South Africa’s flawed promises of Outcome Based Education (O.B.E) and its Outcome based Assessment (O.B.A), which is soon to be eradicated, that was implemented a decade ago, in the year 2000, after several years apartheid education policies were abolished and the new political dispensation with the birth of South Africa’s Democracy and the Constitution was formed.
The Mandela and Mbeki era heralded a review on our system of education and how educators imposed new education standards and its impact in the classroom, as oppose to apartheid, segregationist Bantu education policies and classroom principles; blamed for not producing enough free-educated-thinkers within the system. However over the years, it proved to be a flawed education system of learning both in implementation and acquiring learners with an excellent learning tool.
Outcome Based Education and Outcome Based Assessment was introduce to change the learners’ school environment, awareness to what is being taught and teacher’s assessment proficiency, respectively. The then new, teacher to learner interaction, under the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) together with the Department of Education, aimed to enhance individual learner techniques with specialized attention given to; Critical outcomes, Specific Outcomes, Assessment criteria, Range statement and Performance criteria, from each learner. B. Malan in a review conducted in 1997 said that “one of the aims why O.B.E was introduced in South Africa was to create opportunities for life-long learning to all South Africans. At the ultimate end of the learning process, the child must be able to do something to demonstrate that he/she has learned something.”
The philosophy of O.B.E is base on that “All learners can learn and succeed, but not on the same day, in the same way”. This technique was to encourage the learner’s authentic external behavior, their social reconstructive or transformation skills, critical thinking skills and pragmatic knowledge. With the learner taking charge of their own education, with the teacher mainly playing a role as a facilitator, and Education Department providing Provincial and National, quarterly and final examination papers. Aimed at doing away with the forceful devastating learning segregationist style of teaching, which commanded students that they had to know their learning material now and know it well.
The failure of the system of Outcome Based Education and Outcome Based Assessment, according to Mr. Noko Ramoroka’s extensively documented assessment dissertation of Outcome Based Education, conducted in 2005, for the Department of Curriculum Studies Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria; is attributed to firstly by, the educator’s, teacher’s or facilitator’s indecisiveness and lack of knowledge at implementing the Outcome Base Curriculum to the learners, due to various teaching methods to cater for different learning methods or styles and avoid boring lessons, therefore enabling individual learner attention. Secondly, to its contribution to the National drop of good literacy levels amongst youngsters during the phase of Outcome Base Education, thus aiding to cultivating a generation of young people who cannot read or write or calculate properly. Thirdly, its failure to increase National Matriculation result levels and failure to produce expected University standard students entrance.
According to the Department of Education’s Facilitator Manual in 2002, suggestions were made that educators should make clear, what will be assessed by the end of the learning process and plan how assessment will happen. The education department and facilitator were expected to determine the educator pupil ratio (number of pupils in the classroom), the impact that it has on O.B.E implementation by teachers; To determine whether the way in which learners are seated allows learners participation and whether a conclusive learning space is created; To determine whether educators follow different teaching strategies and have changed from direct instruction to a facilitative role; To determine how educators assess learners’ work and whether they follow multiple strategies when they assess learners work; to determine whether educators still dominate in the teaching-learning situation; To determine whether educators use relevant resources to help learner to achieve outcomes; To determine whether there is evidence that the educator accommodates O.B.E premises and principles in the classroom practices.
Outcomes Based Education incorporated South Africa’s National Qualification Frameworks (NQF), which has three broad bands of education: General education and Training, Further Education and Training, and Higher Education and Training.
It has been extensively documented that since 2007, South Africa has in the range of about 12 million students, more than 360,000 teachers and 28,000 schools. School-goers are expected to attend school for at least 13 years with the “exceptions of grade 0, 10, 11 and 12”. Traditional universities offer degrees that are more theoretically-oriented (University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, University of the Witwatersrand). Universities of Technology on the other hand offer degrees in technical fields that involve various practical applications (Central University of Technology, Cape Peninsula University of Technology).
During the tenure of Professor Kader Asmal as Minister of Education, Curriculum 2005 was already in its helms. Professor Asmal’s greatest challenges was to oversee the merging in of O.B.E into both GET (General Education and Training) and FET (Further Education and Training) systems of learning for further education starting from grade 10. A listening in campaign, to hear the views of society, was one of the resources that the Minister of Education utilized to strengthen the course to Outcomes Based Education or Curriculum 2005. A different curriculum in subjects such as mathematics, physical science, life science, technology and communication were approved and circuited Nationally.
Some rural areas of our country are still littered by a shortage of teachers, classrooms, in some cases a whole school, text books, proper sanitation and a desperately needed transportation system to ferry distant based pupils to and from school daily. These concerns have for years contributed to many rural school-goers dropping out, and some succumbing to a destined dry life in their remote villages.
Recently, government and the education ministry was bombarded with teacher salary increment demands, which led to union affiliated teachers, and none union affiliated teachers, from all provinces of our country downing pens, pencils and chalk to strike on their grievances. Some teachers called for an improvement in the implementation of education system, and the challenging conditions that teachers are faced with daily, including disobedient children in their classrooms.
The system of O.B.E has failed South African school-goers, their teachers, their parents and the South African Government and Department of Education. Products of Outcome Based Education are not only appalling at syntax, constructing well formulated sentences, they cannot solve complex mathematical problems and have proved to be unemployable in the job market. Most parents blame this shortcoming of this system of education to technology, at how youngsters use abbreviated messages not only outside the classroom, but also in their classroom written work and forgetting the culture of reading and writing.
The education system needs improvement in implementation, and drastic changes over the coming years and many educators have reiterated the need for such a change – others argue that oversees the education system of the Republic of South Africa. If the system is to be changed and how effective the proposed system will be, remains to be seen.
WORD TO A NEW SYSTEM OF EDUCATION REVOLUTION
By Linda Sakazi Thwala
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