Prof O'Connell on future of SA education

1. South Africa
EDUCATION 2030

2. Imagineering South Africa’s Future to
2030
• Will not seek to describe education in the 21st
century in any detail
• Focus will be on :
1. Why education matters
2. What human attributes are needed for South
African to succeed in a rapidly changing
environment, and
3. The role that education in South Africa must play to
help South Africa(ns) to develop such attributes

3. 2030: A Watershed
“By 2030 the demand for resources will create a
crisis with dire consequences
Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030
and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops
8.3 billion. Climate change will exacerbate matters in
unpredictable ways”. Beddington.
“Change is now ubiquitous, non-linear and
persistent” Nixon

4. Dalin’s 10 Revolutions
• 1. The knowledge and information revolution
• 2. The population explosion
• 3. Globalisation
• 4. The economic revolution
• 5. The technological revolution
• 6. The ecological revolution
• 7. The social/cultural revolution
• 8. The aesthetic revolution
• 9. The political revolution
• 10. The values revolution.

5. South Africa’s Triple Challenge
• Build a democratic state
• Integrate itself into the competitive arena of
international production and finance.
• Reconstruct domestic social and economic relations
to eradicate and redress the inequitable patterns of
ownership, wealth and social and economic practices
that were shaped by segregation and apartheid

6. WHY EDUCATION MATTERS
• Social thinkers from Confucius through Buddha,
Plato, Aquinas, Ibn Khaldun, Calvin, Newton,
Rousseau, Comte, Mill, Marx, Gramsci, Nyerere to
Wallerstein, Castro and Castells in our present day all
allocate a special place in their theories of
development to knowledge.
• Education for them is the foundation for whatever
form of development or progress one espouses.
• Manual Castells: “knowledge and networks”

7. 160000 years ago humans
appeared on earth

8. By 1960 there were
3 billion people on earth

9. By 2000 the World had
6 billion people
(Doubled in just 40 years)

10. By 2010 the World has
almost 7 billion people

11. By 2050 the World will have
10-15 billion people

12. By 2006 Africa had just
under 1 billion people

13. In 2050 Africa will have just
under 2 billion people

14. In some African states half or
more of the population is under
25 years old:

15. South Africa
Population 1950 = 13 million

16. South Africa
Population 1990 = 39 million

17. South Africa
Population 2010 = 49 million

18. Some Relevant S A Statistics
• Population : 49million
• GDP: $287 billion
• GDP per capita : $5,600
• Unemployment: 25.2% (Conservative)
• State grants of all kinds: More the 12 million
• No. of Taxpayers: ± 7.5 million (5.4 Individual)
• Education budget as % of revenue: 20%

19. Taxpayers and Social Grants

20. 20 % 90%
10% 30%
SENSE-MAKING and CHANGE
90%
70%

21. Big Question
• What kind of society must we be in order to meet
the challenges of 2030?
• Are we now ready to deal with (understand and act
upon) our present reality and are we developing the
competences necessary to transform ourselves
rapidly so as to deal with significant current and
future social and natural environmental changes
• What vision, leadership, processes, tools and other
resources are necessary to take us there.

22. Starting Points
• “We need to wise up or change course or
hardly a decade from now, Zimbabwe will be
our destination, our reality”.
Barney Mthombothi

23. Education in South Africa
Must Change
• Conditions for excellence absent (Leviathan)
• No strong modern Learning culture
• Colonial and Apartheid legacies
• 1976 Soweto legacy
• 1994: Transformation (narrow conception)
• No national discourse
• No consolidated community agency

24. Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes
"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre,
where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is
consequent to the time, wherein men (sic) live without other
security than what their own strength, and their own
invention shall furnish them with. In such condition,
there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof
is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no
Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported
by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving,
and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge
of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters;
no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare,
and danger of violent death; And the life of man (sic), solitary,
poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

25. Education in South Africa
• Conditions for excellence absent (Leviathan)
• Colonial and Apartheid legacies (War)
• Exclusivity (We are different)
• No strong modern Learning culture
• 1976 Soweto legacy
• 1994: Transformation:
• No national discourse

26. Education in South Africa
• Curriculum 2005 fantasy
• Absence of strong professional teaching
culture
• Binary thinking: ambivalence about science
• Cautious national leadership
• No consolidated community agency
• Unwillingness by stakeholders to face up.

27. The Continents: To Scale
• The land area of each territory is shown here.
• The total land area of these 200 territories is 13,056 million hectares. Divided up equally that
would be 2.1 hectares for each person. A hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres.
• However, population is not evenly spread: Australia's land area is 21 times bigger than
Japan's, but Japan's population is more than six times bigger than Australia's.

28. Primary Education
• "Everyone has the right to education", according to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. The second Millennium Development Goal is to achieve universal primary education.
In 2002, 5 out of 6 eligible children were enrolled in primary education worldwide. However,
enrolment does not guarantee attendance, or completion.
• If primary education continues beyond the expected years, enrolment rates can exceed
100%. In Argentina there is an impressive 108% enrolment. On the other side of the Atlantic
Ocean 30% of children in Angola are enrolled in primary school.

29. Secondary Education
• Worldwide approximately 73 million children are enrolled in each year of
secondary education out of a possible 122 million children. That is only 60%
getting a secondary education.
• In China on average 89% get a secondary education, but in India it is only 49%.
Figures in Africa are even lower: 45% in Northern Africa, 25% in Southeastern
Africa and 13% in Central Africa. The lowest is 5% in Niger. What is compulsory in
some territories is a rarity in others.

30. Tertiary Education
• The highest percentage of the student aged population
enrolled is in Finland. Finland is 3.6 times the world average,
with 140 times the chance of a tertiary education than in
Mozambique.

31. Science Research
• Scientific papers cover physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, clinical medicine, biomedical research,
engineering, technology, and earth and space sciences.
• The number of scientific papers published by researchers in the United States was more than three times
as many as were published by the second highest-publishing population, Japan.
• There is more scientific research, or publication of results, in richer territories. This locational bias is such
that roughly three times more scientific papers per person living there are published in Western Europe,
North America, and Japan, than in any other region.

32. New Patents
• In 2002, 312 thousand patents were granted around the world. More than a third of these were granted in
Japan. Just under a third were granted in the United States.
• A patent is supposed to protect the ideas and inventions that people have. Patenting something will then
allow the owner of the patent to charge others for the usage of an idea or invention. The aim is to reward
the creator for their hard work or intelligence. But patents can prevent people from using good ideas
because they cannot afford to do so.
• A quarter of all territories had no new patents in 2002, so will not profit from these in future years as
others will.

34. Evidence of Danger
PhD production rates
• Post-graduate Profiles 250.00
221
PhD's/year/million of population
188
200.00
157
140 1999
150.00
• Research Profiles
2000
114 2001
100.00 2002
2003
53 43
50.00
23
7 10
0.00
South China India Japan South Taiwan UK USA Australia Brazil
Africa Korea

35. ACADEMIC LITERACY
NBT Benchmark Levels, February 2009
7000
6000 5780
5571
5000
4000
Basic
Intermediate
3000
Proficient
2000
1000 851
0
Total

36. QUANTITATIVE LITERACY
NBT Benchmark Levels, February 2009
7000
6125
6000
5000
4000
Basic
3055 3022 Intermediate
3000
Proficient
2000
1000
0
Total

37. MATHEMATICS
NBT Benchmark Levels, February 2009
9000
8000 7788
7000
6000
5000
Basic
4000 Intermediate
Proficient
3000
2146
2000
1000 738
0
Total

38. ACADEMIC LITERACY
NBT Benchmark Levels, February 2009
250
200 194
Basic
Intermediate
Proficient
150
100
55 59
51
50
30
21 18
7 9
0
Commerce Law Science
UWC

39. QUANTITATIVE LITERACY
NBT Benchmark Levels, February 2009
160
141
140
131
Basic
120
Intermediate
Proficient
100
80
60
47
39
40 35
32
20
11
4 4
0
Commerce Law Science
UWC

40. National Benchmark Tests Project:
Pilot Test Reports
Mathematics Benchmark Levels
MATHEMATICS
NBT Benchmark Levels, February 2009
160
142
140
120 Basic
110
Intermediate
100 Proficient
80
60
40
23 23
20
1
0
Commerce Science
UWC

41. EDUCATION IN 2030
• It is quite possible, on the basis on the amazing
technological advances now being made,
especially with respect to communication,
to suggest what organisations and tools education
would have at its disposal in 2030, and how
dramatically this could change the ways in which
education would develop.

42. Sources of Information and
Prediction
• Science fiction has always been a source of
possibilities and the extent to these have eventuated
is amazing.
• Today, a new breed of knowledge creators called
futurist, are confidently going about their business of
using the present to forecast the future.
• Other disciplines have worked in this area as well.
We think of speculative historians like Spengler,
Toynbee and Marx. Also of social scientists like David
Kaplan and Manual Castells, and poets like W B Yeats

43. To Survive: Education Must Change
• Created for industrial age
• Mostly lock-step
• Teacher dominated
• Too much content (Per Dalin)
• Too shallow (Per Dalin)
• Not connected to life

44. CURRICULUM: DRIVERS
• Relevant
• Learner-centred
• Respond to Dalin’s revolutions
• Communication focused
• Critical engagement highlighted
• Make wide use of technology
• Broaden knowledge

45. CURRICULUM GOALS
• Self Confidence
• Self Direction
• Self Sufficiency
• Self Initiation
• Self Discipline
• Openness
Richard Hartjen

46. CURRICULUM: WHAT’S TO BE LEARNT
• Learn how to learn
• History of cultures and religions
• Respect for diversity
• How economies work
• Develop as scientific sense
• What the big environmental challenges/dangers are
• Personal responsibility to know and act
• Ability to work with others
• The significance of relationships
• Learning is labour
• The power of emotions

47. CURRICULUM: WHAT’S TO BE LEARNT
• 21st Century content includes the basic core
subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic-
but also emphasizes global awareness,
financial/economic literacy, and health issues.
The skills fall into three categories: learning
and innovations skills; digital literacy skills;
and life and career skills. Charles Fadel

48. CURRICULUM: WHAT’S TO BE LEARNT
• Our future lies in connecting and understanding
• It will be shaped by people’s sense making with
respect to the different other
• Core of Maths, Science and Reading and Writing
• Cultural history and big religious ideas to understand
• others
• Analysis, reflection and critical thinking
• Create things together
• Develop consciousness of agency in making history

49. CURRICULUM: WHAT’S TO BE LEARNT
• Understand the significance and power of
relationships
• Understand of power of emotions
• Develop confidence in living with uncertainty
• Work out what you dream for and develop the
competence to pursue that dream
• Participate in democratic activity
• Learn to scan, analyse and synthesise large amounts
of material quickly
• Master the many different ways of obtaining
knowledge

50. WILEY: MAJOR CULTURAL CHANGE
The old The new
• analogue digital
• tethered mobile
• isolated connected
• generic personal
• consuming creative
• closed open

51. LEARNING TOOLS:
• Open access to information
• Technology central to the learning project
• New teaching site designs
• Teacher physical presence not essential
• Innovative curricula
• Innovative assessment

52. Learning Tools
• While technology critical for learning in the
21st Century the most important learning
tools are our minds, our hearts and our hands,
all working together. (Fadel)

53. Traditional Classroom

54. Learning Studio

55. Display Space

56. A NEW MISSION FOR SCHOOLS
• The school is not just a tool for youth, but is a
resource for the entire community it serves: Provides
co-working and incubator resources for people with
ideas that want to involve youth, and facilitates
innovative, non-formal, informal, and invisible
opportunities. (Anon)
• A new breed of teacher/facilitators are trained and
recruited to do away with download-style pedagogy,
and rather serve as curators of ideas and enablers of
creativity and innovation. (Anon)

57. Relevance of Schools and
Residential Universities in 2030
• Schools, especially primary schools relevant for:
1. Socialisation role
2. Creating sense of teams
3. Induction into knowledge processes
• Residential Universities relevant for:
1. Content
2. Support services
3. Social life
4. Qualifications
But elitist and no longer have monopoly

58. OUR FORMAL EDUCATION NEXUS
OUR WAR MACHINE
THE STATE
CURRICULUM PEDAGOGY MANAGEMENT
LEARNERS
COMMUNITY

59. The Fault Line: Across the Globe

60. The Second Coming: W B Yeats
• Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon
cannot hear the falconer;
• Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-
dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The
ceremony of innocence is drowned;
• The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full
of passionate intensity

61. 7 LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
THE WHY IS MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN THE WHAT AND THE HOW
Service Stage 3: External Cohesion
7
Serving humanity and the planet
Making a Difference 6 Collaborating with partners
Stage 2: Internal Cohesion
Internal Cohesion 5
Finding meaning in existence
Balancing self-interest
Transformation 4 with group interest
Self-Esteem Stage 1: Personal Mastery
3
Development of a healthy
Relationship 2 positive ego
Need to overcome
Survival 1 deficiency perspective
Barrett