South Africa’s shared vision for education should be to “improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person” – a statement directly from the preamble of our Constitution, said Mary Metcalfe, professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, in her keynote address at the Trialogue Business in Society Conference.
With more than 50 years of experience working in education, Metcalfe reminded delegates that young people are not accessing their potential, and we need to do better to deliver the change that is necessary in the sector. She says that companies and non-profit organisations need to make every cent count as they operate in a resource-constrained environment in which the triple ills of poverty, unemployment and inequality are not being addressed.
Metcalfe began her talk by reviewing basic education and said a disproportionate amount of money was being spent on grades 10 to 12 when “the immediately recognisable right to basic education” from Grade R to Grade 9 needed to be prioritised. “Constitutionally, this is immediate – we can’t say ‘We’ll get there’,” said Metcalfe, drawing attention to recent court cases about pit latrines, access to textbooks and others.
The provinces in the country that experience the greatest inequality are the least likely to receive support and yet this is where the bulk of pupils are. “Learners in Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape are in conditions of poverty, but we don’t invest to undo inequality. The challenge is to work where it’s not easy to work,” Melcalfe said. “We must also address issues such as high failure and dropout rates. The Zero Dropout campaign is already doing good work in this area.”
Metcalfe said that corporate giving should examine the phenomenon of “vanity projects”, since there are simply insufficient resources for these. Instead, companies need to ask of their projects: “What will I learn from this approach that will assist my partners and government to address inequality inefficiencies and poor quality?”
Metcalfe’s recommendations for this sector include:
- Commit to a rigorous, evidence-based approach to learning what “works”.
- Understand impact, scale and replicability.
- Pursue designs that are replicable on cost structures that are sustainable within available resources.
- Locate responsibility where it must be maintained to sustain change.
- Build technical capacity.
- Share learning by connecting and collaborating.
- Invest in the capacity of the instructional core for sustainability.
Early Childhood Development
Metcalfe said early childhood education centres did not provide early childhood development (ECD), which begins at conception and involves issues of maternal health, child hunger, malnutrition, stunting, caregiving and safety and protection.
“The Department of Basic Education does not fund early childhood education centres – instead, the government provides a subsidy of R17 a day to the most vulnerable children in each centre. These centres are primarily funded by communities, so corporates should consider funding this crucial area. SmartStart, for example, takes a fee from the community to provide an early learning environment.”
Metcalfe’s recommendations for this sector include:
- Support system learning to build replicable models.
- Support capacity building.
- Support private sector coordination.
- Support NPOs that back the development and sustainability of community-based centres on evidence-informed strategies.
Metcalfe called for better coordination in the sector. “We need to support collaborative learning initiatives, so we do not duplicate our efforts, and we have to build on what works,” she said.
Although Metcalfe decried vanity projects, she said we sometimes need “starfish” projects from which to learn, but when collaborating we must ask if we have listened and co-designed. “We need the courage to fund replicable models and capacity in the system,” she concluded.
