When government, NGOs and the private sector join hands, bringin public education into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) becomes possible, writes Kate Groch, CEO of Good Work Foundation (GWF).
It’s music to our ears that Coding and Robotics is being formally rolled out as a subject in government schools from 2024. The South African education system needs to keep pace with these next-generation subjects if we are to be competitive – and confident – participants in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
However, the dream of tech-savvy classrooms is in some cases out of step with the on-the-ground reality, and this is where the importance of forging partnerships between the public and private sectors and civil society comes to the fore.
We run an education non-profit in rural Mpumalanga and the Free State that has foregrounded digital literacy as key to unlocking the power of wonder-filled learning for children. It’s “cool” to play games on computers, with children learning while having fun.
Preparing for the 21st-century workplace
As Good Work Foundation, we have prioritised technology-led, human-facilitated learning in the knowledge that millions of young South Africans will enter the labour market in the coming years and need the skills to thrive in the 4IR-driven 21st-century workplace – or risk being left behind.
We are fortunate to have a robust network of corporate and private donors, as well as game lodges bordering the Kruger National Park, that support us in bringing the joy of learning to young people – including helping school leavers to access work and study opportunities.
For more than a decade, we have taught what has now become the Coding and Robotics curriculum to pupils at the 29 government schools to which we provide free supplementary lessons. Every day, our staff revel in seeing the eyes of 10- and 11-year-olds from remote villages light up with the thrill of discovery when they learn how to build a robot out of Lego – and then program it to move according to their commands.
The teachers and principals at their schools are delighted that the kids are enhancing their English and mathematical literacy skills while unlocking their creativity. These children are getting to grips with tablets, computers, coding apps and smartphones – and are loving every minute.
We know that only a small fraction might end up in computer science, programming or information technology as a career – but at least they are being given the opportunity to explore these fields, and to dream. Interestingly, exposure to coding and robotics unlocks many other potential career streams beyond the obvious Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-related jobs, and all the other jobs of the future within the ICT space.
It enhances logical thinking, creativity and innovation. It teaches children how to collaborate to solve problems. Beyond computer science and web development, it opens up the avenues of animation, design and storytelling. It’s not just coding experts who are needed in a 4IR world – but creative thinkers, too. It’s an exciting and ever-changing playground to frolic in.
When my daughter – who is artistic by nature and thought she couldn’t do coding because it’s supposedly for Maths boffins – joined one of our coding exercises on campus, she ended up having a wonderful time designing all the creatures in the game.
So there are opportunities for everyone. Imagine if all video games were made solely by mathematicians? They’d be as boring as anything! You need the artists, performers and storytellers to work alongside the software engineers to bring these ideas to life.
Empower teachers to empower learners
We are making strides in our small pockets of influence; however, this is a drop in the ocean compared to what’s needed in the country. Resources in most non-Model C public schools are inadequate, and even where they do have computer labs, many teachers have not been adequately trained to conduct lessons using the infrastructure.
While the Department of Basic Education is making strides in empowering teachers to make optimal use of smart classrooms, and the intention behind this year’s roll-out of coding and robotics for Grades 4 to 6 and Grade 8 is noble and forward-looking, introducing this subject in every government school in the country will inevitably prove challenging.
We – and other non-profits – are here to help. Over a decade of working closely with government players and the private sector, we have realised that close cross-sector relationships result in the best possible education outcomes for marginalised learners.
And we have proof that it works. Teachers and principals at the schools in our rural network report improved results from their learners, who are faced with the difficult transition from mother-tongue learning to English-medium learning in Grade 4 – yet they struggle because they are not exposed to English at home.
How to ignite a lifelong love of learning
We’re flipping the script to give them a fighting chance. At least once a week, we transport them to our campuses, and our trained facilitators help learners get to grips with English and Maths in a fun, hands-on, interactive way.
We also offer support to help teachers take these learnings further in the classroom. For instance, there are offline or physical coding games such as Nelson Mandela University’s Tangibl Coding Project (with applications like Tanks and Rangers that require only a cellphone and puzzle tokens to play).
Often faced with large classes of up to 70 kids and limited resources, our teachers need support in the changeover to technology-enhanced education. Non-profits like ours have the experience and know-how to harness support from the private sector and exercise sound governance in the deployment of these learnings.
Our teachers are precious, and much of their institutional knowledge will be lost when a large number of the teacher cohort retires in the next few years. While this is worrying, it does present an opportunity for new, young, energetic teachers with fresh ideas and different ways of doing things to enter the space – being disruptors in a positive way. But they shouldn’t have to ignite an education revolution on their own.
As a teacher, I can tell you that the best educational moment is witnessing when a child experiences that “aha” or a “eureka” sensation of getting something right. Such as when, through trial and error, they manage to code a robot and make it move.
Such a love of learning, once ignited, never gets extinguished. It’s up to all of us to light that flame and keep it burning so that learning becomes a lifelong journey of wonder and discovery. These young people will end up using technology to solve the challenges in the rural villages and townships where they come from – so it’s incumbent on us to give them access to digital learning and make them comfortable with it.
But no one can do it alone. Only solid public-private-civil society partnerships will ensure that a young person living in Tshabalala village near Hazyview can, if he or she so desires, hop onto the web and code or collaborate online with others worldwide. We need to link arms across sectors to ensure that happens.