DIGEST 2006 - Sabita

professional work, within the
context of their work environment.
The teacher mentoring in this
initiative is supported by a
comprehensive programme, for
both teachers and learners, of
exposure to Science, Technology,
Engineering and Maths (STEM)
and awareness of careers in the
STEM industry (Horak and Fricke,
2004). A particular objective is
the improved qualifications of the
matriculants, in the hope that
many more of them will enter the
engineering fields. In the rest of
this paper the observations from
this TMP intervention will be
described to illustrate the full
impact and implication on the total
system of skills development
which it must feed into (Fricke et
al, 2006 and Fricke/Horak, 2006).
Even though these observations
may appear to be highlighting
negative aspects, it is designed to
confirm the systemic nature of the
problem and many of the
problems have seen improvement
in the last twenty months.
In general, the experiences with
teachers during the first year of
TMP implementation has
highlighted their (Howie, 2002),
utter confusion with the outcomes
based education (OBE)
methodology introduced in recent
years, and general incompetence
in the various forms of
assessment.
Qualifications
Consider the qualifications of the
teachers at five TMP secondary
schools 2004 as shown in Table 1:
Total number of
teachers
Qualified to teach at
primary school level
Qualified to teach at
secondary school level
50 16 34
Table 1: Teacher qualifications
The TMP project has been running
for 22 months in five schools, and
there are many positive indicators
of progress. However, the
following observations, made at
the start of TMP interaction with
the schools, indicate that there are
systemic problems in the schools
which impact on the maths and
science achievements of learners.
Some of these comments are
based on personal observations,
but external audits done by
education experts were also used
to provide a more objective view.
However, this number of teachers
at the secondary school level must
be looked at in more detail.
Experience and observation
(Howie, 2002) has shown that
these teachers are NOT qualified
for the post they are in, and this is
partly because:
• Many are not teaching the
subject for which they
obtained their qualifications;
• Most received diplomas at
teaching colleges which were
51