'Education is below standard'

2009-08-13 17:00

Johannesburg - Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga acknowledged on Thursday that the quality of education was below standard, while a leading teacher union warned that "impressive policies" would not get the work done.

"The ghost of bad education continues to haunt us," Motshekga told an education conference in Midrand.

"There’s little doubt that we need to improve the quality of education."

This was one of the reasons why the new education portfolio had been divided into two - basic education and tertiary education, she said.

"The idea being, to enable government to respond to the complex [education] system we have."

The government "would like to improve learner outcomes by 2014", she said.

But some schools were still grappling with the most basic of problems, such as a lack of learning materials like textbooks, Motshekga said.

Impressive

Earlier, at the same conference, Jon Lewis, research officer of the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), said the quality of education would not be improved by "impressive policy statements.

"The policy statements [by the department of education] were impressive to read in the abstract... but for many schools it was mission impossible.
The conditions of work lack equipment and resources," said Lewis.

"There is now a national policy framework for teacher development, but it remains a framework. It has not achieved concrete delivery."

Lewis was speaking at a panel discussion reviewing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on national education which was made public late last year.

Lewis said teachers were often ill-equipped to deal with the classroom situation.

"We have a vicious cycle... we have too many poorly trained teachers, resulting in demoralisation and low self-esteem," said Lewis.

There were many weaknesses in the education system, he said.

- SAPA