THE DEPARTMENT OF BASIC EDUCATION’S THREE STREAM POLICY

1. The allure of the German vocational educational system which for generations has produced the industrious and competent workers underpinning German industrial success. Of particular importance is the Hauptschule, which follows four years of elementary education. Hauptschulen are for learners with average or below average grades and the exit level is lower secondary education. Higher performing learners  spend five or six years at a Realschule,or enter a Gymnasium. The standard of education is somewhat higher in a Realschule than in a Hauptschule, and Realschule learners often go on to vocational schools. Neither Hauptschulen nor Realschulen qualify their learners for university entrance. This is the function of the Gymnasium, and some Realschule graduates transfer to them. In many ways, the system is socially conservative, tending to segregate working class learners from the children of the middle class, and in left of centre cities, like Berlin and Hamburg, the three tier system has been partially or completely dissolved into comprehensive schools.  
    
2. Constant complaints from South African business about the products of the educational system not being ready for the world of work. To a considerable extent, this reflects chronic shortages in the supply of skilled manual workers, but it also reflects anxiety about socialisation of the young into business values. The German vocational school system rotates learners between learning theory in the class room sandwiched between substantial spells working in a business. This neatly solves the business socialisation problem, especially given that graduation from a vocational schools confers considerably more status than it does, say, in the United Kingdom.
    
3. The constant search by the South African educational system for more inclusion. Two categories of learner are a special risk. The first is students identified as having special needs[2], who are often, but not always educated at special schools. In 2014, 117 477 learners were identified as having special needs, slightly less than one per cent of all school enrolments, though there are undoubtedly some learners with special needs who are not identified as such. Because they are a relatively small group, and because there is a long tradition of special schooling, this group by itself would not justify a major system adjustment. But there are many other learners who struggle for other reasons- the burden of poverty, membership in a dysfunctional household, a lack of interest in, and ability for, application to their work – and this is showing up at the senior phase of general education, awkwardly split between Grade 7 in primary schools and Grades 8 and 9 in secondary schools. Repetition and drop-out rates in Grades 7, 8 and 9 in 2011/12 were:

And there are many more successfully completing Grade 9, but not equipped to start preparing for the either the National Senior Certificate or for vocational qualifications at a TVET College. It is to cope with the second, and much larger, group that the Department of Basic Education is proposing to depart from a common nine grade general education curriculum – once thought to be an essential part of creating citizens through a common formative experience - and develop a pre-Grade 9 skills and vocational system.