New policy changes for SA education

The Department of Education has introduced five new policies that are expected to yield positive results in the country’s education system. 

The Department’s proposed changes include

• the lowering of teacher pupil ratios,
• the rearranging of districts into smaller more manageable areas,
• the expansion of Further Education and Training Colleges,
• the rollout of internet connectivity to every school in the country by 2013
• a general education certificate Grade 9 pupils. 

The national certificate examination, which comes into effect at the end of 2009, will ensure that those that decide to leave school after the grade do so with a national certificate. It will also help schools assess the readiness of pupils to go on to senior-certification level.

Pupils will write a national paper for English and mathematics as well as internal exams for other subjects.

Education expert Professor Jonathan Jansen told the Pretoria News that he believed that it was a very good idea to give Grade 9s a general certificate, however he expressed concerns that the other policy changes may have little impact on improving education. 

"The problem is that none of these things begin to address the very serious problem of children experiencing a different education system depending on where they are placed. What we need to be worrying about is getting more children to stay in school, and those that do stay need to perform better," he said.

Delivering a speech at Wits, Pandor admitted that the South African education system still faced many challenges. “We are a system that underperforms and fails to support learners to acquire key skills for learning. Our performance in mathematics and science subjects is dismal and we continue to be faced by inadequate infrastructure, poor and inefficient administration in some provinces and disaffected and demotivated teachers,” she said.

Pandor however believes that there are also some positive developments that have been achieved in the past years. Among these is the increase in access to schooling for black children as well as the significant