John Matisonn: How do Western Cape schools compare?

Key topics:Western Cape leads in school building, recovery programs, and assessments.Reading comprehension still low; issues with teaching thinking and language switch.Budget cuts hit provinces differently; Western Cape managed teacher levels wisely..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up for the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.The Western Cape builds more schools faster than any other province, has the largest post-Covid learning recovery programme, is the only province with annual systemic assessments in grades 3, 6 and 9, and a school evaluation authority, MEC David Maynier told the Cape Town press club.On the other hand, educationists still fault the province’s schools for insufficient focus on teaching children to think, and the abrupt switch from mother tongue to English in the fourth grade. These are among the reasons too many children still leave fourth grade unable to read for meaning. One useful insight into the difference in performance from other provinces emerged from different responses to the budget cuts that affected all provinces last year. At the same time, the department made adding grade R compulsory, without providing funding for this. Only the Western Cape cut teachers, though has vowed next year will not see more cuts. Maynier says though the decision was painful and regrettable, outcomes in other provinces suffered from lack of planning when they left the status quo despite the budget cuts. By keeping teacher levels up, they ran up bills they couldn’t pay. “We are seeing massive non-payment of service providers, and schools left to pick up the bill,” Maynier said. Each province allowed different services to deteriorate..Read more:.Mark Burke: Treasury’s school tax blunder - Parents to pay for policy folly.Gauteng delayed paying for school meals, the Free State stopped paying staff medical aid contributions, the North West cut funds for school transport, the Northern Cape failed to pay schools their allocation for norms and standards, and KwaZulu-Natal’s financial administration was taken over by the provincial treasury.Compared to other provinces, Western Cape education stands up well, but has not escaped the national problem of poor outcomes in ability to read for meaning. Independent educationist Dr Lydia Abel said in an interview that the two most fixable causes are that teachers still do not teach children to think by asking probing questions, and the switch from mother tongue teaching to English in the fourth grade is conducted without adequate assistance. “Maynier has done a really good job on balance,” Abel said. “He’s brought sanity to the department, which is difficult given that thousands of new students come in every year, particularly from the Transkei.“But they have not escaped the national system, which is designed for teachers to tick boxes by saying they’ve taught a subject, instead of testing for cognition – whether the learner has understood its meaning.” To break records in building bricks and mortar schools fast, Maynier’s department brought all stakeholders together behind a shared project. The result was that the Fisherhaven Academy was built in 71 days, one of 13 schools built since the end of 2022.With a R2.5billion injection from the national treasury, the province intends to build 29 schools in the next three years, spending R759million more than Gauteng.Perhaps because of relatively good results, the proportion of children in private or independent schools is substantially lower in the Western Cape than the national average. Only 5.2% of children in the province are in independent schools, while in Gauteng that proportion is 14%.Maynier acknowledged that the pressure of thousands of new learners entering the province strained the system. For this reason the department set in place policies to support new independent schools, including low fee schools in disadvantaged areas. “We are the fastest growing province in South Africa,” Maynier told the press club. “The top school for admissions is Claremont High School, which is a Maths and Science focus school opened in 2011 and serves a wide geographic area at lower fees than other schools in the area.” Claremont has 4,800 applications for about 200 places. Spine Road High School in Mitchell’s Plain comes in second, with over 4 500 applications. In 2015, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi started a project when he was the MEC of Education to get tablets to every learner.“In this country, by 2018, there is going to be one child, one tablet; one teacher, one laptop; and one classroom, one interactive board,” he said.To prevent theft, former Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said at the time, “We have put the most sophisticated tracking devices in all the tools… So if you take a tablet from a child, we will be in a position to track it back, anywhere in the country.” .Read more:.Worldview: Apartheid's legacy lives on in South Africa’s unequal schools.She said although the plan was expensive, it could save money that was used to buy books.The plan did not work, a recent report in Newsday found.Of the 2.8 million learners currently enrolled in Gauteng schools, only 163,679 learner tablets have been distributed to date. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, a total of 17,520 tablets were stolen, Lesufi said.

John Matisonn: How do Western Cape schools compare?

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