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Educators are expected to teach any subject depending on the needs of the school, even though you may never have specialised in the subject at tertiary level, argues the writer. (File)
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Educator Dhaya Chetty writes in response to Adriaan Basson's column, highlighting four flaws she feels affects the education system.
As an educator of 40 years, I totally agree with Adriaan Basson’s column. But I just want to highlight a few of the failures:
- Closure of the highly successful Colleges of Education as soon as the ANC came into power. Studying through correspondence to become an educator is the worst. Each year of study, students are placed in schools to learn to teach by observing another educator who often may not be as effective as required,
- No point system at universities to select prospective educators. People who barely passed matric are accepted, and once qualified struggle to teach as their knowledge, language and Maths skills are so limited. Youth who did basic Maths Literacy at school are accepted.
- No subject specialisation : Educators are expected to teach any subject depending on the needs of the school, even though you may never have specialised in the subject at tertiary level. This is a great contributor to poor results.
- Classes are too large. As an example, there are 60 to 65 learners in a class in an urban school this year adjacent to an informal settlement.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when considering the vast number of flaws in our education system.
- Dhaya Chetty
