Important: Changes coming to South African schools

There are some important changes coming to schools that you need to know about.

In its annual performance plan for 2021/2022, the department of basic education laid out the following changes; 

1. Foundational skills of numeracy and literacy, especially reading. 

2. Immediate implementation of a curriculum with skills and competencies for a changing world, with the emphasis being on the Three Stream Model, entrepreneurship education, focus schools, coding and robotics, and the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 

3. Decisive action on quality and efficiency through the implementation of standardised assessments to reduce failure, repetition, and drop-out rates, and the introduction of the General Education Certificate. 

4. Two years of Early Childhood Development (ECD) before Grade 1, and the migration of education services for 0 to 4-year-olds from Social Development to Basic Education. 

5. An infrastructure development plan focussing on delivery and regular maintenance, with a proper sense of costs and financing. 

6. Work with Sport and Recreation, Arts and Culture, Health, and the South African Police Services to teach and promote social cohesion, health and school safety.

Basic education minister Angie Motshekga also presented her annual budget speech to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), detailing the changes her department has planned for schools in South Africa.

Compulsory schooling for younger learners is one of the changes that will impact many South African families.

To cater for the two years of Early Childhood Development (ECD) prior to Grade 1, section 3 on compulsory attendance of the South African Schools Act is in the process of being amended through the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill, the minister said.

“After the BELA Bill has been signed into law by the President, attendance at Grade R classes by children who will be turning six years of age, will be compulsory.

“Systematically, this will be followed by the introduction of compulsory attendance in Grade RR classes by children who will be turning five years of age.”

Language:

“In 2021, the DBE will initiate research on the feasibility of introducing bilingual question papers as part of the assessment programme in selected subjects,” the department said.

This would mean that learners will be able to complete their exams and in their home languages.

“All stakeholders will be consulted and part of the research will entail familiarity with the specialised vocabulary used during the teaching of these subjects and the piloting of the setting of question papers in African languages in two identified subjects for the November 2021 examinations in Grade 11.”

Electronic marking system:

Electronic marking will allow the marking of the national examinations to be done online.

“The terms of reference will be finalised by June 2021 and a service provider will be appointed by October 2021. The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) piloted its e-marking system in two 2019 SC Examination subjects in July 2019.

“This pilot provided the opportunity for the DBE to gain insight into how the system was designed and how the manual marking systems could be adapted to the online system.”

Item banking:

The DBE said it is also in the process of developing an advanced system of generating question papers, called ‘item banking’.

“This significant intervention will be phased in over the next few years for the General Education Certificate (grade 9) and National Senior Certificate. The question papers and marking guidelines will be generated from a pool of items that are coded by subject area, question type, level of complexity and other pertinent item characteristics.”

This was set to take place in the first quarter of 2021 through a tender system.

Online applications for everyone:

DBE said that the online application will allow candidates to apply for their certificates through an electronic platform.

All candidates will be able to apply online and the processing will be done by the local provincial education department.

“This will avoid queuing at the offices of the Department of Basic Education and the provincial education departments,” the department said.

“The project is being piloted by the DBE and will be extended to the provincial education departments in 2021.”

Will you be sending your 5-year-old to big school for Grade R? 

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