Education department’s software choice riles chamber

CAPE TOWN — The Department of Basic Education’s decision to standardise software programs used for computer-related subjects in schools is “indicative of the deteriorating state of ICT (information and communication technologies) education and a wake-up call to industry to urgently intervene”, the Cape Chamber of Commerce said yesterday.

The chamber said it will begin lobbying for a re-evaluation of the decision at national level.

The department sent a circular to provincial education departments, training service providers, independent schools and teacher associations stating what programs schools must use for computer application technology (CAT) and information technology (IT) subjects.

The circular states that from January, the department “will only use Microsoft Office to … implement the CAT curriculum and assess CAT” as part of the matric examination. It says: “The programming language to be implemented in the IT curriculum will be standardised using Delphi.” Four provinces — the Western Cape, Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga — use Delphi. The remaining five use Java.

The chamber said concerns raised by various stakeholders included “the lack of industry consultation, the unintended consequences of the decision, not least of which is the anticompetitive nature of the decision and how this benefits two large US corporations at the expense of others; the fact that this move is in direct conflict with the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) policy; and the concern that this decision will relegate our learners to a future of global irrelevance in the marketplace”.

The chamber also said concerns were raised about the process and whether the commercial implications of choosing commercial software on an exclusive basis meant that this should have been dealt with as an open tender.

“Standardisation on one technology or programming language for education and assessment in computing and software skills is problematic. It is much like trying to study medicine based on the kidney as the only part of the human anatomy,” the chamber’s digital portfolio committee chairman, Roderick Lim Banda, said. “If the issue is a lack of teachers and resources or the need for standardising teaching and assessments, we feel that there are alternatives,” he said.

The Department of Basic Education has defended its decision to standardise software programs, saying this will address various problems including “complexities in synchronising two different programming languages”. It has also reportedly said that using two languages was problematic for pupils who have had to transfer to schools in different provinces where another programming language was used.