NECT reiterates commitment to improving education levels in South Africa

By Sizwe Nxasana, Chairman of NECT.

With six years to the National Development Plan’s target year, questions remain concerning our resolve and the extent to which we have moved towards the envisaged state of affairs.

Many achievements have indeed been registered in the democratic era, yet we are still far off the target.

• Click here to learn more about the National Education Collaboration Trust.

The schooling outputs are not anywhere near where we want to see them.

As international comparative studies have shown, there are still glaring challenges with reading and numeracy.

What we at the NECT have consistently pointed out is that these challenges are symptoms and reversing them requires that we attend to their causes, which relate to policy and system capacity.

In this regard, we have seen a refocus in policy on how we approach the teaching of African languages.

While developments in reconceptualising the teaching of mathematics lag behind those in the teaching of literacy, in both cases, achievement rates have to be improved urgently to minimise the sub-optimum impact on the current cohort of learners.

Noting the centrality of the state in driving sustainable improvement in schooling outputs, the NECT has increased its focus on building in-house state capacity to plan and implement improved school- and learner-level outcomes.

It was on the basis of this reasoning that the NECT was reorganised into three divisions that focus on districts and schools, system level capacity development, and partnerships and social capacity building respectively.

Increased capabilities and much tighter alignment between the national, provincial and district levels are required to unlock more efficiencies from the public spend on education.

The NECT will intensify its efforts to strengthen the capacity of the state in this regard.

On the governance front, the collaboration involving government and other actor groups such as teacher unions and the business sector has strengthened over time, albeit the dissipation of private sector funding of the NECT’s work.

As reported by Trialogue, CSI spending has plateaued over the past two decades.

There have also been noticeable shifts in funding towards employability and free higher education concerns.

Whilst acknowledging the immediacy of the employment challenges, a drastic shift by the private sector from supporting the strengthening of basic education will make any downstream employability successes short term.

As it is, the economy is in short supply of mathematics and numeracy skills, and an average of just 42% of over the over half a million matriculants take pure mathematics.

In addition, the mathematics pass rates remain low, especially among the African and coloured population groups, extending the predemocratic equity challenge.

In contrast, the teacher unions’ commitment to the collaboration and the resultant sector stability is celebrated.

The 10-year anniversary celebrations observed during the year created an opportunity for further dialogues on future education improvement needs and collaborations.

At national level, the actor groups in the NECT network recommitted to a greater focus on strengthening the education system’s responsibility for supporting schools and exploring the future of education.

In the coming years, the NECT will intensify engagements with the DBE and stakeholders to strengthen the system’s capability to vigorously drive school-level improvements, especially in learners’ mathematics and literacy proficiencies.

In this way, districts should increasingly be the platform for more sustainable collaboration.

Click here to learn more about the National Education Collaboration Trust.