The replacement of the old Senior Certificate with the new National Senior Certificate (NSC) in 2008 was greeted with considerable suspicion. Once the results of the first cohort was released, various commentators speculated in the press about the standard of the examination and its associated curriculum. Are these fears warranted?

Until now, principals have been expected to teach in South African schools. The Personnel Administrative Measures (PAM), which, amongst others, set out the job descriptions of principals, state that principals are required to ‘engage in class teaching as per the workload of the relevant post level and the needs of the school’. The education authorities have, however, not enforced this, leaving it to individual schools and principals to decide whether the principal teaches or not. The only time that the issue becomes relevant is for performance appraisal, which includes a criterion which deals with teaching. It is, however, possible for principals to achieve at least a ‘satisfactory’ evaluation despite receiving a 0 for this criterion – and that is all that is needed for the annual progression in salary. It is now being proposed that principals should not be required to teach. This raises the question: Is this a good idea?

A key requirement for successful learning is that teaching should be interactive, i.e. that the learner is active during the process and not just the teacher. One of the most important ways of teaching interactively is to use effective questioning techniques. This is based on brain theories: The consensus among cognitive scientists (since B F Skinner) is that the mind seeks to find meaning, which is done through patterning. To achieve this, the mind must be active during the learning process. Here are some guides regarding successful questioning techniques …

I have heard a rumour of the impending demise of the Assessment Standards (ASs). Actually, more than rumour …. The Minister of Basic Education announced last year that the curriculum would be reviewed with the aim of simplifying its structure.  This is currently on the go.  Sue Müller of NAPTOSA, who has served as a [...]

Malcolm Venter
Years ago, I came home with a delightful little book entitled Bureaucrats: How to Annoy Them. The author, who loathes bureaucrats with a deep, deep loathing , relates some hilarious tales about how he set out to annoy British bureaucrats – a sort of revenge saga. Knowing that I have similar sentiments about these [...]

The National Curriculum Statement indicates clearly that learners must be encouraged to think critically and to engage in problem-solving:
v  The Critical Outcomes require learners to ‘identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking’ (p2).
v  The ‘kind of learner envisaged’ must ‘demonstrate an ability to think logically and analytically, as well has [...]

I don’t believe that it is just bias on my part which makes me believe that the most hard-driven teachers in our schools are our language teachers. From one point of view, they are better off because they have always had a huge marking load and were therefore not fazed, as other teachers were, by having to do Continuous Assessment (CASS).

One of the demands of OBE is that teaching should be ‘learner-centred’ rather than ‘teacher-/educator-centred’. This is probably one of the main reasons for the failure of OBE. Let’s not reduce teachers to being a mere ‘facilitator’.