The Silent Crisis: Time to fix South Africa’s schools

In March 2023, the Centre for Development Enterprise (CDE) released a series of five reports titled The Silent Crisis: Time to fix South Africa’s schools, presenting a comprehensive analysis of what is ailing the South African education system, what needs to be done to fix it, what we can learn from successful reform attempts in other countries and how to mobilise business, civil society and parents to pressure government to make reform happen. The reports were informed by comprehensive research and dozens of conversations with international and local education experts.

Key takeaway

South Africa is the single-biggest learning underperformer relative to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita among low- and middle-income countries. Spending more will not make a meaningful difference unless we address the root causes of system dysfunction.

As leading education analyst Professor Lant Pritchett puts it: “If your bicycle tyre has a hole, pumping in more air won’t do much good … you have to fix the hole first, and then add the air.”

No education official has been prosecuted or disciplined for their involvement in the ‘job for cash’ scandal

41%

only 41% of grade 6 maths teachers in South Africa have ‘good proficiency’ compared to 87% in Zimbabwe and 95% in Kenya

59%

of grade 9 learners could not reach the low international benchmark at which they have some knowledge of whole numbers and basic graphs

56%

0f grade 6 learners cannot read for meaning

MORE THAN THREE-QUARTERS OF THE BASIC EDUCATION BUDGET IS SPENT ON EDUCATOR SALARIES

A typical grade 6 child in Kenya is around two to three years of learning  ahead of grade 6 learner in the Eastern Cape

1/2

MORE THAN HALF of all learners do not know all the letters of the alphabet by the end of grade 1

81%

of grade 4 cannot read for meaning

Findings

South Africa’s learning crisis is an immediate consequence of our teaching crisis. Too many teachers lack the motivation to do their jobs properly: South Africa has the highest teacher absenteeism rate of all Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, according to the basic education minister in 2017. Subject content knowledge and pedagogical skills are also sorely lacking across the system.

A 2013 study found that only 41% of grade 6 mathematics teachers in South Africa have ‘good proficiency’ in their subject, compared to 87% in Zimbabwe and 95% in Kenya. Education expert Professor Nic Spaull estimates that four out of five teachers lack the knowledge and pedagogical know-how to teach adequately.

Across the system, teachers and principals are not held accountable for their performance. This accountability deficit stretches from teachers to principals, from principals to circuit managers, from district officials to provincial managers, from provinces to the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the DBE to Parliament and the president.

Government schools, especially in poorer areas, are also rarely held accountable for their results by school governing bodies, parents or their communities.

One reason for this lack of accountability is that the bureaucracy has been compromised by cadre deployment and incompetence. A 2016 ministerial task team (MTT), established to investigate reports of bribery and extortion in teacher and school leadership posts and promotions, found that in “six and possibly more of the nine provinces … SADTU [the South African Democratic Teachers Union] is in de facto charge of the management, administration and priorities of education”. At the time of the MTT’s release, all deputy directors general of the DBE were SADTU members, frequently attending union meetings.

SADTU’s cadre deployment acts as a major barrier to the effective functioning of the education system. It brings people into the bureaucracy who may not be able to do the job and it creates a set of incentives and an institutional culture in which good, capable people become despondent, while incumbent officials who favour the status quo block attempts to reform the system.

It is no surprise that, when SADTU has agitated against proper performance management for teachers, the DBE has repeatedly caved to their demands. And while important reforms in education have previously been enacted by the department, these have been diluted or repealed following union pressure.

Worryingly, none of the key MTT recommendations to fight corruption and push back state capture has been implemented. Despite findings of criminality by the MTT, to this day no public servant implicated in the ‘jobs for cash’ scandal has been prosecuted or suspended.

With SADTU’s ties to the governing party, no education minister can implement reform on their own. They need the backing of the president, who in turn needs to mobilise and achieve broad public support for the tough actions required to push through major reforms.

Organised business, individual companies and education non-profit organisations (NPOs) have a crucial role to play in making the case to South Africans about the importance of systemwide reform. They can use their influence and resources to help keep up public pressure, from as broad a front of interests as possible, for a set of important actions and interventions that will change the way the schooling system works.

From the CDE’s examination of where the country is at and conversations with leading education and reform experts, five priorities for action emerge if we want the system to deliver acceptable learning levels.

CDE’s policy recommendations

Tackle corruption and cadre deployment

• Implement the key recommendations put forward by the 2016 MTT that was established to investigate reports of bribery and extortion in teacher and school leadership posts and promotions.
• Send cases to the South African Police Service to prosecute criminality.
• Protect whistle-blowers.
• Legally prohibit cadre deployment.
• Stop education officials from being members of a teachers’ union (while allowing them to be members of other appropriate unions).

Raise accountability levels

• Reintroduce universal Annual National Assessments (ANAs) for grades 1 to 9.
• Strengthen the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) to assess and analyse school performance as an independent institution.
• Give principals more power over the appointment and management of teachers in their schools.
• Introduce entrance examinations, competency assessments and proper performance contracts for principals.

Strengthen the teacher corps

• Increase university entrance requirements for teacher graduates.
• Improve teacher training at universities.
• Introduce entrance examinations for the profession.
• Scale up effective and affordable approaches to upskill existing teachers.
• Recruit skilled foreign teachers to address shortages, especially in critical subject areas.

Appoint new leadership

• South Africa needs a new Basic Education minister, director general and top team in the DBE to drive and achieve systemwide reform against firm targets and deadlines.
• Members of the Executive Council and heads of department in charge of provincial education departments must be capable leaders committed to reform.
• These new leaders require the president’s full support for the tough political decisions essential to improve performance.

Publicly commit to achieving goals for the country

• Set realistic stretch targets that will galvanise support for reform.
• Establish proper implementation plans and budgets.
• Hold the minister publicly accountable for the department’s performance.

What business and civil society should be doing

Organised business, individual companies and education NPOs have to move away from a narrow focus on projects and become much more concerned about long-term structural improvements. To get there they need, in the words of Trialogue’s Managing Director Nick Rockey to focus on “facilitating conversations, collaboration, research and looking at the entire ecosystem”.

They need to develop strategies and activities they can adopt or fund that will contribute to sustained improvements across the education system. Only then will the more specific interventions they have mostly funded in the past go to scale and have greater impact.

Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2023 (26th edition).