Schools in Western Cape Failing

By Ilhaam Hoosain
08 September 2007

Education is failing in the Western Cape as teachers do not have the proper skills to teach and children do not want to learn, says an education department evaluation.

The Whole School Evaluation Process Report has identified the quality of teaching and learning as an area of serious concern. The team from the department assessed a range of primary and high schools in the Cape’s nine educational regions earlier this year. The following are some major concerns:

- Teachers were sometimes afraid of their pupils.

- Absenteeism and children being late were common.

- Teachers were working to old syllabuses and were refusing to teach in terms of outcomes based education.

- Classroom walls were bare and in some instances resources were still wrapped in plastic.

- Teachers were often not sufficiently knowledgeable about their subjects and sometimes taught subjects for which they were not qualified.

- Classes were too big, and teachers complained they spent more time doing “crowd control” than teaching.

The Whole School Evaluation process Report has identified teaching quality and learning as an area of “serious concern”.

According to reports, 27 schools were evaluated by the department’s Quality Assurance Directorate, and their findings were that only two were functioning adequately and only one was an example of best practices.