Mathematics Education System in South Africa

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1
Chapter
Mathematics Education System in
South Africa
ZingiswaJojo
Abstract
The teaching of mathematics in South African schools has been pronounced to
be among the worst in the world. Unacknowledged poor teaching of mathemat-
ics in a majority of public schools deprive many learners access to both higher
education and modern, knowledge-intensive work skills. The chapter resumes by
outlining mathematics curriculum redress and changes in the post-apartheid era,
the exploration of mathematics education, democracy and development, together
with the introduction of Mathematical Literacy as an alternative compulsory subject
to learners incompetent to do mathematics. The chapter further interrogates how
mathematics education, in terms of mathematical knowledge, skills, values and
attitudes, is distributed in society and thereby shapes educational possibilities
together with the research trends and their effect on mathematics education in South
Africa. Mathematics teacher training and empowerment are discussed together with
shortcomings in the system that leads to learners’ poor performance in Mathematics.
How South Africa compares in performance with other countries is also examined in
this chapter. The closing remarks of the chapter suggest some improvements that the
mathematics education system in South Africa can embark on.
Keywords: mathematics education, mathematics curriculum, mathematical literacy,
mathematics knowledge, democracy, research, development
1. Introduction
There has been a significant reform in the South African mathematics curriculum
such that the mathematics education research community has also grown markedly.
The trust and focus of this chapter is to unpack the mathematics education system in
South Africa in the post-apartheid era. The author draws and builds envisaged result
bearing changes in the system in the country from various scholars. The curriculum
reform in South Africa has been generally political driven. Consequently, the country
has experienced reduction of education for the past 20years to, economic ends,
coupled with the conflation between mathematical prowess and problem-solving
skills for the knowledge economy, which has resulted in mathematics being isolated
as essential knowledge in South Africa. Thus in the post-apartheid era in the country,
a redress was effected to ensure that all students will have been exposed to some form
of mathematics by the time they complete matric.
After the 1994 democratic elections and post elections in South Africa, many
changes took place and the biggest change by necessity has been in the area of
education. Initially, curriculum 2005 (C2005) which was driven by the Outcomes
Based Education (OBE) was unveiled by the department of basic education. It was

Education Systems around the World
2
mainly characterized by cooperative group instruction which made it difficult for
teachers to identify struggling learners in mathematics understanding at all levels.
Outcomes-based education was introduced in 1997 to overcome the curricular divi-
sions of the past, and was reviewed in 2000 after the experience of its implementa-
tion by stakeholders yielded bad results [4]. The Revised National Curriculum
Statement (RCNS) Grades R-9 and the National Curriculum Statement Grades
10–12 was then implemented in 2002. Consequently, according to [2] the RNCS
system failed because the educators did not understand it and quite often did not
see the difference between C2005 and the RCNS.The result was that the implemen-
tation challenges of RCNS were the same as those of C2005 [2]. It also transpired
that RCNS was highly loaded and fell short of its expectations, used vague complex
terminology and inadequate training of teachers and district officials. In 2012 it was
reviewed again and replaced by the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement
(CAPS) which was rolled out in all phases. According to the authors [3], OBE is
still the underlying philosophy which underpins CAPS.Currently, CAPS is the
curriculum practiced in the country as a measure that redresses the inequalities
and imbalances of the past. With effect from January 2012, a single comprehensive
Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement was developed for each subject
to replace Subject Statements, Learning Programme Guidelines and Subject
Assessment Guidelines in Grades R-12.
CAPS in general aims to produce learners that are able to:
• use critical and creative thinking in making decisions of identification and solu-
tion of problems;
• work effectively as individuals and with others as members of a team;
• manage and organize themselves in handling their activities responsibly and
effectively;
• collect, analyze, organize and critically evaluate relevant data;
• use visual, symbolic and/or language skills in various modes to communicate
effectively; and
• recognize that problem-solving contexts do not exist in isolation and demonstrate
an understanding and interpretation of the world as a set of related systems [4].
Consequently, the learner develops (a) correct use of Mathematics; (b) number
vocabulary, number concept, calculations and application skills; (c) learning to
listen, communicate, think, reason logically and apply mathematical knowledge
gained; learning to investigate, analyze, represent and interpret information,
pose and solve problems; and (e) building awareness of the important role that
Mathematics plays in real-life situations, including his/her personal development
[4]. The intended CAPS prescribed various topics and the content areas to be
covered in each grade with time allocated specifics together with the weighting
of the content areas in each phase, outcomes and relevant assessment examples.
Mathematics is taught at foundation (grades 1–3), intermediate (grade 4–6),
senior (grade 7–9) and further education and training (grades 10–12) phases.
Ramatlapana and Makonye [14] assert that although the teachers were free to
teach the previous curricular as they saw fit, CAPS was prescriptive and demanded
uniformity in implementation across the country. This prescription was enforced
because the freedom with the implementation of changed curricular were

3
Mathematics Education System in South Africa
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85325
counter-productive since learners’ performance continued to be poor in mathemat-
ics. This was evidently reflected from national school assessments and also in the
Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) [7] together with Southern
and Eastern Africa Consortium for monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ)
[10], Government officials and mathematics subject advisors are able to monitor
the present curriculum. This is because the mathematics content to be taught is
explicitly delimited, paced, and sequenced with prescribed mathematics textbooks
that point to certain examples. However, Ramatlapana and Makonye [14] argue that
the said prescription restricts the mathematics teachers’ professional autonomy.
This curriculum is favored in the country because it is helpful in the teaching of
low achieving learners from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds using a
more structured teacher directed instruction [5]. In addition, systematic efforts to
change the practice, attitudes and beliefs of mathematics teachers in the classroom
so as to effect the learning outcomes of students and familiarize teachers with the
implementation of the curriculum are effected through Mathematics Continuous
Professional Development programs. Those programs were geared to address the
quality of mathematics education, improvement of quality of mathematics teach-
ers, numeracy and mathematics teaching in lower grade levels.
Ref. [6] suggests changes to the way mathematics is perceived. Those changes
include: (i) In 1994, mathematics was a compulsory school subject until grade 9,
and beyond that it was not compulsory. Those who registered for it at matric level
did it on either higher or standard grade until 2007. (ii) In 2001 and 2002, the
Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and the Common Task for Assessment (CTA)
was introduced to high school learners, but was shortly discontinued due to seri-
ous challenges in terms of its implementation. (iii) In 2005 another curriculum
change in the form of an “outcomes-based” approach was introduced. This change
had a major impact in the learning and teaching in the GET (grades 7–9) due to
the fact that it was very vague in terms of what had to be taught in different grades
[6]. (iv) Curriculum change over the years has also affected the content to be
taught in different grades. Changes involved moving content from one grade to
another; removing some content and introducing new content. Recently, Technical
Mathematics and Technical Science in technical schools in grade 10 from 2016 has
been introduced. This clearly indicates that curriculum change in South Africa is a
continuing process. Coupled with the change in curriculum was also the introduc-
tion of Mathematical Literacy as an alternative to be done by students who were
not competent to do mathematics in the FET phase. This was done to cater for those
students who could not do pure mathematics and to retain the compulsory status.
This then ensures that all learners are exposed to some form of mathematics by the
time they finish school.
2. The exploration of mathematics education, democracy and
development
The connection in the triad of mathematics education, democracy and develop-
ment brings critical engagements with the country’s developmental features like
poverty and inequality. One of the reasons why mathematics was made compulsory
was in the fact that in this day and era, it is used by people, institutions and agencies
through all types of applications that come to produce and result in a formatting of
society. It therefore requires a more sophisticated mathematically literate person
to question the applications within a democracy since an increasing amount of
some mathematics is found in all areas of life today. The recently introduced new
Mathematics and Mathematics Literacy curricula for grades 10–12in South Africa

Education Systems around the World
4
could be a redress to ensure that all South Africans are mathematics literate and
numerate. Also the evidence in this line of argument is that access to and compe-
tence in mathematics serve very different purposes. The implications of both the
presence and absence of mathematics education has real consequences since it is
used in a multitude of ways in society like predicting, controlling, interpreting,
describing and explaining within a particular cultural, economic and socio-political
context. Furthermore, mathematics is expected to integrate a critical, democratic
and mathematical competence such that citizenry participates meaningfully in the
growing economy. Consequently, South African citizens would then be able to grasp
the mathematical basis implicit in the decisions taken for or against them [18].
In essence, the developmental challenge for mathematics education is not
confined to particular parts of the world, South Africa is included. Venkat etal. [18]
proposed a significant new role in contributing to the acceleration of eradicating
poverty, promoting gender equality and universal primary education. The author
further suggests that mathematicians and mathematics educators need to work
together, from different levels of the education system, in different aspects of
research and practice, from different perspectives, and from different parts of the
world. This according to [18] would address poverty, injustices, inequity, illiteracy
and access to education. In addition, Venkat etal. [18] suggest that in order to create
employment and to fight poverty, mathematics education can be used to empower
people with knowledge and skills that are necessary to reach the targeted economic
growth rates. The author further argues mathematics is required to analyze most
of the skills areas of the economic sectors that are being targeted to ensure growth
is achieved in the country. A shortage of skilled people who can make things with
their hands, those skilled in the technique of an art or craft, engineers, architects,
doctors, together with many of those who are involved in various kinds of applica-
tions of mathematics in South Africa, has been registered in the country. Therefore,
for economic growth, the strengthening of mathematics teaching in schools is
important in order to reach development goals and the needs of the impoverished
and marginalized communities. The improvement of the basic conditions of
peoples’ lives, including schooling and the quality of all aspects of mathematics
education is crucial to sustaining democracy in South Africa.
In addition to the mathematical knowledge and skills needed in the twenty-first
century, mathematics education and performance in the subject determines access to
jobs and further or higher education studies in a range of areas, from the natural and
physical sciences to economics and technology. Thus, mathematics is on the one hand
regarded as a gateway subject, a requirement for admission to learning a large number
of these high-status, high-paying professions. On the other hand, it also functions
as a gatekeeper, a sorting mechanism used to keep some people who fail to learn and
perform at the requisite levels or are failed by the education system [18]. In this way,
the teaching and learning of mathematics stratify the society. It is in this notion that
mathematics education becomes responsible for the country’s economic growth.
3. The distribution and educational possibilities of mathematics
education
The distribution of mathematics education is made visible and public through
international studies of student mathematics performance and national tests and
assessments. South Africa’s poor performance in Mathematics and Science educa-
tion quality was highlighted in the first three TIMMS reports—1995, 1999 and
2002. Feza [5] asserts that South Korea and Singapore which are two of the top
performing countries in TIMSS had gone through curriculum changes reforms

5
Mathematics Education System in South Africa
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85325
driven by political influences and have managed to have their students as the lead
performers in TIMSS.However, South Africa’s repeated ranking at the very bottom
of TIMMS and equally poor outcomes in the annual high-stakes national grade
12 matric examination results, follow with endless speculation about the reasons
and causes of South Africa’s continued poor mathematics performance. Feza [5]
further suggests some factors behind the poor mathematics performance in South
Africa as those that connect with curriculum implementation and teacher readiness.
The mathematics teachers’ classroom practices remain unchanged although the
current implemented curriculum prescribes precise content that must be taught
to learners at various levels. This can be associated with the observations of the
Education minister, Motshekga [11], who noted that “South Africa is significantly
under performing in education in general, particularly mathematics teaching and
learning. Mathematics teaching is often poor quality, with teachers not able to
answer questions in the curriculum they are teaching, one indicator of the chal-
lenge. Often national testing is misleading as it does not show the major gap at lower
grade levels.” In an endeavor to address this saga, the government opted to define
the set of values for the teaching and learning of Mathematics in the South African
context. It was also acknowledged that in education, the country was doing well in
terms of the fact that all learners had access to some mathematics studying, equity,
but quality was lacking. Mostly, the underperformance was visible in the public sec-
tor schools that form about 80% of schooling in the country. OECD [12] associated
the South Africa’s mathematics educational outcomes with the aggravation of the
excess supply of unskilled labor and worsening income inequality in the country.
This crisis has recently worsened as the department of education has decided to
progress learners who did not meet the minimum mathematics requirements for
progression to the next grade in the senior phase, grades 7–9. I argue in this chapter
that the progression of learners who fail mathematics compromises the country’s
future quality of human capital and economic growth. I further suggest that this
can be redressed by subjecting underqualified mathematics teachers, those who had
done standard grade mathematics to an intense compulsory in-service mathematics
teacher training process. In this way mathematics teachers would be equipped with
both pedagogical knowledge and mathematics content for teaching the subject.
In the past decade, Venkat etal. [18] asserted that the number of students seeking
to become senior secondary teachers of mathematics in schools has not kept pace with
demand. Teaching is unable to compete with the status, remuneration and prestige
of other expanding career options in science and technology, given the small pool of
successful candidates in matric mathematics. This is associated with the fact that in
South Africa, through the deliberate underdevelopment of apartheid, the mathemat-
ics education system has inherited a nature of teachers with diplomas as opposed to
degrees, who were underprepared in handling the content of the changed curriculum.
This legacy remains intact and must be addressed for any reversal of the past and
for substantial improvements in providing learners with adequate and appropriately
qualified mathematics teachers. Those teachers will then acquire the kinds the math-
ematical knowledge and skills promised in the current CAPS curriculum. Parker [13]
notes that approximately 20% of grade 10–12 mathematics teachers are professionally
unqualified and of those that are qualified, still only 21% have some university level
courses. In addition, there is also evidence to the fact that qualified mathematics
teachers in the system are either not teaching mathematics or not teaching it at the
level at which they are qualified [13, 15]. Moloi [10], for example, argues that quality
mathematics teaching in South Africa will continue to be a phantom unless (i) there is
a quality teacher education that refreshes teachers’ competencies; (ii) teachers make
efforts to understand how their learners think and learn, and recognize the learning
experiences of their learners; and (iii) teachers are given the necessary support by the

Education Systems around the World
6
authorities. Some of the qualified mathematics teachers either serve in management
positions in schools rendering therefore a limited human capital that can assist with
effective mathematics teaching. This challenge has exacerbated to a level in which
the education minister has lowered the pass requirement for mathematics at grade
12 matric level to 20% across the country, a political decision that hits back to the
country’s economy as affected students cannot enroll for scarce skills at tertiary insti-
tutions although they have passed. In the most impoverished parts of the schooling
system, better distribution of the educational opportunities for many more marginal-
ized learners to effectively improve in mathematics performance, requires a targeted,
systemic and systematic long-term mathematics teacher continuous professional
development, a stable curriculum policy environment, and, a critical level of resourc-
ing and schooling infrastructure for the mathematics education system to function.
4. The introduction of mathematical literacy
The subject mathematical literacy (ML) was introduced at in South African
schools in 2006 as a compulsory alternative to mathematics. This was done to ensure
that every citizen was allowed some form of mathematical skill which they can use in
their personal and work-related life (Subject Guidelines NC (V)) [4]. Although this
was a good intention, not all the objectives of the subject were accomplished. First
at the time of its introduction, there were no trained qualified teachers to handle the
subject. Secondly, it was enrolled at grade 10 level by students who did not perform
well in pure mathematics and had a weak pass in their grade 9. Such students also
struggled to perform well in languages and other subjects. The objective of ML
becoming a high-quality subject, which can stand independently with its own set of
objectives, and not to be compared with mathematics, is one of those that were not
accomplished. Equally shocking was the announcement that ML had since 2014 also
not shown any improvement in students’ poor performance up to 2016 [17].
Mathematical literacy (ML) is a context driven subject that is taught and learnt
from a contextual framework [4]. According to the subject guidelines for ML, Ref.
[4] prescribes that it is a subject that is meant to equip the student to deal effectively
with everyday problems. According to the Curriculum and Assessment Policy
Statement (CAPS) curriculum documents [4]., ‘mathematical literacy is defined
as follows: The competencies developed through Mathematical Literacy allow
individuals to make sense of, participate in and contribute by becoming responsible
citizens who base their decisions on sound information to the twenty-first century
world- a world characterized by numbers, numerically based arguments and data
represented and misrepresented in a number of different ways. Such competencies
include the ability to reason, make decisions, solve problems, manage resources,
interpret information, schedule events and use and apply technology’ [4].
The implications of the above statement is that Mathematical Literacy allows
citizens to make informed decisions and choices after carefully considering all
information in its contexts by comparing, conjecturing, calculating and problem
solving through the use of numbers and by using and applying technology to assist
them. It further states that citizens will be allowed to utilize resources, human or
otherwise, in a very optimal manner based on their calculations made. Although
the above was an expected outcome of the implementation of ML, not much
research had been done to verify whether this is what is actually happening in real
life for those students who have gone the ML program at schools. But recent studies
point to the fact that the percentage failure rate is higher in Mathematical literacy
than pure mathematics in grade 12 matric level. In addition, a major concern was
when Umalusi (a body that quality assures grade 12 matric results in South Africa)

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Mathematics Education System in South Africa
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85325
announced in 2016 that the “needle for mathematics has not moved”, which meant
that there was no significant improvement and noticeable difference in the marks
for mathematics since 2014. Equally shocking was the announcement that ML had
since 2014 also not shown any improvement up to 2016 [17].
5. The research trends and their effect on mathematics education in
South Africa
In conjunction with the changing landscape of post-apartheid South Africa,
research themes explored in mathematics education include assessment; issues of
language; aspects of radical pedagogy and progressive classroom practices; ethno-
mathematics; and teacher education. Nonetheless, it would be of interest to see how all
stakeholders understand the connections between curriculum research, reform, policy
and practice in mathematics education. Adler etal. [1] report a considerable increase in
primary mathematics education over the past decade. This could be a response to South
African mathematics education registered challenge wherein learners’ performances
at all levels, and teachers’ specialized mathematical knowledge [2] was significantly
low. The Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) is one of South Africa’s leading
development think tanks, focusing on vital national development issues and their rela-
tionship to economic growth and democratic consolidation. Spaull [15] who compiled
the CDE report assert that that despite some improvement, South Africa is still signifi-
cantly underperforming in mathematics education. The data they collected points to
indicators on school performance and teaching reveal largely unacknowledged poor
teaching of mathematics in the great majority of schools. This is despite the fact that
mathematics is a key requirement for not only entry into higher education, but also for
most modern, knowledge-intensive work. The most recent report from the Head of the
Department of Basic Education’s National Education Evaluation and Development Unit
(NEEDU), argues that poor learner performance in most schools is largely due to the
poor subject knowledge of teachers, especially in mathematics. The government official
remarks that this is as a result a major problem in with teacher complacency, which is
linked to the ways in which many teachers are appointed, often not on merit.
Informed by the research conducted, Spaull [15] developed four points that must
be borne in mind in addressing South Africa’s numeracy and mathematics schooling
challenge, that (i) although the improvement of mathematics teaching and learning
in public schools will not happen fast, it must begin urgently; (ii) poor mathematics
and numeracy teaching and learning in public schools accelerate private schooling
wherein there is enrolment growth in private extra mathematics lessons; (iii) if
South Africa is to be realistic about having a knowledge economy and creating more
and better jobs, it will require a sustained focus on teacher and teacher-training
development, particularly in mathematics teaching, and (iv) in the interim, it is
likely that the country will have growing numbers of innumerate young people, and
a majority of young South Africans could be unqualified to be hired in many types
of high quality work. Spaull’s [15] research suggests (i) the address of the inefficien-
cies in basic education that result in escalating numbers of drop-out students from
grade R-12; (ii) the development of early childhood and special needs mathemat-
ics education programs; (iii) a systemic account of public further education and
training colleges on how they train mathematics teachers, together with (v) low
pass rates in higher education institutions which were roughly half the learners at
contact education universities who start a bachelor’s degree graduating while only
40 per cent of diploma learners graduate. Further research recommended is on
whether (i) the selection, appointment and promotion of mathematics teachers is
based on their teaching qualities, as opposed say to the teachers’ other relationships

Education Systems around the World
8
or affiliations to unions; (ii) consideration of whether a system of teacher rewards
for learner performance in mathematics can replace a formal teaching qualifications
(iii) the allocation of more resources to teaching in school grades with the most seri-
ous deficiencies can make the most difference to end results at grade 12 matric level;
and (iv) how teacher complacency van be addressed in mathematics education.
6. Mathematics teacher training and empowerment
Stinson [16] projects a historical perspective that reveals existence of mathemat-
ics as a gatekeeper in the education system structure of the United States. Equally
a good performance in mathematics at grade 12 level allows students to enroll and
follow careers of high stature in South Africa. Thus it is important that high quality
training of mathematics teachers is ensured such that they are able to equip students
with high critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Mathematics teacher training in South Africa was handled by training colleges
prior to the re-dressing of the education system under the apartheid era. Those
colleges were divided to the various levels in which the teacher was going to teach.
For example teachers who did primary teachers’ course (PTC) were enrolled
to complete their 2-year certificate qualification in primary teachers’ colleges.
Different colleges enrolled and trained teachers who were prepared to teach in
secondary schools and those were awarded a Junior Secondary Teachers’ Course
(JSTC) certificate after 2 years. In addition there were those few who were trained
via a 1 year higher diploma in education (HDE) in universities after the completion
of their first degrees. This last group was composed of few students who would join
teaching because of other shortcomings or standards that they could not meet in
order to advance to higher degrees. This was all because teaching as a profession was
and still is an unpopular profession that is not highly recognized in the country.
During the post-apartheid era, many colleges were closed and or changed to be
centers for Further Education and Training (FET) colleges or Technical and Vocational
Education and Training (TVET) according to Act 98 of 1998. Thus teachers were now
trained in universities. The bachelor of education (BEd) course has a duration of 4
years. For a candidate to be able to complete training to be a mathematics teacher, he/
she must have done mathematics up to second year level. Others would enroll for a
junior Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree after which they enroll for a 1 year post graduate
certificate (PGCE) course in mathematics didactics. Due to the high unemployment rate
that is dominant in the country, some currently employed mathematics teachers hold an
engineering junior degree but opt for teaching to escape the poverty lines. Consequently,
Kaino etal. [8] assert that current mathematics teachers in the field today are a combina-
tion of a set of teachers with non-matching school subject knowledge and contrasting
models of classroom practices together with proactive, reactive and over-reactive
teachers [9]. The authors, Kaino etal. [8], further note that teachers with non-matching
school subjects require continuous professional development to address and adjust to the
consequences of an environment characterized by enormous infrastructural backlogs,
resource limitations, an inadequate supply of quality learning support materials, and the
absence of common national standards for learning and assessment.
It is for this reason that in each of the provincial departments in South Africa,
members of the Sub-Division of the Professional Development and Research Division
are responsible for the implementation of the Continuous Professional Teacher
Development Management system in all provinces. Such provision is facilitated through
the South African Council of Education (SACE) who liaises with other stakeholders
like teacher unions, School Governing Body associations and others to approve service
providers in different provinces in South Africa. Also mathematics teachers at various

9
© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
Mathematics Education System in South Africa
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85325
Author details
ZingiswaJojo
University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa
*Address all correspondence to: jojozmm@unisa.ac.za
levels work with projects initiated by South African universities to be empowered and
improve their mathematics pedagogical skills. It is my contribution and proposal in this
chapter that mathematics teachers need to undergo compulsory professional training
in-service before they are permanently employed. It is during that training that the
mathematics content knowledge gap can be closed and that they would be equipped
with the competencies of handling the subject even in under resourced trying condi-
tions. This is practiced in other countries like South Korea and Singapore. The students
in those countries are taught well and perform very well in mathematics.
7. Conclusion
Investigations on the South African mathematics education system have consistently
revealed how critical the situation is. Irrespective of the highlighted shortcomings and
condition surrounding the teaching and learning of mathematics, echoing the irregulari-
ties in the system will not help, but the existing challenges must be addressed. Clearly a
political solution in which the quality of successful performance standards in mathemat-
ics at grade 12 matric level have been lowered to 20% is not a solution. That compromise
psychologically disadvantages concerned students who would like to pursue careers in
which mathematics is required. In this chapter, I argue that teaching is an art and the
teaching of mathematics requires continuous professional development that equips
that teachers with mathematics content at various levels and how it can be presented in
the classroom. The supervision of mathematics teaching practice must be preceded by
demonstrated micro-teaching lessons on various topics. All mathematics teachers should
have access to mathematics open education resources that are freely available online.
Also, a shift in the mindset of mathematics teachers must be promoted. The
department of education can consider bring back the training colleges such that
quality mathematics teachers can be trained. The performance in the subject must
be detached from politics and be controlled by conceptual knowledge of the subject.
In that way students will not be taught for passing mathematics in different levels,
but rather understanding that can assist the student to connect and apply learnt and
known mathematics concepts to the improvement of their daily lives. A system that
empowers and compels mathematics teachers to serve for 2 years before they are
permanent, as practiced in Singapore can turn the tables around for South Africa.

10
Education Systems around the World
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