‘ Stop obsession with numbers, help kids read ’
NATIONAL Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa) blamed provincial departments of education for some of the problems experienced in the basic education system.
The union’s executive officer Hema Hariram lashed out at provincial departments for using strange tactics to violate policies at the expense of pupils and educators.
“They don’t adhere to national policies and do as they please. For an example, there is an allocation for funding for teachers’ training but organisations on the ground have reported that they aren’t getting funds to train teachers. The effects of that is [a] teacher will stay ill-equipped to give proper training to pupils,” Hariram said.
“Evidence has shown that our teachers don’t know how to teach.”
She said that it was common for departments to exaggerate on paper the number of courses and workshops that teachers had attended to avoid backlash from the national office.
“Provincial leaders in education need to be held accountable for decisions they make, we owe it to our children. How do they (leaders) expect teachers to teach complicated subjects like mathematics and language if they are underqualified,” she charged.
Hariram slammed the four external exams that pupils were made to write during the course of the year claiming that these were time-consuming.
“We are a country obsessed with numbers. Studies have shown that tests are not the best way to teach our pupils hence we still have Grade 3 pupils that can barely read or write but they find themselves going to the next grade.” She said teachers weren’t coping. “They spend so much time preparing for tests and marking papers instead of teaching.
“We ’ ve done enough tests, let’s now teach.”
Most representatives at the Sowetan Dialogues commended Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga ’ s acceptance that South Africa education was characterised by “pockets of disasters”. But Hariram said this was not enough. “The minister has exceeded on her promise to provide libraries to make children read, but this is pointless when those libraries don’t have books for children that still cannot read.
“It’s up to us as a society to teach our children how to read before they even get into the education system,” Hariram said.