[lg policy] South Africa: Young Communist League condemns national benchmarking test

[Harold Schiffman]

YCL condemns national benchmarking test
Gugu Ndima
23 August 2009


Young Communists says NBT may be used to ostracise disadvantaged
students The YCLSA does not welcome the findings of the National
Benchmarking Test (NBT)
The YCLSA [uFasimba] notes the usage of and condemns benchmarking by
Dr. Nan Yeld as a way to determine access to Higher Education by
school leavers.
The test was conducted on first year university students. According to
Dr. Yeld the test revealed that many University entrants were
illiterate and innumerate. Despite the questionable methodology used
in the research, we see this as yet another "underhanded" strategy to
exclude the youth from disadvantaged communities.

The test also implies that the Matric examination set out by the
Department of Education inferior nature and that standards have
dropped, without any further investigation other than the tests. The
YCL will instruct its structures to fight tooth and nail if any of
these findings are used at Universities to exclude students, as it is
our suspicion that they may in order to justify ostracizing students
from disadvantaged backgrounds. We shall declare any form of academic
exclusion as criminal and will use any platform to fight against it.
Access to free and quality higher education is now our motto. We also
want to again raise the issue of language in education, and how
singular use of English and Afrikaans as the medium in many
Universities continue to be problematic. We call on the Minister of
Higher Education and the Portfolio Committee seriously look into
introducing a National Language Policy which will enable or force
Universities to use all other languages as their medium.

We welcome the efforts made by the Department of education (Both the
basic Education and Higher education) to put in place measures to
address past inadequacies that the government has inherited from the
apartheid government. We believe that if properly implemented, they
will combat shortcomings of the entire education system.

Statement issued by the Young Communist League, August 21 2009

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=140506&sn=Detail
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