School initiatives in Grahamstown show the way forward
The budget was a sober reflection of almost a decade of fiscal mismanagement. Years of excessive government spending, feeble economic growth, widespread corruption and a related weakened capacity for tax collection combined to create a situation in which painful cuts in spending and increases in taxes were unavoidable.
The government is betting that the negative short-term implications for economic growth will be outweighed by greater consumer and investment confidence following the resignation of president Jacob Zuma. But even the increased receipts from value-added tax and personal taxes will not generate enough funds to meet planned needs.
Future government spending has been cut by R85bn over the next three years. Increased spending will only become possible if the economy grows rapidly for several years.
So, while spending on tertiary education will increase as the government honours its promise to scrap fees for students from lowerincome households, allocations to provinces for schooling have been cut. This will compromise efforts to improve primary and secondary education.
Many commentators have shown that despite the national obsession with the annual matric results, half the pupils in each grade 10 cohort do not write matric.
Increasing the number of pupils still in formal education by grade 12 and providing meaningful qualifications for those exiting the system earlier are key to a more successful and inclusive future.
Supporting interventions to tackle these weaknesses provides an opportunity for individuals and businesses stirred to action by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent “send me” call.
Improving the quality of education is often seen as an ambition that can be realised only in the medium term. Supportive interventions by effective nongovernmental organisations are the shortterm hope. Much greater financial support is needed for these efforts to help transform public schooling to be dramatically expanded.
The Gadra Matric School in Grahamstown is one such example. It provides a oneyear second chance for youngsters who either failed matric or did not achieve the high-level passes required for tertiary study.
The school achieved a 100% pass for the third successive year in 2017. About 106 of the 164 students received bachelor passes, 52 of whom also met the more stringent requirements to enrol at Rhodes University, confirming the school’s status as the university’s largest feeder school.
In another targeted programme, 100 Rhodes University student volunteers mentor 200 matric pupils at three local no-fee schools.
The number of pupils from these schools achieving bachelor passes rose from 16 at the end of their grade 11 year to 52 when they wrote matric 12 months later.
Gadra piloted an initiative in 2017 to improve reading in primary schools. Even before the Pirls international study revealed the poor reading levels of 10-year-old South Africans, this intervention targeted grade 3s whose average reading ability was one and a half years behind where it ought to have been.
After a year-long remedial intervention in a carefully planned partnership with the school and its teachers, the average reading ability of the group caught up to the standard expected at the end of grade 3.
The project plans to replicate this achievement in 2018 with reading interventions for pupils in grades R, 2 and 4 to
IN ANOTHER PROGRAMME, 100 RHODES UNIVERSITY STUDENT VOLUNTEERS MENTOR 200 MATRIC PUPILS AT THREE SCHOOLS
strengthen capacity across the school. Similar interventions are needed countrywide. It is partnerships like this, working in collaboration with public schools, that will help power the large-scale, systemic changes the education system needs.
This requires that South Africans and local businesses fund these and other successful interventions. SA’s poor ranking on almost all international measures of education performance cannot be ignored.
In 1994, South Africans paid a once-off surcharge on tax to cover the cost of the first democratic election. We need to consider paying again to ensure the second chance to pull the country out of poverty succeeds.