The trouble lurking in the South African education system over the past few years is clear and this has resulted in a rise of independent school groups.
According to entrepreneurial educationalist Lisa Illingworth, this trend is expected to grow in the foreseeable future.
“The core focus of these schools is on creating citizens that are holistically equipped for challenges that lie outside of academia. These are also coupled with business models that make independent, private schooling accessible to lower income groups,” Illingworth says.
She says that in the next three to five years the system will shift, resulting in five trends.
1. Seeing education as a business
“In simple terms, the current curriculum in South African schools creates little value for the world and hence the emergence of groups like Generations aimed at solving this problem,” states Jevron Epstein, CEO of Generations Schools.
2. Educational niching
The current national sentiment, that traditional schooling is both broken and irrelevant for the world of work, will continue to gain support over the next five years, resulting in increased ‘niching’ into smaller specific educational segments.
“Niching will not only include skills and knowledge segments but also focus on the emotional well-being of the child. Leadership and stewardship will take centre stage followed closely by coding, entrepreneurship and design. The market appetite will grow towards a blended offering of all of these and smaller institutions that offer these programmes will see an upswing in interest,” Illingworth explains further.
READ MORE: The Department of Education responds to misleading reports on pupils leaving school in Grade 9
3. School coaching
Parents are beginning to admit their inability to keep up with the challenges that teenagers face and are seeking professionals to equip both themselves and their teens with a broader toolbox of skills and coping mechanisms – ‘coaching.’
“Schools and parents are also investing and will increase this investment in additional support in the form of coaching and mentoring from formal professionals particularly in the high school phase of education where parents feel under-equipped to cope with the volatility of their teenagers,” Illingworth continues.
4. Self-directed learning
When classrooms were centred around the learning and knowledge directed by a teacher, the structuring of classes, lessons and activities had to have a single point of focus.
With the diverse and deep accumulation of information on the Internet, the role of the teacher can and must change to teaching students how to learn and assimilate knowledge. They have the chance to no longer be information practitioners but shapers of healthy, engaged and responsible citizens.
“Teachers have the freedom now to develop skills and behaviour as the source of knowledge, when there is access, is now digital.”
“Students can start building their own curriculums and identifying gaps in their own learning path by a virtual mirroring/modelling effect of their counterparts. By being taught self-awareness and self-management, students can identify their own gaps in learning, choose which channel by which to acquire that knowledge and with the help of an educator shift through that knowledge to create their own learning pathways,” she says.
5. Mindfulness as part of the curriculum
“Is your child stressed? Anxious? You’re not alone. It seems that everyone is experiencing burn-out these days and kids are very sensitive to what is going on around them. As a result an increasing number of children are experiencing behavioural and emotional issues both at home and in the classroom.
In response, some schools have begun to introduce mindful meditation into the curriculum, and we predict that more and more South African schools will catch on in the coming years.
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