Learn to consult
THE much-contested National Assessments are back, this time in terms much more agreeable to teachers’ unions. Teachers’ unions have won the battle to have these written every three years instead of every year.
We presume this means their name, Annual National Assessments (ANA), will now also have to change.
The sad thing about all this is that it had to take righteous indignation for sense to finally prevail on the Education Department.
The pattern of behaviour by the state, where civil society is forced to throw its toys everywhere before it is heard, is unnecessary.
So is the state’s tendency to seek praise for being responsive when it is finally pushed to change its mind.
There must be lessons learnt from the fallout and the newly founded common ground.
The first and most important is that the state must never assume to have monopoly on smart ideas. It must at all times consult all relevant stakeholders, in this case teachers’ unions.
Education policy must not be imposed from the top. Threats of damnation will not work, just as they did not work when the Education Department threatened fire and brimstone on schools and headmasters who did not carry out the department’s instruction to have the tests.
Another important lesson that the state and society at large should take from this is not to assume that an idea is bad purely on account of who sponsors it.
Many, including the DA, stopped short of interrogating what was wrong with the ANA as they then stood and instead sought to cast the South African Democratic Teachers union as the obstructionist.
Going forward, the state and the unions must assume one another’s goodwill and seek to work together for the best interest of our children.
Where there are differences of opinion, as there shall be, none should think about flexing their muscles as the first option.
Posturing and gamesmanship can only delay the progress of what we all agree on – access to quality education is the best hope of ensuring that our country lives up to its enormous potential.