CHAPTER 8

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Earlier chapters have examined:

• the structure and design of the curriculum
• training, orientation and development of teachers to support curriculum change
• quality, use and availability of learning support materials
• national, provincial and district-level support of curriculum
• levels of understanding of Curriculum 2005

This Chapter makes a number of recommendations that are essential to robust implementation of curriculum change. Recommendations are accordingly made for improvement of:

• the structure and design of the curriculum
• training, orientation and development of teachers
• learning support materials
• national, provincial and district-level support of curriculum processes
• the pace and scope of implementation with reference to grades 4 and 8.

All of these rely on:

• resourcing of the curriculum
• feasible time-frames for implementation
• regular monitoring and review
• effective co-ordination at national and provincial level.

STRUCTURE OF THE CURRICULUM: PROPOSAL FOR A REVISED C2005

The Review Committee advocates a high knowledge and high skill curriculum as the means to promoting social justice, equity and development. For this reason two considerations should drive what is taught and learnt in the GET band.

• Human Rights education and education for civic responsibility should be infused through all learning areas. Issues of anti-discrimination, anti-racism, anti-sexism and special needs require particular and enhanced attention throughout the curriculum. The implications of this for all learning areas should be prioritised and spelt out
• All learning areas should go beyond the limited and narrow pre-C2005 curriculum. Learners should be afforded opportunities to apply what is learnt to ‘authentic´ problem situations and so make their learning relevant and applicable to their lives.

The following five key recommendations are made for the revision and streamlining of the structure of C2005.

Table 3: Recommendations for the Structure of the Curriculum

Rationalisation of Learning Areas

The establishment of eight learning areas in the GET band has meant that insufficient time has been allocated to the development of knowledge, values and skills required for lifelong learning. The Review Committee proposes a reducation of the learning areas and the content within these learning areas in order to promote a curriculum offering high levels of knowledge and skill.

This requires hard choices about what is most necessary, practical and affordable for the GET. The vast majority of South African schools that offer the GET band do not have teachers who have any education or training in Technology or Economic and Management Sciences. There is also a dearth of equipment and learning support materials in these learning areas. It is therefore not possible to include exit requirements for these learning areas in the GETC.

However, aspects of both learning areas should be encouraged and introduced, and especially those aspects that relate to the development of skills and knowledge necessary for the 21st Century. Schools are strongly encouraged to introduce learners to technology, design, entrepreneurship, management principles and basic accounting as and when teachers are trained and resources become available.

The Review Committee recommends that technology (as applied science) is introduced in the learning area Natural Sciences and that ‘design´ features of technology, entrepreneurship and the use and interpretation of financial documents required in everyday life are included in the Life Orientation learning area.

In addition, the training and re-training of science teachers should include applied science and other features of technology.

The Committee foregrounds the following as foundations for further learning and the development of high level skills:

• comprehensive reading and writing skills
• foundational mathematical skills
• core concepts in the social and natural sciences.

In addition the GET curriculum should promote:

• an understanding of the history of South Africa and Africa and their place in world history
• an understanding of the environment and how to preserve it and key issues relating to space and place
• music, drama, dance and visual arts
• issues central to personal well-being and spiritual and physical growth.

The Review Committee proposes six rather than eight learning areas in the GET band.

Table 4: Rationalised Learning Areas

For a more detailed description of the proposed scope of each of these see Appendix 2.

Learning Programmes

The learning areas will be presented as learning programmes. The learning programmes will serve to connect and integrate the various content, concepts and values of the learning area. In the Foundation Phase the learning areas should be presented in three learning programmes: Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills. In the Intermediate and Senior Phases each of the six learning areas should be presented as learning programmes. The names of the suggested new learning programmes are provided below.

Table 5 : Suggested Learning Programmes in the GET

Time Allocation

In line with the above recommendation the second recommendation suggests that more time in the curriculum is allocated to the ‘gateway´ learning areas. Particular attention should be given to the development of effective literacy and foundational mathematical skills. It is proposed that the time allocated to the learning programmes should be as follows:

Table 6: Suggested Teaching Time of Learning Areas in the GET

The National Curriculum Statement

The DOE policy documents of 1997 (DOE 1997b, c, d) propose the development of a National Curriculum Statement. The Review Committee supports this and suggests that this document replaces the current curriculum policy documents.

The National Curriculum Statement for GET should detail which knowledge and skills, within each learning area, should be taught and learnt when, in what sequence, and at which level of competence. It should have separate but compatible sections for each of the four focal areas of education: the ECD, GET, FET and ABET focal areas. This report concentrates on the GET phase.

In summary, the National Curriculum Statement should consist of the following key features.

Table 7: Features of the National Curriculum Statement

In this curriculum proposal sequence and progression will be promoted by grade-by-grade learning outcomes and assessment standards.

Integration across learning areas should be promoted by the SAQA critical outcomes and by assessment exemplars; and integration within learning areas should be promoted by the learning area statements and the learning programmes.

Key Features of the National Curriculum Statement

Critical outcomes

The critical outcomes as they stand indicate the range of knowledge, skills and values required of the South African citizen of the 21st century. There is widespread agreement that these 12 statements provide ‘a more than reasonable agenda for education´ (O´Connell interview). It is proposed that the existing critical outcomes are retained and used to guide the overall learning experience and the development of all learning programmes. Their role is crucial for guiding the curriculum design process.

Learning area statements

Each of the learning areas in C2005 currently has between seven and ten specific outcomes. In some cases these are outcomes that relate to the subjects or disciplines of the learning area, in other cases they are social goals or values, and in yet other cases they are similar in spirit and expression to the Critical Outcomes. The specific outcomes, in many cases, do not express the cognitive distinctiveness of the learning areas.

The National Curriculum Statement should re-affirm the distinctive nature of each learning area through the learning area statements. These should define the learning area and its essential features thus showing what is distinctive or unique about the learning area (PASA submission). The existing specific outcomes could, where meaningful, inform the design of the learning area statement but the learning area statement should pin down the broad learning goals of each learning area. See Appendix 3 for an illustrative example of a learning area statement for the languages learning area.

Learning outcomes and assessment standards

The National Curriculum Statement should indicate which knowledge, within each learning area, should be taught and learnt when, in what sequence, and at which level of competence. The Review Committee proposes that this be done through learning outcomes and assessment standards for each learning programme by grade. The learning outcomes (content, concepts and skills) and assessment standards should be presented together by learning programme and grade.

The learning outcomes by grade should:

• specify the sequence of the core concepts, content and skills to be taught in each learning programme at each grade level.
• represent an integrated skill, concept and content statement of the projected learning outcomes.

The assessment standards should:

• describe the expected level and range of performance for each of the learning outcomes for each grade level.
• provide assessment exemplars which detail what kinds of tasks can be set, what assessment strategies should be adopted, and the kind of answers that should be expected
• provide guidance on summative and formative assessment.

There are two very important principles which should inform the development of the learning outcomes and assessment standards.

• The learning outcomes should be ‘designed down´ from the ‘destination of the GET´. This means that the first step in the development of the learning outcomes is the specification of the Grade 9 exit outcomes (knowledge, skills and values) and specification of the exit assessment standards: what will be assessed at what level of detail and complexity. The exit certificate requirements should be linked to the entrance requirements for the FET.
• Learning outcomes and assessment standards should be seen as the minimum or core concepts, content and values that should be covered in each grade in each learning programme. They by no means suggest that this is all that should be taught but they indicate what is essential to ensure progress through the GET band and to ensure the attainment of the high levels of knowledge and skills required for lifelong learning.

It is important to note, as we did in Chapter Three, that different areas of knowledge have different requirements in terms of sequence and progression. Some learning areas contain an overt and established ladder of concepts and skills that must be organised in a sequential and phased way to facilitate cognitive access. This is particularly true of mathematics.

In other learning areas conceptual progression may not be as dependent on particular sequencing of content and concepts. However it is important that the learning outcomes specify the content and concepts to be covered in these learning areas. This will ensure that

• there is not undue repetition of content and concepts
• that key content on important issues such as HIV/AIDS and entrepeneurship are covered
• that key issues are dealt with at increasing levels of complexity and detail

An illustrative example of learning outcomes and assessment standards is presented in Appendix 4.

In conclusion, the National Curriculum Statement contains four key design features which replace the eight design features of C2005. Table 8 demonstrates the key differences between the structure and design of C2005 and C21.

Table 8: Differences between C2005 and the revised Curriculum 21

Terminology in the National Statement

The terminology used in the curriculum document should be clearly defined. Accessibility and clarity should be a fundamental feature of all curriculum statements.

TEACHER ORIENTATION, TRAINING AND SUPPORT

Chapter Four highlighted weaknesses in training which required:

• Strengthening and adapting the model/s of training and the duration of training
• Addressing the quality of the trainers and training materials
• Improving the quality of the content and methodology of training
• Providing for follow-up in-class support

The proposals for improving training can accordingly be grouped into two main categories linked to long and short-term strategies. The long-term strategy is based on the view that preparation of teachers properly belongs in the higher education sector and that this sector should become oriented towards training teachers for the new curriculum. The short-term strategy assumes the continuing short-term need for training but on an improved basis. Short-term training needs to be improved and built into a long-term training strategy. The dominant cascading model has weaknesses, and so needs to be strengthened. Current ‘cluster´ and ‘schools-based´ models in use which adapt the cascade model to make it more effective should be supported. The proposals made here build on the proposals made in the submission by the DOE.

Once the National Curriculum Statement has been approved, training agencies should orient their programmes accordingly.

Recommendations

Long-term

It is important that preparation of teachers for C2005 occur within an overall, integrated teacher development framework, strategy and plan. This requires:

• A co-ordinated national strategy for preparation of teachers which links pre-service education and in-service training of teachers and teacher educators with the Norms and Standards for Educators framework, labour agreements such as the 80 hours INSET, and support policies like the Education Management Development Policy Framework.
• The statutory location of teacher preparation in institutions of higher education. It is crucial that higher education (universities and technikons) is involved in the planning of the curriculum and support for its implementation. At national level, higher education is usually left out of debates around C2005; institutions providing teacher education and training usually come on board after plans have been drawn and implementation is underway.
• The development of partnerships between provincial departments should be encouraged with NGOs and tertiary institutions to strengthen ongoing professional support and development at school level.

Short-term

Short-term measures are required to improve existing plans. They comprise recommendations for the strengthening of the cascade model and providing greater support to teachers:

• Identify, select and train a special cadre of national, provincial and district curriculum trainers including subject advisers and staff rendered in excess at colleges. These teams could work collaboratively with NGOs. This could serve to avoid the problems inherent in the cascade model of teacher training and to ensure quality and uniformity. This is particularly true in the area of assessment, reporting and recording.
• These roving national and provincial core teams should be provided with intensive and regular training in assessment, record keeping, promotions, and team teaching, developing supplementary materials and policy interpretation. They should be deployed to work directly with school clusters providing on-site support to teachers and to serve as mentors. Quality assurance procedures should be developed to ensure a more standard quality of training throughout the country. All trainers should be accredited through an appropriate process.
• Mount a vigorous, targeted advocacy programme for reorientation for the Revised C2005.
• Support the formation of school clusters in every province by identifying lead teachers (HODs could be used) to co-ordinate each cluster. Provide some incentive to these lead teachers.
• Train lead teachers to provide on-site support and development. This could be done by identifying one teacher from every school to participate in a six month intensive accredited course at a college or a university with replacement teachers provided. Such a course should focus on :

• learning outcomes and deepening content knowledge in the different learning areas
• sharpening understanding and use of assessment
• using textbooks and designing supplementary learning materials
• peer supervision.

• Commission a set of high quality training materials to guide the orientation and training of teachers for each phase. These materials should

• mediate the new revised national curriculum statement
• provide short exemplars of lessons for all learning programmes
• deal with different approaches to assessment, provide assessment exemplars, include clear formats for recording and reporting
• include training in the evaluation, selection and requisitioning of LSMs
• provide guidelines regarding management issues such as timetabling and procurement of LSMs.

LEARNING SUPPORT MATERIALS

Recommendations

General

• A prerequisite for a successful LSMs strategy is strong alignment between the curriculum framework, teacher development and the development and supply of LSMs. A report should be commissioned annually on the degree to which this alignment has been achieved.
• The central role played by textbooks in addition to other LSMs effecting curriculum change should be recognised and affirmed and the requisite investment in these resources should be made.

Quality and Use of LSMs

Publishing

• It is critical that the DOE produces a clear National Curriculum Statement for publishers to follow and that textbooks are produced and evaluated in line with this statement. The National Curriculum Statement should be made available to publishers at least two years before textbook orders are due to be placed.

Training

• Teachers need to be trained in the evaluation, selection and use of textbooks in the context of the curriculum framework. This should be done in a manner that reaches every teacher and should be completed well in advance of the ordering of textbooks by schools.
• ‘Macro planning´ (see p. 75) has led to poor educational practice and undermined the role textbooks can play in assisting teachers to understand and fulfill the requirements of the curriculum. ‘Macro planning´ should be phased out and discouraged in the future.
• To ensure quality of curriculum support materials, responsibility for developing these materials should shift to dedicated units or institutes as described in the White Paper on Education and Training in the short-term. A set budget should be made available for this purpose and the process should operate within reasonable time-frames.

Reading materials

• Reading skills are the basis of all learning and every effort must be made to ensure that children are able to read by the end of the Foundation Phase. Special funding should be sought by the Minister of Education for the provision of readers and reading schemes for all Foundation Phase classrooms. This is in addition to other LSMs required by Foundation Phase learners. These materials should be renewed every four years and their cost should be built into the Medium Term Expenditure Framework.

Availability of LSMs

Budget

• The Council for Education Ministers (CEM), under the leadership of the Minister of Education, should ensure that an appropriate budget is set aside and ring-fenced for LSMs in every province. This may involve re-interpretation of the financial arrangements in the provinces concerning block grants. This budget should be determined by multiplying the amount per learner determined by the Norms and Standards for School Funding by the number of learners per province. Estimated expenditure on LSMs should be made available to all stakeholders at the beginning of each financial year (See Appendix 5).
• The stationery budget should be separated from the budget for textbooks and should be no more than 15% of the total budget for LSMs. This should also be overseen by the CEM.
• The budget for LSMs is directly influenced by the rate of retrieval of textbooks from learners at the end of each year. The current low rate of textbook retrieval is therefore a key weakness and must be improved. The rate of retrieval per school should be quantified on a province-wide basis and all parents, principals and governing bodies should be made directly accountable for the retrieval process.

Approval processes

• The provincial textbook approval processes are unreliable. We recommend that the open list currently used in the Western Cape and Gauteng be extended to all provinces. At the same time, however, we propose a national recommended list compiled by an advisory panel appointed by the Minister of Education for each learning area. This panel should evaluate all learning materials as either not recommended, recommended or highly recommended. This advisory panel should be made up of recognised curriculum and learning area specialists and teachers. The list should be published annually to assist teachers in making their choices.

Delivery

• In the medium term, each province should consider implementing a system which allows a direct relationship between schools and suppliers such that tender procedures are not required. However, where tender procedures continue to be required, efforts should be made to streamline the process in order to avoid the delays currently experienced. Penalties should be imposed on suppliers who fail to fulfill the terms of their contracts.

Management

• Each provincial Head of Department should establish a project team to co-ordinate and manage the supply of LSMs and the project manager should act as a single point of accountability. This project team should be directly responsible to the Head of Department. The DOE should continue to monitor the procurement process in each of the provinces.
• An inter-provincial committee on the supply of LSMs should be established. One of the key tasks of this committee should be to co-ordinate activities at key points in the supply chain, e.g. ordering of textbooks from publishers.

NATIONAL, PROVINCIAL AND DISTRICT-LEVEL SUPPORT

Recommendations

The following three broad recommendations are made in order to enhance national, provincial and district-level support for the implementation of Curriculum 2005:

• reorganisation of structures, roles and functions
• reinforcement of personnel, and
• provision of necessary resources.

These broad recommendations are elaborated on below.

Reorganise

We recognise that Project 4 of Programme 5 of Tirisano seeks a restructuring of the system by December 2001. Our recommendations highlight organisational issues that need to be addressed to strengthen the implementation of C2005 in its present form and in its restructured form as recommended earlier in the report.

The following four specific recommendations are made in relation to reorganisation.

• All functionaries dealing with C2005 at national and provincial levels should be relocated within a single directorate as a means of minimising line function conflicts. The organograms should also be structured to anticipate the introduction of FET in 2003. Clear processes for transversal actions with other directorates at national and provincial levels should also be described. In the interim period, regular planning meetings (at least monthly) should be convened between those separate directorates involved in the support of C2005 for purposes of harmonising work programmes.
• The unit driving C2005 in the DOE (presently a directorate with many other functions) should have its status enhanced as a mechanism for inserting the centrality of C2005 as a core business of the DOE. This could either be done through the location of this unit in the office of the Director General, or through the creation of a directorate dealing exclusively with C2005.
• Further more, each C2005 functionary should have a clearly defined job function on the basis of which s/he will be able to plan action, evaluate her/his progress and collaborate with other functionaries within and across line functions.
• Reorganisation should also ensure a vertical alignment of national, provincial and regional/district structures in order to facilitate co-ordination between these levels of delivery. Related to this is a need for the DOE to put in place its C2005 planning and training programmes well in advance in order to minimise reported clashes of national and provincial programmes.

Reinforce personnel

The following three specific recommendations should help reinforce personnel in support of C2005 implementations:

• All unfilled approved posts in curriculum units at national, provincial and regional/district levels should be checked for relevance and then advertised/re-advertised and filled by the end of 2000.
• National norms and standards for numbers, roles and functions of provincial and district C2005 support staff should be established. This should lead to a reasonable percentage of appointed curriculum and support officials to be exclusively allocated to C2005. Within such a cadre, specific numbers of support officials should deal exclusively with either GET or FET (or even foundation, intermediate or senior phase). Perhaps the issue of establishing provincial institutes of curriculum development as suggested in the first White Paper could be re-visited in this regard.
• Curriculum and support officials dealing with C2005 should have their administrative load lightened through the allocation of administrative personnel re-deployed from other units at provincial head office and at regional/district levels.

While making these recommendations, we recognise that C2005 post-training support to teachers provided by provincial and regional/district can be improved but will never be sufficient. In that regard it is recommended that

• in the medium term, energies be spent on the development of school management as curriculum managers and on-site support agents. Initial and regular development programmes for provincial and district managers of C2005 implementation should be put in place. In the long-term, appropriate PRESET and INSET programmes should be put in place to develop a teaching corps that will increasingly need less support from outside the school. Dual mode delivery could be used to offer these programmes.
• Provincial curriculum and support officials should also convene regular meetings (at least twice a year) with non-governmental education development agencies and education institutions in their respective or neighbouring provinces for networking towards sustainable support of C2005 at all levels of delivery.

Provide necessary resources

To address the resource problems of transport and funding identified in Chapter Seven, the following specific recommendations are made:

• In the medium term, efficient mechanisms should be put in place to solicit tenders for the supply of vehicles for C2005 support ventures. In the long-term, a certain number of appropriate vehicles should be provided for purposes of supporting C2005 at provincial and district levels. These vehicles should be augmented by the granting of state vehicle subsidies or car allowances for those officials whose support work requires them to travel regularly. Strict accountability procedures should be put in place to prevent misuse.
• In the short-term, access to the Education Policy Reserve Fund (EPRF) in the provinces should be simplified and, to some extent, decentralised to relevant district units.
• In the medium to long-term, norms and standards for the funding of C2005 curriculum and support activities at both national and provincial levels should be established. Provincial budgeting has to earmark C2005 funding.

SCOPE AND PACE OF IMPLEMENTATION: GRADES 4 & 8

General

It is clear from the work of the Review Committee that implementation of Curriculum 2005 cannot continue in its present form. It is therefore recommended that the revised, streamlined curriculum proposed in this report be phased in as soon as possible.

This curriculum should be implemented with due regard to the pressures already present in the system and the time required for changes not only in the production of new curriculum documentation but also in teacher orientation, training and development, learner support materials and provincial support. The experience of implementing Curriculum 2005 within tight time-frames suggests that a more flexible time-table is required in order for all aspects to be addressed thoroughly and thoughtfully.

Short-term

• In order to minimise disruption, Grades 4 and 8 should continue in 2001. Grade 8 should continue without the Economic and Management Sciences and Technology learning areas. These are taught in very few schools and on the whole without equipment and by teachers not specifically trained for the task. It is therefore advisable that they be discontinued
• The National Curriculum Statement proposed above should be completed as soon as possible. The Review Committee recommends June 2001 as a completion date
• C21 should begin to be introduced into the system from mid-2001. A special project team should be appointed to manage the phasing out of C2005 and the phasing in of C21
• An advocacy and orientation process should be conducted by a team especially assigned for this task from 2001
• Training institutions and teachers should orient their teaching to the new curriculum as soon as the National Curriculum Statement is approved.

Medium-term

Implementation of the new curriculum requires a multi-pronged approach. In the medium term:

• Implementation of the new design structure should occur by phase in the foundation and intermediate phases and by grade in the senior phase. Implementation should be by grade in the senior phase because of its complexity; grade 7 still exists in some primary schools while grades 8 and 9 are in junior secondary schools.
• The General Education and Training Certificate will be awarded in 2006. It is recommended that implementation of the GETC in 2006 should guide introduction of Curriculum 21 in the preceding years and in Grades 7, 8 and 9. This recommendation is based on the principle of ‘designing down´ from the exit level level requirements of the GETC.
• Grade 7 students who received an outcomes-based programme in 2000 may be disadvantaged by current certification procedures which will award a certificate only after a nine year programme. It is proposed that a special arrangement be entered into with SAQA for these students to ensure that they are not disadvantaged. This arrangement could take the form of an exemption from the 2002 GETC.
• Curriculum 21 should be introduced in the Intermediate and Senior Phases when appropriate.
• Curriculum 21 should be introduced into teacher orientation and training programmes from 2002 onwards.

Contents   |   Chapter 1    |   Chapter 2   |   Chapter 3   |    Chapter 4   |   Chapter 5  

Chapter 6   |   Chapter 7    |   Chapter 8   |   Chapter 9   |    Appendicies