A team of South African head to Cuba to examine Cuba's model of educating large number of illiterate adults so quickly.

Expert Team to Witness Reading the Cuban Way --

Business Day (Johannesburg)
NEWS
February 27, 2006 --
Posted to the web February 27, 2006 --

By Sue Blaine,
Johannesburg --

A TEAM of local literacy experts left for Cuba, Venezuela and New
Zealand yesterday to examine Cuba's model for educating large numbers
of illiterate adults quickly and how it has been adapted.

Education Minister Naledi Pandor has acknowledged that SA is not
winning its battle against illiteracy, and that there is a need to
reject aspects of government's adult literacy education programme. A
visit to Cuba last year sparked her interest in "the Cuban model".

"We cannot be oblivious to the hard reality that our attempts to
improve SA's literacy rate have largely failed. Nor can we pretend
that our current methods of fighting illiteracy are effective,"
Pandor told a meeting of literacy experts in May last year, when she
announced that a ministerial committee on literacy would be
established.

Prof John Aitchison, head of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Centre
for Adult Education, says it is clear "SA is not seriously
eradicating illiteracy".

The number of people over 20 who have no schooling has not changed
much in the five years since they were measured at 4,5-million for
Census 2001, nor has the number of people, 4-million in all, who have
"some primary schooling", he says.

Eradicating illiteracy has been a government priority since 1994 and
its adult education programme was introduced in 1995.

Last May Pandor reminded experts that SA had obligations in this
regard, having committed itself to a United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation agreement, which includes the
goal of ensuring the world's adult illiteracy rate is reduced to
about 10% by 2015.

But the wheels of government turn slowly and the ministerial
committee on literacy was only recently established. It was gazetted
on February 3 this year.

The team of nine is to spend the next three weeks in Cuba, Venezuela
and New Zealand, and it is to submit a final report on its findings
to Pandor on March 31.

While the ministerial committee may have to work quickly, this does
not mean SA will see swift, radical changes in adult education, says
Aitchison, who is on the ministerial team.

"Obviously, if the task team comes up with an acceptable plan, it
will require a gear-up period and funds assigned to it in the next
budget," he says.

The Cuban programme is impressive at first sight. Shortly after
President Fidel Castro came to power in January 1959, Cuba's
illiteracy rate plummeted from 26,3% to 3,9%. Castro implemented a
mass literacy campaign in 1961 which had thousands of middle-class
youths volunteer to go into rural areas to teach .

Cuba has managed to maintain its high literacy rate. In 2004 the
Central Intelligence Agency reported the island's literacy rate was
97%.

The Cuban model is now being used in several countries worldwide, but
it has its critics.

In SA people involved in literacy education are worried that the
revolutionary fervour which drove the Cuban literacy programme is
gone and few will volunteer, or even do the work, for a small
remuneration.

They also worry that few of SA's illiterate adults are enticed to
learn to read, write and do arithmetic without other more practical,
workplace inducements.

"There aren't hordes of people wanting to become literate. What they
want is to change their lives.

"You have to get enough into an adult basic education and training
(Abet) programme to do that; you need a full package that includes
training on microenterprise," says Pat Dean, head of KwaZulu-Natal's
Operation Upgrade, a nongovernmental body involved in adult education
for nearly 40 years.

Dean says her organisation has learnt the hard way, that using
volunteers does not work because as soon as people find paying work,
or better paying work, they take it and leave.

However, the Cuba model's informality is of interest to experts who
complain that SA's adult training programme is often too formal,
especially when gaining a formal literacy qualification -- as happens
in SA's system -- does not guarantee a leg up into the world of work.

"You can't promise a certificate will open the doors of paradise. For
those living under the poverty line, we need a different approach to
the formal one.

"Here the Cuban model may help," says Wolfgang Leumer, local head of
the Institute for the International Co-operation of the German
Education Association.

SA's high unemployment rate creates another problem for illiterates,
says Aitchison. Because of the formality of the adult training
programme and the skills development levy, a tax of 1% of payroll
which is turned over to Sectoral Education and Training Authorities
(Setas) -- established to oversee training in various economic
sectors, that is training of those already employed -- those with
poor schooling and often no employment, are often left out of the
training loop.

"In SA there are thousands of people with high-school education who
are unemployed and literate, so why employ illiterates that you then
have to train?" Aitchison asks.

It is perhaps because of this that those Setas that were given a
second five-year tenure by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana last
March have not thrown much money the way of basic education and
training for adults.

"Most Setas argue that companies should top up the amount they have
allocated to adult education, but companies argue that they pay their
skills levy and can't budget more money.

"This means that nothing, in effect, happens," says Andrew Miller,
CEO of Project Literacy, SA's only national nongovernmental
organisation devoted to adult education.

Vusi Mabena, chairman of Business Unity SA's standing committee on
social policy, says his experience as an adult education instructor
for Afrox showed him that even those employed adults who had
education offered to them at work were often not interested.

"I had to hunt for people, and they'd say 'What is it going to do for
me?' Here's a man who was denied education in the past. Now he's 45,
and he's told, 'Lets go to Abet'. And he says, 'You're joking!' A
very small number grab the opportunity," Mabena says.

Added to the mix is the serious problem of a 50% drop-out rate.

Last year the education department said it would be investigating the
causes for this enormous drop-out rate, but a list of questions sent
to the education department's acting director of adult education,
Vernon Jacobs, has not been answered.

Copyright C 2006 Business Day.

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