Grade 12 in 2008 did not write the full examination. By comparison, 564 775 candidates wrote the Senior Certificate (SC) examination in 2007 – 31 214 more than in 2008 – and 61 583 learners (or 9.8%) enrolled in Grade 12 in 2007 did not write the matric examination – very similar to the numbers in 2008, but significantly more than in the previous years.

Grade 12 learners passing exam
Of the 533 561 candidates who wrote the full examination and were resulted in 2008, 333 604 were successful and obtained a NSC, resulting in a pass rate of 62.5%. This means 34 613 fewer successful Grade 12 learners in 2008 than in 2007 when 368 217 Grade 12 learners passed the SC examination resulting in a pass rate of 65.2%. The number of Grade 12 learners passing the SC examination has been increasing steadily since 2001, with the first decline registered for 2008. The pass rate, however, has been declining since 2003 from 73.2% to 62.5%.

Grade 12 learners passing exam with admission to degree study (or endorsement)
Although the number of Grade 12 learners passing the matric examination declined significantly by 9.4% (or 34 613 fewer successful Grade 12 learners in 2008 than 2007), the number of learners in 2008 achieving a pass that allows admission to a degree study was significantly higher than the number of matrics passing the SC examination with endorsement in 2007 (viz, 107 462 compared to 85 454 – an increase of 25.8% or 22 008 year-on-year). In 2008 the endorsement rate (the number of Grade 12 learners achieving a pass that allows admission to a degree study as a percentage of the number of those writing the NSC examination) was 20.1% compared to 15.1% in 2007. Although the new curriculum has introduced totally new achievement levels and minimum admission requirements for a degree study, and the data for 2008 are therefore not directly comparable to the data of previous years, the ‘big’ increase in the number of Grade 12 learners passing with endorsement in 2008 compared to previous years as well as the jump in the endorsement rate leads to doubts about the credibility of the results, the standard of the NSC examination and whether learners with the minimum admission requirements for a degree study are adequately equipped to commence an undergraduate study.

Performance in mathematics
Although there has been a steady growth in the number of Grade 12 learners taking mathematics as a subject and passing it (viz, 82 030 maths passes in 1996 increasing to 149 228 passes in 2007 – an increase of 82%), the number of matriculants passing mathematics at the higher grade (HG) has only increased marginally from 22 416 in 1996 to 25 415 in 2007. The number of passes at the standard grade (SG), however, increased by 100% from 59 614 in 1996 to 123 813 in 2007. In 2008, 136 515 Grade 12 learners passed mathematics and 207 260 passed mathematical literacy. This means that in total 343 775 Grade 12 learners passed with some form of mathematics in 2008, compared to 149 228 maths passes in 2007. This large increase in maths passes is primarily a consequence of the new requirement that all Grade 12 learners have to offer either mathematics or mathematical literacy. But how does one compare the 2008 results with past results? ‘To provide some guidance, the DoE requested the mathematics examination panel to set the 2008 examination papers so that 30% of the marks were of similar difficulty to a former standard grade level pass and to make 50% of the two mathematics papers in 2008 similar or equivalent in difficulty to a pass at the old higher grade level’. Similarly, universities declared a 50% in mathematics in 2008 equivalent to a HG pass in 2007, a level achieved by 63 038 Grade 12 learners in 2008, compared to 25 415 HG maths passes in 2007. This big increase in maths passes equivalent to the HG passes has raised concerns and eyebrows and many critics have argued that ‘this could only have been achieved with a massive lowering of standards’. According to a calibration exercise done by the DoE, ‘we could have expected, by higher education admission signals, in 2008 approximately 54 000 passes in mathematics papers above 50%. An increase from 54 000 which is what could have been expected to 63 000 which is what we got is not as surprising as an increase from 25 000 actual HG passes to 63 000 passes’. Nonetheless, the increase seems to be too high and ‘universities may want to adjust their benchmark of mathematics HG equivalence upward’.

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The cost of failed matrics

According to Liza van Wyk, CEO of AstroTech and BizTech, ‘Parliament needs to urgently address the challenge of close to half a million matriculants who have failed in the past two years and who have scant future prospects in a rapidly globalising world where education is the key to competitive advantage’. She said failures in schools and universities coupled with exceptionally high drop-out rates were costing the tax-payer billions in wasted tuition and imperiling the economy with low skills and deepening poverty. In a study done in 2002 by DG Gouws and HP Wolmarans of the University of Pretoria’s Department of Financial Management, university failures cost the South African taxpayer R1.3b a year in terms of the amount of government subsidy wasted by a failure rate of approximately 20% of enrolled students or roughly 125 000 students that fail each year at South African tertiary institutions. Since then, failure rates have worsened. It is estimated that between 35% and 40% of students that enrol at tertiary institutions drop out before completing their studies. This percentage compares unfavorably with an internationally acceptable rate of about 10%. According to Van Wyk, ‘adding half a million failed matriculants to the millions already without work in South Africa’s streets will further ignite crime, deepen poverty and the diseases associated with it’.