Government is moving ahead with its plan to stop South African students from repeating lower grades multiple times.

The policy of ‘automatic progression’ is once again on the table for local schools – which proposes that a learner may only repeat a grade once in the Foundation Phase (Grade R – Grade 3) to prevent them from being retained in this phase for longer than four years.

Answering in a recent parliamentary Q&A session, basic education minister Angie Motshekga said that her department is putting plans in place to make the necessary policy amendments to allow for these changes, despite concerns from education experts that the change could be more harmful than helpful.

Motshekga explained that under the new system:

Every learner will be supported to achieve the expected levels of performance for the grade. There will be adequate support for learners at risk throughout the phase;

For the breadth of foundational skills across the phase, there will be an identified set of skills per grade to focus on, thus making it possible to give more opportunities to demonstrate competence in the next grade on the same skills if there is a need;

Learners who experience barriers to learning will be given the opportunities to demonstrate their competence in ways that suit their needs;

In the Foundation Phase the inability to read should not prevent learners from demonstrating their mathematical competence, because this produces misleading results that are of no use to the learner, the teacher who has to plan the learner’s learning sequence, and the education authorities who have to identify problems in the education system.

Mothskega said that the usage of Mathematical terms should not be confined to the Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT), the knowledge of Mathematical concepts in other languages should be accepted as correct;

Reporting will be comprehensive, giving the teacher in the next grade and the parents a clear indication of strengths and skills that need further development.

Concerns

Some education experts have warned that the automatic progression policy may have dire consequences for the country’s education system.

In a column for The City Press Tholisa Matheza and Diane Hendricks, education specialists at the University of Cape Town warned that the change is “likely to create more burdens on an already burdened education system”.

“Currently, learning and content backlogs in grades 8 and 9 in mathematics, science and English are becoming more of a challenge,” the researchers said.

“This is largely because poor performance in these subjects results from a gap in foundational knowledge and understanding of content.”

Responding to these issues, Motshekga said that international literature on this topic demonstrates very little evidence for repetition policies actually benefitting children.

“At best, these policies appear to have no effect on learner achievement and dropout, despite the immense financial stress they place on the schooling system. However, in many cases they have a negative effect on child outcomes,” she said.

She cited studies from 1999 and 2002 which showed strong negative effects of retention policies on academic achievement and socio-emotional adjustment.

A recent and more rigorous meta-analysis (2009), indicated that on average repetition either had a negative effect or a null effect on academic achievement, she said.

“As such, support for automatic progression within the South African context is being considered as a possible policy position, given that repetition is regarded as being associated with learner dropout and poor academic performance.

“Indeed, many scholars hold the view that the negative effects of repetition far outweigh automatic promotion.

“Within this debate, we must also consider issues of efficiency and human rights aspects of over-sized classes, as well as the unaffordability of bringing the learner/educator ratio down substantially via hiring of additional teachers,” she said.

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