Listen to the teachers, Angie

FINALLY Angie Motshekga has admitted to the failure of South Africa’s educational system (“System failing pupils – Angie”, September 4). What took her so long to discover this?

I have taught through all the educational systems: the old, OBE, RNCS and now Caps. I am a qualified mathematics teacher who is passionate about helping the weaker children.

I’ve developed methods, teaching aids, etc over the years to get them to understand basic concepts which they hadn’t yet completely mastered or understood by the time they got to my class (11-year-olds). With Caps, these poor children are forced to jump around subject matter without us teachers being allowed to give more time to reinforce concepts that haven’t been grasped.

Add, subtract, round off, divide, multiply, fractions, measurement, data, add, more fractions, geometry, multiply, more data, rate, etc. We are even given the time frame in which concepts must be taught.

What about those poor children who just don’t grasp the basic number concept? How can they manipulate numbers when they don’t know what they’re working with!

At meetings when this is raised, we are told: “Try and go back and teach what they don’t grasp”. Heaven help us! We just don’t have the time other than break or odd afternoons when we don’t have extra-murals.

At least with OBE, I taught maths in ability groups, accelerating the top group of children and assisting the weaker children. In my classes, not one child failed maths.

It’s a different story these days as we are so pressurised to complete topics within a certain time period, that there is no time to do much remediating. No wonder South Africa is near the bottom in the world’s mathematics ranking.

Coupled with that, this Education Department deems me unemployable as I happened to resign, not retire, from teaching, only to return as I missed the children and teaching is my passion. I amin a governing body position earning far less than any government teacher.

However, this would never detract from my passion to teach, but I am forced to look abroad to teach to earn a living salary.

So yes Angie Motshekga, there is definitely something drastically wrong in South Africa’s education system. Stop promoting those who under-perform and giving jobs to cronies. Listen to the voices of your teachers and not all the theorists!

Concerned teacher, Port Elizabeth