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How Tech Is Transforming Teaching In a South African Township
An anonymous reader writes: The founders of the African School for Excellence have an ambitious goal — nothing less than redefining low cost, scalable teaching that brings international standards to the poorest schools in Africa. Their first model school is off to a good start: in just 18 months, all grade 9 students are achieving scores higher than 50% on Cambridge Curriculum Checkpoint tests, and only one student scored less than 50% in math. The national average score in math is 13%. The school relies on a locally designed piece of marking software to function. Their teach-to-pupil ratios are not great, but the teachers are committed to using technology to stretch themselves as far as they can. What's most remarkable is that the school's running costs are already half the cost of a traditional government school, and the quality of education is much, much better. All this, and they're only a year and a half into the program.
At first I thought this is impossible, but then I found this: (Warning, PDF) http://www.education.gov.za/Li... This is a report on a standardised nation wide test. The average for grade 9 math is indeed ~13%.
the school's running costs are already half the cost of a traditional government school, and the quality of education is much, much better.
The government will never stand for this sort of nonsense. It requires people to be as dumb as possible (to continue voting them into power), while having a fraction of the population being able to be nominally employed (taxes, to pay government officials' lavish salaries and benefits), while enough remain unemployable ("long live the struggle!").
On a less sarcastic (not less serious) note: I believe that the population growth rate in SA outstrips the rate at which new schools are being built. Hence some investment firms see education (private schools and even homeschooling systems) as a viable niche market.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
When educational programs first start they almost always have better than average results. Part of the reason is that the creators are committed to making the programs work. Once the programs are widely used, the results decline because the teachers are not as committed. While these results merit further trials, there is no guarantee that the results would be sustained when widely used.