The startling changes to the South African maths curriculum since 1994
Maths is regarded as one of the most difficult subjects to learn and teach at South African schools, with much of this difficulty stemming from the differing mathematics content taught in the various grades and numerous changes to the maths curriculum since 1994.
South Africa’s Mathematics Foundation released a report this past week detailing these difficulties, as well as the extraordinary amount of changes that have been made to the mathematics curriculum between 1994 and 2004.
“There is a need to interrogate the teaching and learning of Mathematics at all levels, and schools which are struggling should receive the necessary support from school districts and provinces,” said Dr Vasuthavan Govender, AMESA President and Member of the South African Mathematics Foundation.
“There should be changes to the way mathematics is perceived in the various communities and parents should be encouraged to play a more prominent role in this regard,” he said.
The below does not take into account the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) in 2006 and Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in 2012 but instead focuses on content changes.
Change 1 – Higher and Standard Grade
In 1994, mathematics was a compulsory school subject until grade 9. In grade 10, learners selected a minimum of 6 subjects, which may have included mathematics as a subject – however it was not compulsory.
There was further separation within maths, where learners could do maths at either the standard or higher grade. This continued until 2007, when the last group of learners wrote mathematics at either the higher or standard grade at grade 12.
Change 2 – The Common Task for Assessment
In 2001 and 2002, the Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and the Common Task for Assessment (CTA) was introduced to high school learners. The CTA, which was regarded as an external examination, had serious challenges in terms of its implementation and was shortly discontinued.
Change 3 – The “outcomes-based” approach
2005 introduced another curriculum change in the form of an “outcomes-based” approach which had a major impact in the learning and teaching in the GET (grades 7-9) due to the fact that it was very vague in terms of what had to be taught in different grades and was not a “subject” but a “learning area”.
This went against the curriculum research in South Africa which pointed out the need to have documents describe clearly the sequence and progression on knowledge within a subject.
Change 4 – Direct changes to content
Curriculum change over the years has also affected the content to be taught in different grades. Changes involved moving content from one grade to another; removing some content and introducing new content.
The introduction of Technical Mathematics and Technical Science in technical schools in grade 10 from 2016 shows that the process of curriculum change in South Africa is far from over.
This included the introduction of Mathematical Literacy as an alternative to maths in the FET phase.
Read: Education minister explains South Africa’s 20% maths pass rate
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