Opinion | Switching lanes in learning

According to official statistics, South Africa’s unemployment rate at the end of the first quarter of 2026 stood at a staggering 32.7%. What is more concerning is that 60.9% of youth in the age cohort 15-24 were recorded as being unemployed.

On closer analysis, this excessively high unemployment rate can be attributed to the failure of an education system that does not embrace the divergent abilities of its pupils because of an inflexible structure and restrictive curriculum that is incompatible to their needs.

As a result, the South African public education system has struggled to equip pupils with vocational and technical skills, leading to a massive crisis where youth unemployment and “not in employment, education, or training” (NEET) figures are exceptionally high.

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Passing matric and achieving a qualification does not necessarily mean that graduates gain employment as there are simply no jobs for them. Furthermore, for more than a hundred years, pupils have been educated in the same manner and in the same traditional settings.

At this time of persistent skills shortages and unacceptable unemployment levels, the focus should be on the development of the skills our country so desperately needs.

If every pupil is to become a productive citizen, it is imperative that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) facilitates a paradigm shift from a generic one-sizefits-all curriculum and delivery mode to an approach that focuses on the unique skills of individual pupils.

Such an approach can elevate pupils to higher levels, transforming classroom dynamics and the nature of learning. Many pupils believe that attending classes in a school setting is a waste of time.

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They are convinced that what they can learn in a 45-minute lesson in class, they can learn in five minutes through social media platforms like YouTube. This gives rise to a couple of pertinent questions.

Do pupils only learn within the four walls of the classroom and why do pupils remain at the same level of academic competence throughout their 12 years of schooling? Pupils are often classified as proficient, average and below average, and in an ideal situation, as they progress through the grades, their capabilities and competencies should be enhanced as a result of the teaching-learning process.

However, their performances remain static. Despite the adoption of several teaching methods such as inquiry-based, project-based, activity-based, pupil-centric and communicative – there is a discrepancy between teaching and learning.

This conclusion is strengthened because the three categories of pupils continue to persist. The view that a pupil learns what a teacher teaches is demonstrably inaccurate. The use of textbooks and attentive listening doesn’t automatically result in learning.

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The quotation: “If they cannot learn the way we teach, we need to teach the way they learn”, has never been more relevant in our South African public school system. For the classroom learning platform to become purposeful, the principal concern ought to be not how teachers teach, but how pupils learn.

It is about time the DBE switches to another learning lane and steers along another course. The classroom merely provides a structured environment for the acquistion of specific academic knowledge.

On the other hand, learning does not take place in a bubble because a great amount of learning takes place not when a pupil walks into a classroom, but rather when a pupil walks out of it.

At high school level, pupils must be guided in the right direction to think introspectively and identify whether they are visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic learners. This calls for teachers to use multi-modal approaches alongside the prescribed textbooks.

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Multiple format texts such as blogs, vlogs, infographics, videos, film clips, reels, and music must feature in every class to keep all pupils spellbound. This will ensure that different pupils benefit from the varieties of texts, paired with multiple activities.

The design of educational institutions, with rows of classrooms, each stacked with desks, scarcely provides any space for pupil-centred involvement. It is solely designed for teacher-centric methodology. But the availability of classrooms need not be issue as pupils can learn just as well outdoors and eagerly welcome a change of location.

There is also the issue of the acquisition of linguistic skills. Speaking can be learnt only by speaking, writing only by writing, listening by listening, and reading by reading.

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Poor English-speaking skills are rooted in the fact that there are not enough speaking activities in classes and an emphasis on formal presentations. To overcome this, pupils can be divided into small groups and speaking activities conducted outdoors, with the stress on informal communication.

Another way to trigger learning is for pupils to swap the classroom to learn skills in agriculture, aquaponics, plumbing and climate science in an outdoor environment. In this way, not only will the pupils be acquiring skills, they will also be creating employment opportunities for themselves in the future.

While many people associate agriculture with farming, the backbone of agriculture is the science that can open doors for future careers. Our pupils deserve an education that advances their abilities and develops their potential so that they can become skilled and employable members of society.

Jordan Erradu is a former principal of a special needs school. He writes in his personal capacity