7 minute read
Back to Basics
Back to basics
BY ELSKE JOUBERT
In their 2019 State of the Nation and Budget addresses, President Cyril Ramaphosa and Finance Minister Tito Mboweni demonstrated that education is a key priority for the government moving forward. As such, the bulk of government spending has been allocated to this sector.
Prudence Louw, Chief Information Officer at IDEA Digital Education, believes that this move is very promising as “it shows a commitment to South Africa’s youth at a time of extreme difficulty in the economy and the job market.” She believes that we must focus on the foundations of education rather than quick-fix solutions, looking at the pockets of excellence that exist in the country, modelling these and replicating them. Our approach has historically been average – and often surface-level – access to short-course education.
“We should be focusing on improving our fundamental literacy and numeracy proficiencies for school students and adult education. These are the necessary pillars for us to be able to explore more innovative, entrepreneurial avenues.”
The South African education sector is still struggling to deliver. This is owing, in no small part, to the education system that existed during the apartheid years, says Leigh Johnson, Programme Designer: Open Enrolment at University of Stellenbosch Business School Executive Development (USB-ED).
“The realities are so diverse for children born into positions of privilege compared to those in disadvantaged communities. The pressure and increasingly intense red tape put on teachers – who in many cases are under-supported, -prepared and -educated themselves – has made their ability to offer the attention and care required by the children in their care incredibly difficult. We have not yet found or created the system that will adequately support our schools to transform.”
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2017/18 Global Competitiveness Index report ranked South Africa 114th out of 137 countries for the quality of its education system.
“We not only need to make drastic changes to the quality of our education system and school syllabi, but we also need to shift from academic learning to technical and vocational studies. We need to reimagine learning for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” says Onyi Nwaneri, CEO of Afrika Tikkun Services.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is set to fundamentally change the way we live, work and relate to one another. Says Nwaneri, “Most notably, we need to respond comprehensively to the needs of a child’s full development by supporting their cognitive, intra-personal and emotional development – from early childhood to school-leaving age and beyond. We should not only be teaching for intelligence quotient (IQ), but also emotional quotient (EQ), which develops character, confidence, critical thinking and creativity.”
Echoing this, Johnson notes: “We need to remove our focus on functional and technical skills and knowledge and instead focus on developing and growing the skills that are uniquely human and can’t easily be replaced by a machine. Developing emotional intelligence, collaboration and team skills, and systems thinking is far more important than remembering facts and figures.”
The question then appears to be how we can best create opportunities for those children, especially girls, who are on the margins of society and who can’t afford quality education.
“We can do this by creating an inclusive educational system that eliminates the barriers to entry in respect of quality standard education,” says Nwaneri. “We need to intentionally level the playing field, ensuring that the same or relative standard of education is provided to all South African children, irrespective of race, gender or financial pedigree. One way of doing this is a fundamental overhaul of our education system to meet best practice standards as well as simultaneous introduction of low-cost private schools.”
Research has shown that girls in historically marginalised communities, or those where the focus was not on equitable education, have benefited enormously from informal and alternative education models. According to Louw, students will take responsibility for their own learning where technology is used to show them what is expected of them and how they can achieve this.
Funding is also paramount, says Des Hugo, Academic Director: Elementary Education at Nova Pioneer. “We need investors who wish to focus on the support of all marginalised children. Schools should open up their spaces to wider communities to share best practices in new learning. Poverty is no reason for a different quality of education, and the stakeholders who manage government funds should realise the potential of public–private partnerships to build quality education opportunities for all.”
Commenting on how we can best build a sustainable science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pipeline for girls, Hugo notes that “[we] need to celebrate our STEM female role models – both locally and globally. We need to encourage girls to enter the STEM space from an early age, and gender stereotypes in employment opportunities need to urgently shift. We need to educate parents on the opportunities for their daughters.”
Adding to this, says Louw, “We shouldn’t be driving female STEM job creation as much as we should be developing more opportunities for girls to take on STEM education in both school-based and tertiary education. The industry will demand these skills because the digital economy already needs scientists, engineers, coders and programmers. Our role in the education sector is to ensure that there is greater gender balance in these subjects earlier on. Seventy-five percent of our IDEA STEM content team are women, and why wouldn’t that be the case? If corporations, institutions or departments find a gender imbalance in their teams, they need to ask themselves what they are doing to attract that imbalance.
“There is no doubt that there is still more to be done to break down the stigma that surrounds women in STEM,” she continues, “but we shouldn’t ask the question as to what women in Africa are going to do in the future of innovation, we should rather be cognisant of the fact that we are already shaping and changing this future. Our next 25 years will see even greater progress in both recognition and advancement for women across this continent, and the world, in their roles in STEM innovation.”
Considering the massive youth unemployment predicted for Africa by 2030, Hugo notes that the advancement of women to design and build a future in Africa for Africans is essential for growth and employment on the continent. “Many girls leave school at an early age. This needs to change to encourage women to enter the STEM space as ideators, designers and developers of new technologies and knowledge; as this is where the majority of opportunities lie, it is one of the most crucial aspects of the growth of women.”
By increasing the opportunities for women, growth is exponentially enhanced, says Louw. “Research shows that it is largely through the lifting of women out of poverty that economic growth is achieved, as their reliability, persistence and success is far more prevalent than that of men. Additionally, women are more likely to plough their earnings back into their families and communities which, in turn, will elevate others and thereby facilitate growth,” she concludes.
TOP 5 TRENDS IN THE NEXT 3–5 YEARS
By Lisa Illingworth
1. Seeing education as a business
Over the past few years, there has been a rise in the number of independent school groups whose core focus is creating citizens who are equipped for the challenges that lie outside of academia. These groups also use business models that make independent, private schooling accessible to lower income groups of the population. The number of these schools is predicted to increase for the foreseeable future.
2. Educational “niching”
Schools will begin “niching”, focusing on smaller, specific educational segments. This will not only include skills and knowledge segments, but also focus on the emotional well-being of the child. Leadership and stewardship will take centre stage followed closely by coding, entrepreneurship and design.
3. School “coaching”
Schools and parents, particularly those dealing with children in high school, will invest in additional support in coaching and mentoring from professionals to equip themselves and teens with a toolbox of skills and coping mechanisms.
4. Re-thinking university
Parents will begin to search for supplemental factors to the apparently ineffectual curriculum, institutional structure and teaching methodologies. Suits & Sneakers is an example of a revolutionary learning model, creating interpersonal teaching and learning channels hosted in a digital environment.
5. Mindfulness as part of the curriculum
An increasing number of children are experiencing “burnout” and other behavioural and emotional issues. In response to this, some schools have begun to introduce mindfulness into the curriculum to increase calm and combat anxiety, as well as encourage focused and participatory learning. It’s likely that more South African schools will bring this teaching method into their classrooms.
