Overview Of The South African Education System

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It is abundantly clear that the South African education system is in crises and the existing schooling system is worsening and the majority of South Africa’s youth are suffering. Many South African learners have not reached the levels of competencies required by their grade in terms of reading and writing, many of our learners are illiterate and innumerate. After 1994, the South African government has tried to redress the inequalities of the past by restructuring the education system based on equity, human rights and democracy. However the South African education system still continues to face huge challenges between implementing changes and acquiring sufficient resources for schools and universities.
In this essay, I will outline the reasons …show more content…

(Spaull, 2013) says that of 100 students which starts school, only 50 will pass the matriculate. He says 40 will pass while only 12 will qualify to attend university. (Spaull, 2013) emphasises that youth between the ages of 18 to 24 years old who do not have any form of post-matric education is at a disadvantaged and will struggle to find permanent employment or will even find themselves being unemployed for long periods of time, if not even permanently.
(Duncan, 2013) says that the matric pass rate is increasing but many of these passes are with less than 50% and maths and science are often failed.
(Duncan, 2013) explains that even the ANC has admitted that education is in crisis and has said that South Africa has made significant progress in building a single, non-racial, non-sexist national public education system. However major challenges still exist such as the quality of education and thus compares very poorly in comparison to other countries.
(Duncan, 2013, poses the question, if the education crisis is real what are the fundamental causes? South Africa spends more than 5% of its GDP on education which is very similar to what the USA, the UK, Holland and Australia spends. So it’s not the lack of money being spent rather the lack of new ideas and the implementation of new policies to align South Africa’s education with the rest of the

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