Thursday 5 January 2023
There is a growing global movement advocating to include a broader range of skills, competencies and values, beyond numeracy and literacy, in education policies and curricula. This movement manifested within Sustainable Development Goal 4 – “to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”. Since then, most countries around the world have acknowledged the importance of capacitating learners with a broad range of competencies.
Save the Children South Africa (SCSA) is advocating for the inclusion of this broad range of skills and competencies in the curriculum. To lay the foundation for the advocacy work, SCSA commissioned JET Education Services to undertake a scoping study of the South African education landscape. The purpose of the study was to systematically outline the nature and scope of what should be advocated for and to identify and create a clear understanding of the key partners needed to drive the changes needed in the education system.
The key findings from the situation analysis and discussion in the report highlight that:
Save the Children South Africa (SCSA) is advocating for the inclusion of this broad range of skills and competencies in the curriculum. To lay the foundation for the advocacy work, SCSA commissioned JET Education Services to undertake a scoping study of the South African education landscape. The purpose of the study was to systematically outline the nature and scope of what should be advocated for and to identify and create a clear understanding of the key partners needed to drive the changes needed in the education system.
The key findings from the situation analysis and discussion in the report highlight that:
- To imbue South African learners with additional skills and competencies, a ‘new’ curriculum is not necessarily needed. However, strengthening the current curriculum, a process already underway, is a crucial undertaking.
- Coherent articulation of and about 21st century skills across policies or policy alignment with regards to conception and intention is emergent but not seamless.
- Alignment across different agencies in the education sector – basic education, higher education and qualification and quality assurance agencies – is emergent but not seamless.
- Basic skills cannot be ignored while developing the breadth of skills in the South African context.
- Optimal use of resources is fundamental to the success of enhancing breadth of skills in the South African context.
- Existing processes should thus be harnessed, for example, the Sector Plan for Entrepreneurship in Schools and the pilot of the General Education Certificate (GEC) are likely to hold valuable lessons with regards to teacher development and enhancing the breadth of skills in the South African education system.
- Deeper understandings of how these key takeaways might be developed are needed.
4980f742-2d19-4235-af95-87da780e0315.pdf (savethechildren.org.za)