Answer to Question #198694 in English for boledi

Question

Reflection 6.1 Do you think the CAPS document can be used to guide teaching? (2) 6.2 How will it help you? (3) 6.3 In your own view, what do you think are the issues that should have been included or are missing in the CAPS document? (5)

Answer 1

A National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is a single, comprehensive, and concise policy document introduced by the Department of Basic Education for all the subjects listed in the National Curriculum Statement for Grades.

Therefore, CAPS, the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, is a revision of the previous NCS (National Curriculum Statement). CAPS gives teachers detailed guidelines of what to teach and assessed on a grade –by- grade and subject-by- subject basis. The Main aim of CAPS is to lessen the administrative burden on teachers and ensure consistency and guidance for teachers when teaching.

The teaching and learning of the subjects have specific aims, skills, focus of content areas and weighting of content areas. What were called Learning Outcomes and Assessment Standards in the NCS are now called Content and Skills in CAPS. In CAPS Numeracy is now called Mathematics and Literacy is called Language. A learning area is now referred to as a subject. CAPS provides detailed week –by- week planning for teachers to follow. It gives clear guidance in terms of pacing and progression. It also gives clear guidance of assessment requirements. 

I remain deeply concerned about the amount of time and the number of marks that are allocated to writing. I do believe that writing is a skill that should be taught and assessed. However: The ‘frequent writing’ that is envisaged, while noble in intention, is impractical. Although the suggestion is that teachers do not have to assess everything the children write, the reality is that ‘if it’s not for marks’, it is deemed unimportant. So much writing is envisaged that the children are going to be drowning in writing by the end of the year. We need to remember that the home language only one of seven subjects! I firmly believe that quality remains more important than quantity. I believe that the writing ‘process’ outlined in the document is the route we should be taking. This is only possible where there is less, better writing. Without feedback, there will be no improvement, and writing will be for writing’s sake. I also remain convinced that an essay “exam” is counter-productive. It may, in the short term, allow the children to improve their marks, especially with the disproportionate mark allocation.

There is a huge discrepancy about what grammar is purported to do, and how it is dealt with in the proposed schedule. The document states that grammar should be “presented as a set of tools rather than a set of rules”. For Home Language users, language should be taught with a view to communicating with and understanding the real world. There is far too much focus on an outdated technicity approach, when we should concentrate on what language is used, and why, and how to decode language that is used by others. With this, I offer a five-year plan which covers this kind of language. It allows for progression and growth of understanding something that the CAPs indicates should be done, and, above all, it has no repetition, and excludes things that have no place in a high school first-language classroom. The ‘language structures and use’ column in the year plan includes a mishmash of quite pedantic language with no sense of progression according to age and intellectual capacity. In several instances there are completely different skills grouped together, for instance pronouns and punctuation. This miscellany of language implies that language teaching will be ad hoc. This method was tried and rejected, and led to a whole generation of learners who lacked basic language skills. Children need formally to be taught rules before they can apply them, and understand how language use reveals attitude and relationships.