Public education refers to the education services provided to the public at large. The government is the custodian of such education provision. Public education in south Africa falls under the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) and it is delivered through National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). This policy document, CAPS, consists of official subjects offered see: https://www.education.gov.za/Curriculum/SeniorCertificate.aspx. Many education commentators have been criticizing public education due to its ‘’one size fits all’’ curriculum model. Parents and learners, who can’t afford private education, have shown their dissatisfaction and their trust and loyalty to this curriculum has dismally declined. This paper`s intention is to reveal that public education is not an intended choice for many parents and learners in south Africa, but it is a choice of education they have settled for in the absence of financial means to afford their preferred choice of education – private education. The paper will further reveal some commentary from various sources highlighting the concerns around public education being the only option the public is stuck with and the looming dangers it poses to the future of education in South Africa.

Businesstech, 2018 revealed that Ipsos (Global Market Research and Public Opinion Specialist), in collaboration with the Varkey Foundation, released its annual Global Parents survey, looking at parents’ perceptions of education and the schools they send their children to. While parents, globally, remained upbeat about their children’s education – perceptions were particularly negative in South Africa. Almost three-quarters (72%) of South African parents thought standards of education got worse in the last 10 years – higher than any other country surveyed. South Africa was also the highest ranked country when it came to parents who believed that the education system was set to deteriorate further over the next 10 years (50%). In addition, more than half (54%) of South African parents rated public schools as fairly poor or very poor – a rate higher than any other country surveyed apart from Uganda (66%) – https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/231147/what-parents-really-think-about-local-schools-and-the-quality-of-education-in-south-africa/

Learning from the statistics above, it shows that parents are not satisfied with the public schooling of their children. Common sense would dictate that; these parents will remove their children from public education to private education. Even after such alarming statistics, parents are still enrolling their children under public education system. Furthermore, again in consideration of the above statistics, most parents sending their children to school for the first time, enrol their children in public education. Is it because these parents do not want better education for their children? no! every parent want what`s best for their children. Then why parents continue to enrol children under public education system, the declining system of education that has created loss of confidence within the parents and learners?

Private education is by far better than public education, however it is costly. These dissatisfied parents realize the need to enrol their children under private education but issues of affordability push them back to the public education system. That is why, despite the decline in public education, the parents still continue to enrol their children in public schools. This is the proof that parents do not purposefully intend to enrol their children under public schooling system, but they settle for it due to lack of private education affordability. That is why many parents who gained private education affordability after they have sent their children to public schools, they remove them and enrol them under private education banner. In concurrence to our argument here, in 2016, Mail & Guardian revealed that private schools confirmed that black pupil enrollment was increasing because many parents perceived the curriculum of the public schools to be dysfunctional. Curro Holdings, which owned 110 private schools by then, said at least 66% of its 41 864 pupils were black and they had dumped the dysfunctional public schools (https://mg.co.za/article/2016-06-30-00-prestige-and-mistrust-in-public-education-drives-more-parents-to-private-schools/). That is another proof showing that south African majority of parents have settled for public mediocre education system, not because they are happy and have confidence in it, but it`s because they have no choice but to settle for it, since their intended option is not affordable.

This calls for public education to ask itself as to why it has become a second option that parents settle for? The reality is that the public education will not ask itself this question because the public education authorities know that as long as there are poor people in our society, the education services they offer will always have customers thereafter! That is why after 25 years of democracy in south Africa education curriculum transformation hasn’t really taken place. Those who have been entrusted with the responsibilities to champion the curriculum transformation are haggard because their education services (public education) will forever render its services to those who can`t afford the proper intended education services (Private education). Our position against the current curriculum (NCS -CAPS) is in agreement with Colin Northmore, the head of Sacred Heart College, revealing that public education system has failed the country – “I am deeply critical of the current curriculum that is on offer to children in South African schools. The CAPS is, I think, the absolute wrong direction to take our education. It’s a very content-heavy curriculum, a very scripted, minimalist curriculum. We are not teaching children to become critical thinkers but to become rote learners’’

That is why we are of the view that NCS-CAPS curriculum model is not a safe future oriented curriculum. It needs to be dismantled and we introduce Personalized Education Curriculum System (PECS). As long as we continue with this NCS-CAPS, a lot of damage will be done, and this curriculum will constantly produce people who can’t save this country from its education crisis. South Africa has always had educational crisis, top of the list is curriculum transformation, to this very day the curriculum hasn’t been attended to. The design of new policies is not working because learners are still not given skills and future oriented curriculum to undertake, but instead they`re given what we call ‘’education bogus’’. Introduce PECS as the national curriculum, public schooling will be meaningful and appealing and private education will lose its prestige attraction it gets from the parents, until then, South African education is doomed.

Know more about PECS: https://simnandisolutions.co.za/personalized-education/ – Click on PECS Powerpoint presentation.

Please answer these 3 questions and submit: https://simnandisolutions.co.za/pecs-questionnaires/