The lack of competence of maths teachers was highlighted during a panel discussion at a maths education conference hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal under the banner of the US-South Africa Higher Education Network last week.
The panel included founding vice-chancellor of Sol Plaatjies University and current chairperson of the Umalusi council Professor Yunus Ballim; maths educator from the school of education at UKZN, Professor Sarah Bansilal; former vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Witwatersrand, Professor Loyiso Nongxa, an emeritus professor of maths; and Leonard Mudau, who is the chief education specialist for maths, science and technology at the Department of Basic Education.
During the discussion, Nongxa said he believed that schools lacked qualified teachers.
He said this was based on conversations with people working in education, adding that reports had also revealed that teachers were unable to cope with the material they were meant to teach.
“If it is true that the majority of our schools, and therefore the majority of our learners, are not taught by people who are properly qualified, then the question becomes what practical steps can we take to ensure that by 2030, which is the target of the National Development Plan (NDP), every school in South Africa will have at least one qualified maths teacher?” he said.
The NDP target seeks to increase the number of learners eligible for Bachelor’s programmes with maths and science to 450 000 by 2030.
During the discussion, when asked what the department’s biggest hurdles were in reaching the 2023 NDP targets, Mudau said the greatest challenge the department was facing was that teachers were leaving rural schools.
“Where it’s rural, most teachers do not stay; they’ll teach for a few years, then once they get an opportunity to go, they move to urban areas,” he said. That is the greatest challenge that we have,” he said.
Ballim said there was something wrong with the way in which maths was being taught and learnt.
“The reality is for the last six years that I’ve been involved in uMalusi, the numbers of those (matrics) who will get at least 50%, range from 20% to 22% ...
The reality is that four out of five young people in this country who registered to write maths will not manage to get 50%,” he said.
Ballim said in his experience the harm was done in the early years.
He suggested that South Africa needed to seek advice from other African countries about what they were doing that we are not able to do.
“I have a fairly good sense of education in Zimbabwe, particularly in southern Zimbabwe, and I’ve always said to my family you’re more likely to get your children better educated in maths if you send them to a rural school in Zimbabwe.
So the argument about rurality, about the difficulty of getting teachers to stay in rural areas, I think we need to rethink those sorts of excuses,” he said.
Bansilal agreed that primary maths was a big area of concern.
She said they were shocked when in the first semester of this year only 50% of primary school maths teachers passed the maths course.
“There is the challenge of actually equipping them with the knowledge they should have had in school: multiplication, addition and subtraction of fractions, simple volumes – areas they are struggling with,” said Bansilal.
Bansilal added that while they are teaching at a higher level of NQS six and seven, they cannot neglect school-level Maths.
“We are trying to do some research. We are redesigning our courses at UKZN at the moment, we are also linking up nationally,” she said.
The national Department of Education had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
The Mercury