Abstract
The study reported in this paper investigated foundation phase teacher provision by the public universities in South Africa, with a view to carefully and accurately determine the extent to which foundation phase teacher provision matched national as well as provincial needs. The study draws on data obtained through a survey of teacher provision at the public higher education institutions (HEIs), conducted by the national Department of Education (DoE) in 2009, as well as from data relating to teacher education qualifications and programmes in the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS).The study confirmed perceptions that the number of new foundation phase teachers being produced by the public higher education institutions (HEIs) falls short of national and provincial needs, and that the provision of African language foundation phase teachers is particularly problematic, especially in the context of mother-tongue instruction in the early years.
Highlights
There is a real interest, in all spheres of public life in South Africa, in early school education
There is an urgent need for more African mother-tongue foundation phase teachers, highlighted by the fact that only 13% (168) of all the foundation phase teachers produced in 2009 were African mother-tongue speakers
What exacerbates the implications of these findings that too few new foundation phase teachers are being educated at present, is the broader context that many current foundation phase teachers have not been trained in the area, and that many of those who have been trained have been poorly trained
Summary
There is a real interest, in all spheres of public life in South Africa, in early school education. Early childhood is a period of great potential for human growth and development, it is a time when children are especially fragile and vulnerable (UNESCO, 2007) This certainly appears to be the case in South Africa, where the majority of children experience severe shortfalls in the kind of learning experiences that they are exposed to in the years before they enter formal schooling. In 2007, the Department of Education conducted a second cycle of Systemic Evaluations at the foundation phase (Grade 3) level This was a replica study of a similar evaluation conducted in 2001, and involved the assessment of a random sample of 53 972 Grade 3 learners from 2 327 primary schools across South Africa.
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