DDG Mr Brian Schreuder from the Western Cape
Dignatories from other provinces
Jenny Rault-Smith, Director Curriculum Development
EMDC and Head Office Directors and officials
Principals and Teachers
Friends and partners in education
I accepted the invitation to open this conference with no hesitation whatsoever. We spend so much time meeting to address issues that impact on learning - issues like crime, buildings, resources and so on - and disproportionately little on what I would call "the core".
I want to adapt Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign buzzwords "(It's) the economy, stupid" to "It's the economy and the curriculum, stupid!". I am confident that the driver for the economy in this province (and nationally) is the curriculum and all that goes into it, and all that happens as a consequence of it. It is a privilege, then, to be able to be with curriculum experts and able to address learning itself, instead of these other issues which so often frustrate us. That makes today an oasis for us all.Over the last decade, a number of unsung heroes have been born in the education world in this country - there have been the visionaries, the planners; those who craft documents and policies; the trainers who interpret them; the authors who develop learning programmes.
There are the teachers, the principals; there are those who monitor and ensure that standards are maintained; we have the watchdogs like the media and the academics. And there are the parents, and the learners themselves.
I want to highlight three parts of this giant learning support network today, ladies and gentlemen.
1. The role and importance of school-based assessment (together with some of its snags and pitfalls)
2. The role of the parent and, finally
3. The role of education department in making sure that standards are set and kept.
Firstly then - what about school-based assessment? Plenty has been written about the bad practice of using only "one-off" high-stakes examinations to accredit our learners. Although we know that, in life, we often do have to perform, and be judged on how we shape up, in one short highly-charged performance. We also know that, more commonly, our overall performance is judged more by an accumulation of different kinds of evidence.
In everyday life, "assessment", in other words, is global. Our shortcomings in one aspect can be overlooked because of our overwhelming talent in another. I can completely lack high-level computer skills for example, but be a great performer as a planner; I might shine administratively, but be only average at speaking in public. And so on.
So school-based, or ongoing, assessment is a hugely important part of our whole assessment practice. We have to find ways of taking a range of snapshots of a wide spectrum of performances by our learners. The single paper-pencil test, or the so-called final exam, is then only one performance arena amongst many.
In any big franchising outfit, the parent company must lay down sets of basic standards that all their outlets must conform to. And because all the steps needed to achieve full accreditation are clearly defined, all the members of the franchise know what to strive for.
For school-based assessment to have a meaning, the franchise principle must be applied. This is specially true in a new system such as ours is. Our teachers cannot operate in isolation from one another.
Cross-assessment of learner portfolios between schools has to be the norm. Standardized assessment exercises, assessed against given rubrics, have to be the order of the day.
I am happy that our moderation process, with its three steps, is bedding in and that we are seeing increasing teaching and assessing competence and confidence amongst our teachers.
If schools additionally link with one another to jointly set, and even assess, tasks and examinations - then this can only be beneficial. So my first message is - let's work together to set and maintain standards so that our school-based assessment is both reputable and helpful to the learning process.
But we are not just here to congratulate ourselves. I need to say that I can't accept that we have schools where over 40% of the Grade 12 class fails in the final examinations.
For 2007, all schools offering Grae 12 have been instructed to have targets announced and signed off by the end of March. These targets are for numbers of matriculation exemptions, numbers passing Maths and Science, numbers passing overall and for proper throughput in the lower classes as well.
And I am saying that if we mean business then we must link the performance agreements of officials to the successful meeting of those targets in schools.
I don't understand how 40% of the learners who have been allowed to enter Grade 12 simply don't make it at the end of the year. I think we have to ask ourselves what is happening in those schools in the Grade 8 - 11 classrooms as well. Do the teachers know how to teach properly? Do they know how to assess? Do their learners know how to study?
We need to know what learning is taking place. We need to know if those who enter Grade 12 in the first place have really met the requirements at a Grade 11 level.
Are we really looking at a sudden collapse in the course of the final year? Isn't the truth, actually, that the whole learning path of those children is suspect. And if this is the case, then, if I may be so direct, it's not just our children that are failing the grade. It's we who are failing our children.
A macro target for the province this year is to have not a single school recording a matric pass rate of under 60%. This is a very specific challenge today to the people in this room as I know you are, in fact, the critical role players in this province. Let's get it right! For the sake of our children.
Because, I must add here, it IS the economy, stupid! If I get a poor matric or no matric, then I get a dead-end job. Then my personal conditions are poor, I impact on my neighbours, the economy spirals downwards; poverty is entrenched.
If we are asking the deep questions about learning and assessment, then it goes way past the superficial issue of how many pieces must be assessed according to the national protocol. It goes way past the administrative burden. The real issues are - "What learning should have taken place?" "How can I check on this?" and then "What do we do if there are gaps?"
And this "we" brings me to my second point. I must say here that the old model, where the parent only knows that a child is in trouble when the final report with the "F" on it drops into the letterbox, is a thing of the past.
Our parents need to know a few things about assessment these days:
1. Assessment is ongoing. It's not just tests any more, or exams.
2. And it's assessment with a purpose. It's assessment so that better learning and better teaching can happen. It's not assessment just to get marks. It's not assessment for a competition between learners. It's a checking and reporting mechanism.
The wise parent keeps tabs on learning every day and every week. The wise parent helps its children plan ahead; get enough sleep; get enough play. Our children need to explore lots of things; we need to help them find and expand on their strengths and to eliminate weaknesses.
We don't punish or threaten mindlessly. We help with discipline, yes, but we don't shatter and destroy. Teenage suicide is a real phenomenon, ladies and gentlemen.
Nurture and challenge - but don't destroy. Ask your child to see his or her actual work; don't just ask for the "marks"; don't wait until "the end"; do it regularly, throughout the year.
If your child's teacher is just giving "marks", then ask also for comments and suggestions for improvement. If your child never has homework or says the teacher isn't doing his or her job properly, then check that out. Don't be afraid to go the school to ask the principal to investigate if good teaching and learning is happening.
Don't be afraid to let the department know if you think that the principal isn't managing properly. Your child deserves the best. It's up to the education department to make sure that happens to the very best of its ability. So my second plea is that parents actually work at getting learning right. Be active participants!
My final point relates to what the department is doing to improve teacher skills and confidence.
1. Cluster workshops: A key thing is, of course the series of cluster workshops, defined under the moderation protocol, at which standards are set and monitored.
2. Trained officials and teachers: Training and development sessions only make sense if the officials themselves are knowledgeable. This very workshop that we are attending today is part of what a good system needs: it needs excellent, qualified officials and leaders across schools and in all parts of the learning environment.
I congratulate the organizers and all of you for making time to be here today and tomorrow. I know that our ongoing subject workshops are also making a big difference to teaching and learning.
3. Classroom-based support: I must be honest here and lay a bold and direct challenge to unions. I know that classroom visitation is a sensitive matter and the subject of negotiation. But let me say plainly here that officials simply must be allowed, as a matter of course, into actual classrooms.
If we have teachers who are struggling, then we need to know what the problems are so we can help remedy them. I have received isolated reports of some cases where officials have been denied access.
The matter was raised at a meeting of the Council of Ministers and the national Minister indicated that she found it hard to even accept that this was an issue - because the employer has a duty to ensure that our children are being properly taught.
I don't for a moment want to suggest a compromise to the integrity of the shop floor role of unions. However I must repeat my plea made elsewhere for a constructive partnering model so that we can fight together against things that erode quality education and can fight together for the rights of our children.
Through the evaluation processes starting up through our Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) I believe that we are developing more reflective teachers. We must, and we will, open our doors to officials to render practical support and training - with due sensitivity - where it is needed most.
4. Provincial Policies and Guidelines: I am happy that we have produced a guideline document on how to set examinations. I know that our moderation protocol is respected at a national level.
5. A dedicated Assessments Directorate: under the WCED re-design we will be setting up a full directorate dedicated to assessment matters.
6. Standardised "model" testing: I am looking forward to the national Grade 11 examinations this year, which will again help safeguard our learners as they head into the new National Senior Certificate.
7. High level training: we are supporting growing numbers of teachers as they qualify formally, via the relevant unit standards, as assessors and moderators.
8. Clarity on a national level: on a national level the newly - issued streamlined policies on recording and reporting are a firm response to the cry of teachers that their administrative load has been too great.
We now have detailed and useful subject assessment guidelines. Let's be comforted by the clarity of purpose of our national Minister, expressed in her own words as "Teachers teach. Managers manage. Learners Learn". And let us freely acknowledge all the steps she is taking to strengthen the hands of our teachers, managers and learners.
The hardest thing is for us to grow teacher confidence. This is something that must be built and nurtured. There are so many new things happening in the new curriculum that it's only natural for teachers to feel edgy. And tired and frustrated as well. But, ladies and gentlemen, the curriculum is not an ogre. Everything is being bedded down. Confidence will prevail.
I want to end by noting my admiration for our dedicated and outstanding teachers. I have referred to struggling ones as well, because I have to. It's the duty of the state to support those who are struggling and to censure shoddy performance and neglect.
But it's critical for us to reward effort as well. I am really happy that we are moving into an era where we can incentivise teaching in new ways: where we can literally pay teachers in scarce subjects more money; where we pay teachers who teach in rural areas more money; where we pay teachers who teach in dangerous settings more money; where we keep good teachers in the classroom - where they can make the most difference - by paying them more money just to be "good teachers" and that we do not only reward people when they move out of the classroom and into "management".
This is not just fantasizing, ladies and gentlemen. These are the very real options that the state is opening to teachers once all the agreements are signed off.
Lastly - and still on this point - I want to mention a plan for rewards across the board. October 5 is National Teachers Day. In the days around it we plan to have a massive programme of rewards for educators.
We are approaching, for example, gyms, hair salons and spas for a massive "spoil a teacher" extravaganza. We want to give every one of our 33,000 teachers at least one hour of pampering in that week.
We have just completed an interesting pilot programme, "for the sake of our lives", in which different batches of learners have run each morning in a series of runs, linking schools around the critical aspects of running clubs, nutrition programmes, school safety and community education forums.
I'm mentioning this because, each morning the receiving school lined its driveway to cheer on the runners as they ran in from a neighbouring school, up to five kilometers away.
And again and again we saw learners playfully cheer and actually applaud their teachers as they drove into the grounds through the guard of honour. I want to say that our teachers are not thanked enough for their incredible work. Let us all join hands to applaud them.
We are in this together, ladies and gentlemen. I wish you a fruitful two days and hope that you will carry with you the message that, for the sake of our lives, we need to get this right. We must reward progress; we must help people fill the learning gaps; we must lean over and help one another when help is needed.
Each One Teach One: Together Building a Home for AllElkeen Leer Iemand - Saam Bou Ons 'N Leertuiste Vir Almal
Omnye Ufundisa Omnye - Sakha Kunye Ikhaya Lokufunda Lomntu Wonke
Thank you very much.
For Enquiries:
Gert Witbooi
Media Liaison Officer
Office of the MEC for Education
Western Cape
Tel: 021 467 2523
Fax: 021 425 5689
Visit our website: http://wced.wcape.gov.za
The Western Cape - A Home for All
INtshona Koloni - iKhaya loMntu wonke
Die Wes-Kaap - 'n Tuiste vir Almal
