South African students are bad at maths compared to other countries. This is clear from results of South African learners in the International Mathematics and Science Study. The results show that South Africa’s performance is far from competitive in relation to other countries.

To try and understand the reasons for this poor performance, I did a qualitative case study focusing on a year-long post graduate course taken by aspiring teachers. I focused particularly on a Post Graduate Certificate in Education with a maths focus offered by one of the country’s university of technologies.

I looked at three key themes – the curriculum and its delivery, partnerships during delivery and policy influencing delivery. My research findings show that the success of the Post Graduate Certificate in Education in preparing maths teachers is not without concern and its delivery, in the case study context, needs rethinking.

My findings underscore earlier research that has suggested that a shortage of competent and confident qualified mathematics teachers is a key contributing factor to the low maths performance of South African school children.

Constraints

The one-year Post Graduate Certificate in Education offered at South African universities is a key qualification for aspiring teachers. This is taken after completing a diploma or degree in other fields such as engineering, business and hospitality. It offers an opportunity to university graduates to become a professionally qualified teacher in one-year instead of pursuing a career in industry.

My research highlights the constraints identified by students and lecturers of the post graduate certificate programme, in particular as it relates to the teaching of maths.

The first constraint I identified involved inadequate support structures as well as information, communication and technology infrastructure to meaningfully support the ever-increasing numbers of students taking up the course. The numbers have grown exponentially – from 10 in 1994 to 100 in 2014 and then 207 in 2015. In short, the university has been expected to do more with less.

The second constraint I identified was a potential over reliance on using Bachelors in Education content designed to be delivered over four years. This was evident from the statements from lecturers clarifying how they identify and select content to present during lectures.

This is a constraint as the four year Bachelors in Education content is not always suitable for the Post Graduate Certificate in Education context. This indicates a need to develop context specific content to make the best of the one-year post graduate certificate.

The third constraint was a limited partnership to develop professional learning communities. These should ideally involve lecturers and students, university representatives evaluating students during compulsory classroom teaching periods and the teachers in schools hosting students.

The main reason for this constraint appeared to be that most lecturers were part-time as the course was offered in the afternoon or evening. This meant that lecturers and students had limited time to engage. This affected the outcomes and the quality of the course.

Another outcome from the lack of engagement between the part-time lecturers was that lecturers duplicated content offered in other programme modules. Students and graduates noted this as one of their main concerns. Unnecessary duplication is a major problem because the post graduate certificate programme has a limited time-frame of just one year.

The fourth and final constraint was a lack of oversight over university policy stipulations linked to the delivery and assessment of the post graduate qualification.

For example, university policy stipulates that an assessment plan, programme and calendar must be provided to students. Such a document wasn’t provided to students as noted during interviews. Policy also stipulates that students must re-do practical teaching if they miss more than five days during the study period. One student noted that he was absent for a whole week during this period and no one noticed. He was awarded a pass for practical teaching.

My research found that lecturers didn’t follow all the university’s policies. This suggested that they weren’t being monitored by the relevant authorities. This lack of oversight by the university is clearly a major problem.

Next steps

I conclude from my findings that, to become confident and competent maths teachers, graduates who have passed the Post Graduate Certificate in Education need further development and support. If this isn’t provided, South Africa is unlikely to see an improvement in the performance of its school children.

 

Atul Gupta is seeking to have his South African passport issued.

 

The Department of Home Affairs is opposing the application

 

Gupta's legal team has filed a court application, seeking an order ompelling the director-general and home affairs minister to furnish     his record of decision for refusing the passport.

 

The lawyer representing one of the Gupta brothers has filed a fresh application, seeking an order compelling the Department of Home Affairs to file a record and reasons for its decision on its refusal to issue his client with a passport. The papers were filed in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria last week. 

 

The respondents in the matter are the director-general of home affairs and Minister Aaron Motsoaledi. Atul Gupta, who fled South Africa for Dubai amid corruption allegations,

approached the court in January in a bid to have his South African passport issued.

 

In his application, he argued that the home affairs director-general's failure to grant his passport application was unlawful and reviewable. The department is opposing the application.

 

Speaking to News24 on Tuesday, Gupta's attorney Rudi Krause said, despite Motsoaledi's public statements that his client would not be issued with a passport, he had so far not provided the record of decision.  He had also not filed an answering affidavit, Krause said.

 

Decision

 

"The minister boldly said he has taken a decision not to issue Mr Gupta with a new passport [and] now the fundamental problem is, it's not the minister's decision... it is the decision of the Director-General.

 

He said:  So, if the minister has taken that decision, we want to see on what legal basis the minister claims to have made the decision which he is not entitled to make in law. "We have found his public statement to be legally flawed," he added.

 

The main application was brought in terms of Rule 53 - which determines that an organ of state that takes an administrative decision must provide the court, upon application, with the record of decision, he said.  "So, there must be an official record of the decision that the minister took," he said.

 

Krause said:  It is just reckless of a minister to behave in this fashion. "They [the respondents] have also served us with a Rule 47 notice requiring of Mr Gupta to put up security for costs which we've told them we are not going to do.  "How can the government expect a citizen of this country who wants to exercise their constitutional right to put up security for costs? We've told them in writing, we are not going to put up security for costs. [They should ] bring an application so that we can argue this in court; they have not brought that application either." In his affidavit filed in court, on behalf of his client, Krause said: "At the time of deposing to this affidavit, the respondents have still

not filed the record of decision with the registrar. Instead the second respondent (Minister Motsoaledi) is quoted in the media as saying that he has garnered a top legal team and that he will resist any effort by the applicant to be issued with a South African passport.

 

"Despite the approach that the second respondent [minister] has taken publicly, the respondents remain in default of filing a record of decision and simply complying with the rules of the court as all parties are obliged to do."

 

Pressure

 

Krause said the DG and the minister were not only in default of compliance with the notice of motion and the rules of court, but also in contempt of court “by virtue of their flagrant disregard for the Rules of this Court”.

 

Asked for comment on the matter, spokesperson for the Home Affairs minister, Siya Qoza said: "The Department is defending the matter and is giving this application the requisite attention." 

The controversial Gupta family left South Africa for Dubai under increasing pressure due to allegations that they influenced former president Jacob Zuma's Cabinet appointments.

 

South Africa has been engaging with the United Arab Emirates for some family members and their associates' extradition.  But according to Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, the UAE was not

cooperating, News24 reported.  Meanwhile, in his application filed in January, Gupta said:

My circumstances and business activities in South Africa are well known, and it would not be inappropriate to describe myself as having a public profile. I have been the subject of speculation and reporting by the media, much of which is inaccurate. The simple factual position is that I have not been charged with any criminal offence under South African or any other law, and there had been no credible suggestion that any such charges are to be proffered against me.

 

The personal data of over 500 million Facebook users has been posted online in a low-level hacking forum.

• The data includes phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information.
• Security researchers warn that the data could be used by hackers to impersonate people and commit fraud.

A user in a low level hacking forum has published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and - in some cases - email addresses.

Though South Africa is not directly listed as an affected country, millions of SA accounts appear to be affected under the designation "Africa".

Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users' phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook's password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user's phone number.

The leaked data could provide valuable information to cybercriminals who use people's personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who first discovered the leaked data on Saturday. "A database of that size containing the private information such as phone numbers of a lot of Facebook's users would certainly lead to bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social engineering attacks [or] hacking attempts," Gal told Insider.

Facebook did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.

Gal first discovered the leaked data in January when a user in the same hacking forum advertised an automated bot that could provide phone numbers for hundreds of millions of Facebook users in exchange for a price. Motherboard reported on that bot's existence at the time and verified that the data was legitimate.

Now, the entire dataset has been posted on the hacking forum for free, making it widely available to anyone with rudimentary data skills.

It's not the first time that a huge number of Facebook users' phone numbers have been found exposed online. A vulnerability that was uncovered in 2019 allowed millions of people's phone numbers to be scraped from Facebook's servers in violation of its terms of service. Facebook said that vulnerability was patched in August 2019.

Facebook previously vowed to crack down on mass data-scraping after Cambridge Analytica scraped the data of 80 million users in violation of Facebook's terms of service to target voters with political ads in the 2016 election.

Gal said that, from a security standpoint, there's not much Facebook can do to help users affected by the breach since their data is already out in the open - but he added that Facebook could notify users so they could remain vigilant for possible phishing schemes or fraud using their personal data.

"Individuals signing up to a reputable company like Facebook are trusting them with their data and Facebook [is] supposed to treat the data with utmost respect," Gal said. "Users having their personal information leaked is a huge breach of trust and should be handled accordingly."

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A critical skills survey conducted by Xpatweb highlights the most in-demand ‘scarce’ skills in the country, which has led to businesses seeking talent recruitment from abroad.

The survey was conducted across a wide range of multi-national and corporate firms to assess the level of difficulty organisations face when sourcing scarce skilled individuals and the role of foreign nationals in addressing these shortages.

The number of respondents has grown exponentially in recent years, with a 30% increase in responses from 178 in 2019, to 220 in 2020/21.

Xpatweb managing director Marisa Jacobs highlighted the results of the latest Xpatweb Critical Skills Survey 2020/21.

“The survey has revealed that 77% of organisations have stated that they are still struggling to recruit and obtain critical skills in South Africa for their local and cross-border operations.

“76% of participants further confirmed that an international search will assist the organisation in meeting its business objectives,” Jacobs said.

According to the latest survey, the top 10 skills businesses are struggling to recruit include:

• Engineers (18%);
• ICT (13%);
• Foreign language speakers (10%);
• Media and Marketing Specialists (9%);
• Artisans (8%);
• C-Suite Executives (7%);
• Senior Financial Executives (6%);
• Health Professions
• Related Clinical Sciences (5%);
• Science Professionals (4%)
• Accounting (1%).

Over the past five years, the skills shortage has persisted with eight categories of skills dominating the top of the list of professionals that businesses find difficult to recruit.

“This has led to many organisations seeking suitably qualified and experienced candidates beyond South Africa’s borders to fill these posts,”  Jacobs said.

ICT professionals and engineers in highest demand

The number of businesses indicating that engineers are difficult to recruit rose from 16% to 18% which could indicate that these skills are being lost to the brain drain as countries like Australia and the United Kingdom compete directly with South Africa for qualified and experienced professionals.

Business expansions into Africa for special projects locally in the oil and gas sectors also tend to attract these in-demand skills.

Mechanical engineers (26%) were most in-demand, followed by maintenance engineers (18%), chemical engineers (13%) and industrial engineers (14%).

The demand for ICT skills remains unprecedented and climbing, as 14% of businesses, compared to 15% of respondents in the 2019 survey now indicate that they struggle to source skilled professionals in this field to drive their operational demand to transition into the digital economy.

The most sought after professionals include IT application developers (11%), data analysts (10%), data scientists (9%), software developers (9%) and software engineers (8%).

“As big data, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things rapidly shape the way of doing business, which often marks the difference between firms that survive and thrive in the transition from the third industrial revolution into the 4IR and those that don’t compete effectively, sourcing these skills is a priority that cuts across all sectors,” Jacobs said.

Executives and foreign-language speakers 

Senior financial and C-suite executives remain in demand with the number organisations reporting that it is a struggle to find suitable candidates to fill these key business leadership positions.

Most in demand professions were chief operating officer (24%), chief financial officer (24%), chief executive officer (19%) and chief technology officer (19%).

These skills are most sought after in sectors including business and finance; production and manufacturing; management; information communication; IT and technical services, mining and administrative services.

“Factors influencing the challenges that businesses face in recruiting the right person for these roles include the fact that in a global village, organisations are increasingly seeking professionals with international experience.

“Businesses are not only seeking essential tick box qualifications and experience required for a traditional executive position, but they want professionals who are equipped with niche business experience to lead their expansion and growth across international markets,” Jacobs said.

“Businesses are aware of market dynamics in their various global markets and need to be certain that candidates understand the nuances of their specific focus areas.”

This global expansion of businesses and especially growth in cross-border trade on the African continent has also led to rising demand for foreign language skilled professionals, including the hiring of interpreters.

Some 10% of organisations indicated that they struggle to find people with adequate foreign language skills, a marked increase from just 4% in the 2019 survey.

Foreign language speakers most in-demand included, French (29%), German (18%), Mandarin (14%); Italian (10%), Spanish (10%) and Dutch (4%).

Sectors that are finding a demand for these skills are largely information technology and communication; business and finance; hospitality and tourism and education and libraries.

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