South Africa’s education system will not work effectively until undue union influence and critical educational factors are resolved.
“Identifying Binding Constraints in SA Education” is a synthesis report which provides a summary of several education-related research papers produced by education experts affiliated to the University of Stellenbosch’s Research on Socio-Economic Policy unit.
The research report provides an overview of a large research project undertaken by a team of economists at Stellenbosch university in 2015/16 under the Programme to Support Propoor Policy development (PSPPd), a collaboration between the European union and the South African Presidency. The project generated eight journal articles, six working papers and 12 policy briefs. The report aims to bring these findings together and show how their varied diagnoses and proposals hang together and provide a coherent portrait of the challenges in the education system as well as viable solutions. Throughout the analysis, the researchers applied two ‘conceptual lenses.’ The first was one of prioritisation and acknowledging that identifying and solving binding constraints was a prudent use of limited government resources. The second was an acknowledgement that the root causes of South Africa’s low educational outcomes, while multifaceted, generally fall into one of two categories:
- (1) a lack of accountability, and
- (2) a lack of capacity.
Consequently any proposed solution would need to address both of these elements to gain traction. From the various reviews of existing literature and new research conducted for this project, there emerged four binding constraints to improved educational outcomes for the poor. These were:
- (1) Weak institutional functionality,
- (2) undue union influence,
- (3) Weak teacher content knowledge and pedagogical skill,
- (4) Wasted learning time and insufficient opportunity to learn. These four factors interact and lead to low educational outcomes for the poor.
The report reflects concerns expressed by academics, practitioners and the public at large about the influence exerted by unions, especially the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) – perceived as interfering with the ability of the education system “to act in the best interests of children”.
A number of studies contained in the report jointly found that in many schools, fewer than half of the official curriculum was being covered by the end of the year and fewer than half of the officially scheduled lessons were being taught.
Researchers laid the blame at the door of: inadequate teaching time; teacher absenteeism; and insufficient opportunity for pupils to learn.
The report said the National School Effectiveness Study showed that most Grade 5 pupils wrote in their books only once a week, or less. It added that only 3% of Grade 5 pupils across the country wrote in their books every day.
On inadequate teaching time, the report observed that out of the 130 maths lessons scheduled for Grade 6 pupils during the 2012 academic year in 58 schools in North West, teachers had only administered 50 lessons by November.
“The researchers note that frequently the problem was not teacher absenteeism but rather a lack of teaching activity, despite teacher presence,” it said.
While it has long been established that teacher content knowledge is significantly related to learning outcomes, the report has concluded that raising teacher knowledge on its own was also insufficient.
“Teachers need to know how to translate that knowledge for effective learning in the classroom. This implies that content knowledge and pedagogical skills both need to be good.”
For example, the 2007 South and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality showed that only 32% of Grade 6 maths teachers in South Africa had desirable subject knowledge, said the report.
