The development of a new curriculum is an absolute necessity. If a new curriculum is implemented, it must be perfectly relevant and answer the question asked by societal advances. Every country’s curriculum relevance is automatically challenged by an ever-changing society. A curriculum system is bound to evolve as societies develop, in order to remain relevant and serve its education community. Button (2022) reveals that curriculum change is unavoidable in any culture, which then validates the need to consider curriculum changes in South Africa. These changes occur because no curriculum is perfect, and there is frequently a need to react to society’s economic, technological, social, political, and ideological contexts. In the case of such inevitabilities, an invention of a new curriculum in South Africa is bound to take place in the near future.
However, whenever the need for curriculum change arises, South Africa is slow, if not static, in acting to fundamentally transform the education system. The need for curriculum system modification has arisen numerous times, however the education system is still afflicted by irrelevancies to this day. An opportunity to decolonize education presented itself in 1994, yet the school system is still fixated on the colonial hubris of the past. According to observations from the study titled “The introduction of RNCS in South Africa” by (Omunkunyi, 2020), an opportunity to debunk all curriculum irrelevancies and rectify education decolonization failures presented itself in 1997, just before the introduction of Curriculum 2005 – Outcome-based Education (OBE). This is where the South African education community would have expected the curriculum system to finally inject consistency and assist pupils find meaning in their studies. Unfortunately, this was never the case, as matters deteriorated to the point where “amendments” were made, resulting in the birth of the Revised National Curriculum Statement – RNCS in 2002. Finally, another opportunity arose in 2012 when the CAPS curriculum was developed; once again, this opportunity was underutilized because South Africa’s education system remains a mass affair system that facilitates irrelevant subjects in schools.
Even though economic, technological, social, and ideological conditions always necessitate curriculum changes, the South African curriculum system change will be primarily prompted by irrelevancies within the curriculum itself, which are a combination of all the mentioned factors. Taking irrelevant subjects against important subjects for a chosen career path has no significance in high school. For instance, students interested in careers in various leadership domains within public governance deserve, as their subjects; Leadership and Management, Public and International Relations, Political Studies, Government Ministry, Municipal Governance, etc. However, such subjects do not exist within the CAPS curriculum system, meaning such students are settling for the available subjects irrespective of relevancy. The forced and settled subjects in the absence of relevant subjects depict curriculum dictatorship fuelled by lack of curriculum solutions. And these are the central reasons that, in the future, could prompt the proposal of an invention of a new curriculum system in South Africa.
According to Button, (2022), Curriculum change can be seen at three levels. The first is minor change which involves re-arrangement of subject content, learning activities, re-organization of personnel, and addition of topics or methods in the curriculum project. The second is medium change which involves not only organizing content, materials, or facilities, but it involves the integration of subjects or new approaches to the existing subjects. And lastly, a major change that involves an overhaul of the existing curriculum may entail a complete re-organization of the conceptual design of the curriculum, and changes in structure, content, methods, and approaches. Given the argument above, the South African curriculum system, without a doubt, desperately needs major curriculum change.
The rationale for major curriculum change level three is that the current curriculum continues to fail to explicitly give relevant subjects for common career routes such as Fashion Design, Public Governance, Journalism, Sports Careers, and so on. Even when relevant subjects are offered for certain professional routes, they are minimally provided for and are paired with irrelevant subjects. For example, Information Technology is a broad field of study, NCS only provides Computer Application Technology (CAT) as a subject, and subjects like Introduction to Database, Introduction to Programming, Interactive Programming, Network Technical Skills, Workstation Technical Skills, Business Informatics, etc are reduced to mere chapters in the prescribed Grade 12 CAT textbook, while they should be separate independent subjects to ensure an extensive and sound relevant introduction to information technology as a field.
For these reasons, (Button, 2022) contends that some educational techniques have become obsolete, and that learning experiences should be reinvented to be more relevant to student interests, skills, and cultures. This argument suggests a total overhaul of the curriculum structure, including the well-channelled coupling of disciplines in order to strike relevancy for the benefit of students. This means that NCS should avoid casting shadows and instead offer a realistic curriculum – Consumer Studies with its relevant courses, CAT with its relevant subjects, and EGD with its relevant subjects – to boost effective entry into the sector. Until education is designed in this way, it will continue to serve itself rather than society. That is why the South African curriculum requires massive revisions.
With the World Economic Forum predicting a full-scale workplace revolution in the next two decades, Cordieur, (2022) cites the need for a school curriculum that addresses historical inequalities and equips students with values, knowledge, and skills for the twenty-first century in order to embrace this revolution. The only way to accept that revolution is to develop a new curriculum that is aligned with future job market demands.
Given these reasons, the Personalized Education Curriculum System (PECS) aims to transform present curriculum irrelevancy into curriculum relevancy. The PECS is intended to save children from the enormous curriculum that drives them to study courses they will not need in the future. PECS is a disruptive education curriculum system that, by design, will end the confusion surrounding curricular disagreements. PECS will finally figure out the pass requirement standards. PECS aspires to restore the worth and dignity of our educational system. PECS allows students to get a taste of the job while still in school. That’s what makes PECS unique and highly relevant to inspire the education community of our nation, South Africa, and the whole of Africa. And that is how we believe the education system can be fixed.
Know more about PECS: https://simnandisolutions.co.za/personalized-education/
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– Questionnaires
Bibliography:
Cordeur, M. (2022). We need a curriculum overhaul to equip young people for the workplace of the future. Maverick life, 18 July. Available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-07-18-curriculum-overhaul-needed-to-prepare-our-young-for-the-new-workplace/. (Accessed 5 May 2011).
Button, L. (2022). Curriculum Essentials: A Journey. https://oer.pressbooks.pub/curriculumessentials/chapter/chapter-curriculum-innovations/
Omukunyi, B. (2020). The introduction of RNCS in South Africa. https://www.coursehero.com/file/92756710/The-introduction-of-RNCS-in-South-Africapptx/