Competency of Teachers

Competency of teachers

There is much spoken in South Africa about the effectiveness of the OBE education system, but little attention is being paid to the qualifications and/or competency of those who are tasked with implementing the system.

Any system, irrespective of the sphere in which it operates, is only as good as the quality of its implementation. Teachers are the heart of any education system, with the quality of your teachers being able to make or break any system. In South Africa teacher training appears to be much disorganized and seems to lack clear direction. The problem does not lie as much with new teachers entering the profession as with those who were trained according to the old syllabus.

New teachers are trained exclusively according to OBE principles and guidelines and are therefore competent to teach according to this method. They, however lack the experience of dealing with the youth of today, a skill which cannot be taught and can only be mastered through experience and practice.

Your older generation teachers have the necessary people skills and experience to handle children. They, however lack the detailed knowledge and understanding of the OBE system. They know how to teach, but do not really understand how to teach in order to achieve the results in the way that the OBE system demands.

A third problem is a legacy of the ‘apartheid’ era with regard to the way in which teachers were trained. There were three totally different systems and teachers were trained according to the system to which they belonged. When the systems were integrated, little or no attention was paid to retraining teachers in order to ensure that they were all up to the same standard.

The result of the combination of the above problems is total confusion and in some instances chaos within your teaching ranks. This is a recipe for disaster with the children, by which the system is being measured, being the biggest losers. The OBE system in its current form although appearing to be ineffective, is extremely difficult to evaluate in light of the above problems. There are glaring shortcomings in the system, make no mistake, but they are often being accentuated out of all proportion by the incompetence of some of the people tasked with administering the system. Everybody keeps blaming the system and continually changes are being made in order to improve performance without focusing on the core issue of teacher competence.