Education department's response to pandemic baffling
Sometimes you can only shake your head in disbelief at the preposterous actions of the department of basic education (DBE) in response to the pandemic.
Yes, understood, there must be compassion in the ways in which we mitigate the effects of the pandemic on children s
’ learning and, indeed, children s
’ futures.
As one of the leaders in Umalusi (the council responsible for examination standards) correctly put it, you cannot penalise pupils for the year in which they were born; in other words, no child in school right now planned to be part of a pandemic generation whose academic learning was so suddenly interrupted by the coronavirus.
But in the exercise of compassion you also need to ensure competence through the assessment standards, or the very logic of the education system collapses which is to produce
— well-educated graduates who are competent as citizens and workers.
It is an act of compassion to require the automatic promotion of all children in grades 1-3. Well done.
It takes the pressure off teachers and children (and parents, by the way) and frees up the already limited time left over for teaching rather than preparing, conducting, and marking examination scripts.
But why only grades 1-3? This is completely arbitrary. Why not also the intermediate phase (4-6) or better still, the entire primary school grades? Let me be clear: there is no educationally sound reason for limiting automatic promotion to the first three grades of school.
It is also a defensible action on the part of the DBE to allow schools to give pupils in grades 4-9 up to 5% extra marks in no more than three subjects if this allows them to pass. But why only these six grades? Why not all of them? Why not 10%? This is where the bureaucratic flailing, in full public view, becomes so embarrassing, this hit-ormiss approach to assessment.
The main problem with the extra marks approach is “” where it is coming from. We already allow for extra marks. We have a low bar for success (remember the 30 and 40% passing standard).
The DBE has long lost its credibility to be trusted in setting rigorous standards for all our children.
Why is this especially important in a pandemic year? Because the systemic problems in the school system do not go away with this band-aid approach to a much scarier set of challenges.
I am convinced that the South African public has no idea about the severity of impact of Covid-19 on our long-term educational futures and, from that, the social stability of our country.
Two new studies, from outside the country, should raise the alarm at home.
One of them projects the impact of this year s school closures
’ on academic achievement and found massive reductions in learning gains in reading (6368%) and mathematics (3750%) compared to a typical school year.
The other study, of 4.4 million children, found that all pupils did worse in mathematics and reading (on average, by 5-10 percentile points) but that children in high poverty schools
“” did much worse than those in better-off schools. In other words, pre-Covid inequalities will get much worse once everyone receives their shot in the arm.
Our school system right now is like the Titanic going down in icy, deep waters while the DBE rearranges the chairs on the upper decks as civil servants play soothing music for the passengers comfort.
’
Here s the really bad news.
’
The UN predicts that worldwide about 24 million pupils will drop out as a result of the pandemic. South African projections of 300,000 are conservative estimates.
Almost every school reported a loss of pupils when the phased reopening happened. And while that loss might be explained by the choice of online options among middle-class and wealthy parents, for poor families the low return rates are more likely to be the result of dropping out of school forever. Now read the DBE s palliative
’ actions on automatic promotion and added percentage points in the context of such devastation.
This is the important message which the public needs to grapple with during the official panic about marks: you cannot fix a broken system by tinkering with assessment. You certainly cannot repair anything by lowering the assessment standards. The entire school system needs to be fixed.
The pandemic will come and go. We will still need competent graduates as electricians and chefs as well as teachers and doctors. Yes, assessment needs to be fair (equitable) but it also has to be valid.
Right now, it is neither.
Our school system right now is like the Titanic going down in icy, deep waters while the DBE rearranges the chairs on the upper decks