South African foundation phase teachers are woefully unprepared to teach youngsters the basics of interpretation and evaluation, as they lack these skills themselves.
This is one of the findings of the National Report 2012 on the State of Literacy Teaching and Learning in the Foundation Phase, carried out by the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) of the Department of Basic Education.
The report points out flaws in foundation phase learning and teaching that affect children’s learning for the rest of their lives.
It found that teachers in these critical grades lacked many of the skills they are expected to pass on to learners.
In a standardised language test, teachers did relatively well on questions requiring the simple retrieval of information explicitly stated in the text, scoring an average of 75,1%. However, scores dropped dramatically as soon as the higher cognitive functions of inference (55,2%), interpretation (36,6%) and evaluation (39,7%) were invoked.
Scores on the maths test show a similar decline for more complex topics, from a mean of 67,2% for arithmetic operations, to 49,7% for the key topic area of fractions, ratio and proportion, and 46,5% for items involving the use of algebraic logic to solve problems.
The report found that South African primary school teachers generally exhibit poor subject knowledge in language and mathematics, and consequently an incomplete understanding of both the requirements of the curriculum and how to animate it in their classes.
The report has been released just a day before the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, is to present her budget to Parliament.
She says the Department will be asking Parliament to support intervention strategies that are meant to remedy shortcomings in educational practice and to eliminate barriers to quality education.
“The NEEDU National Report 2012 has provided the evidence we require in this respect,” Motshekga states.
“We will engage the valuable recommendations made by NEEDU in pursuance of its mandate to provide our Department with expert advice, on a system-wide basis, on those factors that inhibit or advance school improvement.”
Motshekga acknowledges the importance of foundation phase learning and believes the report will give the Department “evidence of where we continue to fall short in teaching young learners to read, as well as evidence of good practice that we can learn from, moving forward”.