Educator Workload In South Africa

Teachers spend slightly less time on their activities overall, but much less time on teaching than policy requires. There is a serious erosion of instructional time in the majority of schools, but it is worst in rural and semi-rural African schools.

In the past decade, the national preoccupation has been on the crisis in secondary schools. Lurking behind the intractable problem of low pass rates, the dysfunctional schools and the small number of higher grade mathematics and science graduates is the calamity in primary education. Drawing on the work of researchers in a range of fields including psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, economics, the health sciences, and mathematics education, this book documents the depth and scope of the primary education crisis and provides a comprehensive and rigorous explanation of its causes. Primary education in crisis pulls together the wealth of research on health, poverty, resources, language and teaching as factors in academic achievement in reading, writing and mathematics. At the centre of the book is an analysis of the published studies that systematically document what teachers teach and fail to teach, and why it is that teaching is at the heart of the crisis in primary education. The author suggests that there are no quick fixes, but only hard choices and that, for reform to succeed, it must be evidence-based.

The decision to change one's job is usually preceded by a process of job evaluation and determining alternative employment opportunities. Dissatisfaction with the workplace can be a strong incentive to seek alternative opportunities. This study focuses on the role played by job satisfaction, morale and HIV/AIDS in educator attrition. The responses of educators who considered leaving their jobs were compared to the responses of those preferring to stay. Findings reveal that job dissatisfaction linked to poor salaries and limited possibilities for career development, as well as the lack of status and respect attached to the profession, may push educators out of the classroom. The low morale amongst potential leavers reflects this dissatisfaction, as well as the stress caused by curriculum transformation and the emotional impact of HIV/AIDS. Factors encouraging educators to stay in their profession included their passion for developing young people and strong collegial relationships. However, many also feel trapped by limited job alternatives, and may embark on withdrawal options such as increased absenteeism or lower outputs. It is crucially important to deal with the sources of educator frustration, lest the result becomes deteriorating service provision and quality in South African education.

Education in Southern Africa is a comprehensive critical reference guide to education in the region. With chapters written by an international team of leading regional education experts, the book explores the education systems of each country in the region. With chapters covering Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, the book critically examines the development of education provision in each country as well as local and global contexts. Including a comparative introduction to the issues facing education in the region as a whole and guides to available online datasets, this handbook will be an essential reference for researchers, scholars, international agencies and policy-makers at all levels.

Gives a brief overview of regional issues and the history of education in South Africa and describes the development of education in the country over the past 15 years. It presents an analysis of the education system, identifying key directions for ...

South Africa remains a global leader in the legislative protection of individuals who engage in same-sex relations, and is the only country in Africa where the rights of these individuals are explicitly recognized and protected by the constitution. Yet South Africa’s identities are still contested and evolving, particularly for same-sex desiring teachers – many are forced to locate their sexualities privately for fear of being ostracized, bullied or losing their jobs, resulting in the miseducation of young people in schools. This volume reveals the various ways in which black South African male teachers construct their sexual and professional identities, how they accommodate structural dictates while simultaneously resisting them, and the effect this has on students. Presenting the day-to-day experiences of eight same-sex desiring teachers within repressive contexts, this volume challenges the Western origins and assumptions of queer theory, particularly its inability to confront communal forms of social organizing and its focus on individual agency. It asks for more socially responsive theorizing that takes into account the role played by location, race, class, gender and sexual identification within South African and international contexts.

Economic and social changes, fast evolution of technology, and the growing importance of Internet services and international communications--all these require secondary education providers to adapt what is taught and learned in schools. However, in Africa the content of secondary curricula is in most cases ill-adapted to 21st century challenges, where young people are mobile, have access to 'more and instant information,' and face health threats such as HIV/AIDS. In addition, implementation problems exist, and the time for instruction is often much less then what is required by the prescribed secondary curriculum. In Africa there is a need to develop a secondary education curriculum adapted to the local economic and social environment, but with international-comparable performance indicators. This study analyzes that challenge: the quality of curricula and assessment, and their development processes in secondary education in Africa against the background of existing contexts, conditions, and ambitions on the one hand and current pedagogical thinking on the other. This World Bank Working Paper was prepared as part of the Secondary Education and Training in Africa (SEIA) initiative which aims to assist countries to develop sustainable strategies for expansion and quality improvements in secondary education and training.

How do curriculum, conceptions of knowledge and the schooling experiences of young people engage the great issues of this tumultuous time? Curriculum is always influenced by the events that shape our world, but when testing and bench-marking preoccupy us, we can forget the world that is both the foundation and the object of curriculum. This edited volume brings together international contributors to analyze and reflect on the way the events of the last decade have influenced the curriculum in their countries. As they address nationalism in the face of economic globalisation, the international financial crisis, immigration and the culture of diaspora, they ask how national loyalties are balanced with international relationships and interests. They ask how the rights of women, and of ethnic and racial groups are represented. They ask what has changed about history and civics post 9/11, and they ask how countries that have experienced profound political and economic changes have addressed them in curriculum. These interactions and changes are a subject of particular interest for an international yearbook in that they are almost always permeated by global movements and influenced by multinational bodies and practices. And as these essays show, in curriculum, global and international issues are explicitly or implicitly also about local and national interests and about how citizens engage their rights and responsibilities. This volume brings together a new approach to perspectives on curriculum today and a new collection of insights into the changes from different parts of the world which discuss: How is the world represented in curriculum? How do responses to world events shape the stories we tell students about who they are and can be? This book will be of great benefit to educational researchers and policy-makers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.