For South African learners, the pressure to finish a syllabus can sometimes come at the expense of something more important: actually understanding it.
Tsietsi Logan Letimile, founder of Sankofa Tutorial SA and an educator in the Department of Education, has spent the past 12 years working with learners and teachers to address this issue.
His approach is to slow down where necessary, make learning meaningful and take your time teaching.
When covering the work means missing the point
The pressure on teachers to complete the Annual Teaching Plan (ATP) is real. The document sets out what should be taught and when, giving schools a structure to follow across the academic year.
But Letimile believes that structure can become a problem when completing the prescribed work becomes more important than whether learners have understood it.
In a busy classroom, a teacher may have limited time to revisit a difficult concept. Learners who need another explanation can quickly fall behind while the class moves on to the next section.
For Letimile, this is where the tutorial space can make a difference.
Sankofa Tutorial SA was established in February 2014 at George Carter Secondary School. Its purpose was not simply to offer additional lessons, but to create an environment where concepts could be given the time they require.
A learner can sit through an entire lesson without understanding what was taught. Completing the lesson does not change that.
“It’s better for you to finish only 60 percent of the curriculum but they understand 80 percent of the content than 200 percent of the curriculum and they only understand 20 percent of the content,” Letimile explains.
It is a philosophy that puts comprehension ahead of completion.
SMread: Automation in social grants excludes the vulnerable, activist says
The reading problem begins much earlier
The challenge doesn’t just begin in Grade 12, when examination results suddenly become a concern. It can start during the earliest years of schooling.
South Africa continues to face serious difficulties with literacy and reading comprehension among primary school learners. For a child who cannot understand what they are reading, almost every later subject becomes harder. Mathematics becomes a language problem as much as a numbers problem. Natural sciences becomes difficult to follow. Instructions themselves become obstacles.
Letimile also points to the growing presence of digital devices in children’s lives as something parents and educators need to consider.
The concern is not simply that children use phones. It is what prolonged dependence on screens can replace. Conversation, reading, physical play and opportunities to develop communication skills all form part of how children learn to understand the world around them.
The earlier these foundations are established, the more prepared learners are to engage with formal schooling.
SMread: Can the ANC fix Johannesburg’s water crisis?
A child’s first language matters
Language presents another layer to South Africa’s education challenge.
For many learners, the language used to teach the curriculum is not the language they speak most comfortably at home. English can provide access to higher education and the wider economy, but that does not mean a child should have to abandon their mother tongue in order to learn.
Letimile argues that a strong foundation in a child’s home language can support the acquisition of additional languages because understanding begins with meaning.
When a learner encounters an unfamiliar word, the brain needs something familiar from which to make sense of it. Without a solid linguistic foundation, the learner can end up trying to understand the language of the lesson before they can even begin understanding the lesson itself.
This does not make indigenous languages a barrier to education. Rather, it highlights the importance of building strong language foundations while learners acquire the languages they will need later in life.
South Africa’s linguistic diversity should be treated as an educational resource, not an inconvenience.
SMread: Hill-Lewis: ANC cannot be trusted to fix what it broke
Understanding the learner comes first
Good subject knowledge is essential, but it may not be enough.
A teacher can know mathematics exceptionally well and still struggle to teach it if they cannot communicate the concept in a way that makes sense to the learner.
The same applies to passion.
Teaching requires an awareness that the person sitting in front of you is not simply a mark on a register. Learners arrive with different abilities and ways of processing information.
A teacher therefore has to understand the learner as well as the subject.
At Sankofa, this influences how tutors are selected. Letimile looks closely at communication skills and the reasons prospective teachers chose education in the first place.
For him, a caring teacher can have a greater impact than one who possesses knowledge but cannot connect that knowledge to the learner.
SMread: South Africans among hundreds missing in Nepal floods
There is no single way to learn
The classroom is rarely as uniform as a curriculum document might suggest.
Some learners can remain focused on a task for a long period. Others need movement. Some respond strongly to visual material. Others learn through discussion or practical experiences.
This becomes particularly important when working with learners who have attention difficulties.
Instead of expecting every learner to remain still and attentive for an extended period, Letimile encourages tutors to build movement and activity into lessons. A lesson can change pace, introduce visual material or take learning outside the classroom when the subject allows it.
One example came from a tutor teaching photosynthesis. Rather than keeping the learners inside, she took them outdoors and used the plants around them to make the lesson concrete.
In doing so, one of the parents noticed that her child had begun identifying plants during everyday life and connecting what she saw to what she had learnt.
That is the difference between memorising information and understanding it.
The learner who needs more time still matters.
Sankofa’s model is built around a simple principle: do not move on while a learner is still lost.
Its tutors meet learners once a week, rather than having the five-day classroom contact available to a school teacher. That makes the use of time particularly important.
Letimile says tutors are expected to have a clear outcome for each session and to work towards achieving it before moving forward.
The pace is determined by understanding rather than by the fastest learner in the room.
This does not mean every learner will achieve the same result at the same speed. Some will require considerably more support, particularly where learning difficulties are involved.
But differences in pace shouldn’t be a reason to leave someone behind.
SMread: City Power deploys mobile service trailers to local communities
Results come from consistency, not cramming
Sankofa reports a 100 percent matric pass rate among its Grade 12 learners since its first Grade 12 cohort in 2015.
That result is significant, but Letimile does not attribute it to a secret formula.
Instead, the emphasis is on preparation, qualified educators, clear outcomes and making sure learners understand the work before moving forward.
There is also an important difference between joining early and joining late. A learner entering a programme close to an examination, particularly with significant gaps in their foundation, cannot necessarily be expected to undo years of missed understanding in a short period.
That is why the back-to-basics approach matters.
The earlier a learner’s difficulties are identified, the more opportunity there is to address them before they become entrenched.
Scaling the model is its own challenge
If the approach works, why is it not already available in schools across the country?
For Letimile, expansion has presented practical challenges. Running a tutorial organisation with qualified educators and the resources required to support learners is expensive. Access to suitable school facilities can also be difficult.
Sankofa is now pursuing partnerships with schools in different parts of Gauteng as it works towards expanding its reach.
The ambition is larger than adding another tutoring centre to the education landscape. The broader question is whether additional learning spaces can help relieve some of the pressure placed on schools while giving learners more time to understand what they are being taught.
South Africa cannot afford to confuse speed with progress
Education is usually measured through pass rates and whether a curriculum has been completed.
A learner who memorises a formula for an examination and forgets it a week later has technically completed the lesson. A learner who understands why the formula works has acquired something that can be used again.
This is so important as learners move through school and are expected to apply rather than simply recall what they have learnt.
Letimile’s approach returns education to a basic question that is easy to lose sight of when classrooms are crowded and deadlines are relentless: Does the learner actually understand?
If the answer is no, moving to the next page will not solve the problem.
Sometimes, it just makes more sense for an educator to go back to the beginning.
For more on this:
Image via Do Something.
