South Africa’s student funding scheme should be strengthened

South Africa’s student funding scheme should be strengthened

https://theconversation.com/south-africas-student-funding-scheme-should-be-strengthened-74448?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%2022%202017%20-%2070195267&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%2022%202017%20-%2070195267+CID_51bd160981da00da73ca663fac040030&utm_source=campaign_monitor_africa&utm_term=South%20Africas%20student%20funding%20scheme%20should%20be%20strengthend

Published in The Conversation – 21 March 2017

This is a well-thought-out piece that should be read by all interested and affected parties.

I have a comment and some queries.  First, the comment.

The authors state that:

“What is needed is systemic intervention to address the knowledge and skills gap between school and university. This requires restructuring the curriculum and qualifications structure in higher education”.

Sure, but, without a restructuring of a dysfunctional Basic Education System that has consistently produced effectively educationally ‘disabled’ matriculants, no amount of constructive restructuring of tertiary education curricula et al. will have a meaningful effect.  I deliberately use the word “disabled” because many eminent educationalists (e.g.  Jonathan Jansen and Mamphela Ramphele) have sadly pointed out that the current system is in some ways deficient to emasculating Bantu Education.  Bantu Education was DESIGNED to produce ‘well-educated’ graduates with low qualifications, destined for low, support level careers at best.  The current system, according to highly respected and experienced academic-support educationalist Ian Scott, produces graduates that often have to be “re-educated” to correct just plain bad education.   

According to Jansen, the necessary re-structuring of Basic Education requires better (and more relevant) education of teachers, re-education of incompetent incumbents, and greatly moderating the negative effects of teachers’ unions.  Without such re-structuring, too many kids enter university poorly conversant in English, the common educational language medium, and poorly equipped in terms of numeracy.

The other major flaw in Basic Education is the lack of even rudimentary exposure to unadulterated history back to Africa’s beginnings.  First-year university students still have a lack of appreciation of:

1.       

1.  1. Africa’s rich pre-colonial history;

         2. the full implications of slavery, colonialism and Apartheid;

3.    3.  what actually constituted the most decidedly non-monolithic liberation struggle; and

4.    4. the successes and failures of post-1994 governance.

These matters are, to some extent, addressed in advanced university undergraduate courses, but nowhere near to the level that is necessary for kids to get some sense of the ‘truth’.

Now the queries.

Aren’t major flaws of the current National Student Financial Aid Scheme relating to the grants not covering the comprehensive costs of education (requiring kids to take on part-time work or live under sub-optimal conditions) and recipients the opportunity to misspend funds (on recreational activities) or shunt them home to help support their relatives?  These practices predispose recipients to failing academically, behaving irresponsibly and accruing massive debt.

Wouldn’t it be better to fund recipients comprehensively and siphon off funds first to cover the costs of fees, accommodation and food first, and then provide a modest monthly allowance?