Abstract
The legacy of the inequities of South Africa’s apartheid past and the shortcomings of the post-apartheid schooling systems have resulted in a particular underrepresentation of Black African graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Extended curriculum programs have been an important mechanism for redress and massification in South African higher education, offering students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds an alternative route to tertiary study. Although equity of access has improved considerably, severe challenges to realizing equity of output remain. Amid increasing student diversity within higher education, a national call has been made to interrogate the performance of extended curriculum programs at a local level in search of clues as to how the country’s educational goals of effective transformation, inclusion and improved science graduate output can be achieved. One such program is reviewed to give context to an examination of alternative access student performance in a mainstream module. The evident success of foundation students in particular relative to the majority of direct entrants suggests that students who exceeded the stipulated mainstream admission criteria by a narrow margin and who experienced further challenges related to their proficiency in the medium of instruction (English) were disadvantaged by not having completed an access year. These findings are considered in light of the growing sentiment in South Africa that the full value of curriculum extension will only be realized when it is taken to scale, becomes an integral element of mainstream provision, and is thus available to the full range of students who will benefit from it.
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Notes
- 1.
The term ‘Black African’ used in this paper describes the ‘population group’ that excludes people of mixed race (Coloureds) and people of Indian origin (Indians) (Statistics South Africa 2014). In South Africa, Black African is the majority population group by a considerable margin (80%).
- 2.
The term ‘output’ used here refers to the numbers of students graduating in a given year as the proportion of a particular student intake or cohort (i.e. the ‘completion rate’). This is in contrast to the qualitative term ‘outcome’ which refers to the nature and quality of graduate learning and attributes (as applied in CHE (2013)).
- 3.
The National Government uses a quintile system of classification based on a ‘poverty index’ for resource targeting purposes. The amount of state subsidy schools receive depends on under which quintile the school is considered to fall: the lower the quintile, the higher the amount the state contributes per learner. Schools that fall into the lower three quintiles are considered the most under-resourced and serve the poorest of communities. They are ‘no-fee’ schools (DoE 2011). Schools in quintiles 4 and 5 are expected to supplement their state allocation through the charging of school fees and fund-raising. Quintile 5 schools are invariably historically ‘white’ schools and are located in affluent areas.
- 4.
By way of example, the latest available report on national assessments reveals that the averages achieved by Grade 6 and 9 learners in mathematics were 43% and 11% respectively (Department of Basic Education 2014).
- 5.
University admission criteria depend heavily on standardised school-leaving examination results. The minimum statutory requirements for direct entry to a Bachelor’s degree are universal for all South African institutions of higher learning (known as a ‘bachelor’s pass’ from secondary school). However, additional admission criteria (that are based on ratings achieved in school exit-examinations and measured as ‘admission point scores’ (APS)) vary considerably across institutions as well as between faculties within each institution. These criteria always include a composite score (referred to in this text as ‘Grade 12 score’), which is the sum of APS for all Grade 12 subjects; additional subject APS requirements relate to the tertiary program to which the student is seeking admission. (For example students are required to have achieved minimum levels of proficiency in school mathematics and generally in one science subject for entry to a STEM program).
- 6.
While academic development staff working in early foundation programs may have enjoyed academic autonomy, the problems related to the marginalization of such programs have been numerous (see for example Kloot et al. 2008).
- 7.
The module illustrated here, BIOL 101, is an introductory cell biology course. Performance in this module is indicated by students’ final mark in it.
- 8.
The student body was first separated into two main branches by the variable ‘Grade 12 exam system’ in a forced split at the root node.
- 9.
English as a school subject is studied by learners as either a ‘Home Language’ or ‘Second Language’. Some learners whose home language is not English (ESL) elect to study the subject at the more challenging level of ‘Home Language’ which assumes greater proficiency in the language (see Department of Basic Education 2014).
- 10.
The notion of integrating the educational principles of the Foundation Program into the mainstream at UKZN was alluded to at the time of the program’s inception by Grayson (1997, p. 122) who stated: ‘As a pilot program we believe that the SFP has been successful. However, if we are to address the needs of large numbers of underprepared students in future without diminishing the value of our degrees, foundation level courses will need to cater for many more students, and many of the educational principles that form the basis of the SFP will need to become integrated into mainstream teaching in the Science Faculty’. For a broader discussion referring to the delays in progressive change proposed decades earlier in the area of academic development in South Africa, refer to Kirby (2013).
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The first author would like to gratefully acknowledge the National Research Foundation for financial support.
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Appendix
Appendix
Regression Tree for Final Marks for Mainstream Module BIOL 101 (N = 352)
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Kirby, N.F., Dempster, E.R. (2018). Alternative Access to Tertiary Science Study in South Africa: Dealing with ‘Disadvantage’, Student Diversity, and Discrepancies in Graduate Success. In: Agosti, C., Bernat, E. (eds) University Pathway Programs: Local Responses within a Growing Global Trend. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72505-5_5
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