LETTER: How does a ‘qualified’ teaching workforce deliver such poor reading results?

Suffer the little children of SA; they are among the best-dressed kids in Africa in their proud uniforms as they exit the minibuses at school, full of expectation, about to be let down yet again (“Literacy crisis: study shows over 80% of SA’s grade 4s cannot read for meaning,” May 16).  

They will learn that the three Rs are in a state of permanent truancy. It has been like this for decades, and all they get are platitudes, and sometimes a morning sandwich. Who is to blame for the shambles?  

Surely not beleaguered Angie Motshekga, minister of nothing, for that is what she is. Her mandate extends to the front door of Sol Plaatje House, no further. After that it is the SACP-SA Democratic Teachers Union alliance all the way down, with its cadres effecting control from the department of basic education into the provinces.  

Nic Spaull provides an articulate summation of the scale of the disaster, but misses two key points (“Look to Brazil for its remarkable turnaround of pupils’ reading skills,” May 18). The first is the above: provinces are responsible for schooling, and once the education allocations reach provincial treasuries, it’s game over for change.  

Second is to address the question of how it is that a teaching workforce that is 95% fully qualified delivers such miserable reading outcomes. The "backlog" of under-qualification was dealt with years ago by means of the simple artifice of providing a top-up year to move the teachers to REQV 14.  

Success! Fully qualified and entitled to a salary increment. And the universities that provided the certificated training? Oh happy days, they aced it. Another cash cow milked.

They should hang their heads in shame. What upgrading did they perform? Of salary packages, achieving the distinction that our teachers are among the highest paid in the world. A headteacher pulls in some R1.4m or 60,000 purchasing power parity dollars. Pay one, pay all. 

So the solution is more training. Really? By who? By the universities that failed the children by pushing through teachers who remain unfit for purpose?

A complete rethink is needed. For a start, anyone who performs a training role must have recent, relevant, proven experience at the level to which they train.  

So start with training the trainers. That is the path to success.  

Michael Kahn 
Independent innovation adviser 

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