When teaching becomes preparation for everything except learning

“I’m not teaching children anymore — I’m teaching the Annual Teaching Plan,” Rendani*, a Foundation Phase teacher, told us in quiet resignation. “I have passion for this thing, but I think I’m tired. I am not better than when I entered the system,” she added. It was hard to hear and equally difficult to say.

She is not alone. Across South African classrooms, teachers who entered the profession to shape how children think are increasingly finding themselves bound to pacing guidelines, curriculum trackers and assessment schedules.

The outcome is that teaching begins to shift away from responding to children’s needs to ensuring the curriculum is fully covered by the end of each term. We know this because we engage with teachers regularly through reflective learning sessions in the Teachers CAN network. This dynamic national network includes change-agent educators who have shown their commitment to helping learners reach their full potential.

Embedded in the Teachers CAN manifesto is the belief that we need an education system that trusts teachers to know how best to respond to children’s needs. Such a system would create the conditions for educators to teach with purpose, evidence and care. The manifesto’s champions advocate for strengthening teacher agency and elevating the craft of teaching.

This matters because the Foundation Phase — grades R through 3 — is where the building blocks of learning are laid. Yet Pirls 2021 found that 81% of Grade 4 learners in SA cannot read for meaning in any language, worsening from 78% in 2016. These results force us to ask tough questions about how we teach children from different backgrounds — and different learning levels — to ensure no one is left behind.

From pedagogy to practice

Foundation Phase teachers are trained on how children develop. They draw on thinkers like Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist who showed that children’s thinking moves through stages that no curriculum can rush, and Lev Vygotsky, who argued that real learning happens in the space between what a child can do alone and what they can reach with the right support. They enter the profession expecting to scaffold learning and move at the pace of understanding. But the system they enter is structured differently.

In South Africa, annual teaching plans and curriculum trackers have become dominant organising tools. While they support consistency, they also enforce rigid pacing. Teachers are expected to move forward regardless of whether children have mastered what they have been taught.

A Grade 2 teacher may know that their learners are struggling with phonemic awareness. Yet pacing guides leave little space to pause, revisit, or deepen learning.

Educational sociologist Basil Bernstein pointed out that assessment does more than measure learning — it communicates what a system values. For teachers, the personal consequence of a system that values assessments over all else is rarely spoken about publicly. You could say it’s a moral injury — the specific damage done when a skilled professional is repeatedly required to act against their own values and training.

For learners, the impact compounds. Children move forward without mastering foundational skills, and over time, they disengage from school or drop out. Research consistently shows that children are more motivated, resilient and engaged in learning when they feel competent, experience supportive relationships and have meaningful opportunities for autonomy.

Meeting learners at their level

This is not an argument against accountability. Assessment should support teaching, not dictate its pace. Curriculum should guide learning, not compress it. But if we are serious about improving outcomes, we need to restore teachers’ professional judgement and create the conditions that allow teachers to respond to children’s learning needs through evidence-informed approaches.

Annual teaching plans and assessment policies should be flexible enough for teachers to revisit concepts and to group learners according to their learning needs before moving on.

There are already examples that show this is possible. Through Teaching at the Right Level, implemented across several African countries, children are assessed according to what they know rather than what grade they are in. Teachers then group learners by their current learning level and provide targeted instruction, allowing children who have fallen behind to build strong foundations in literacy and numeracy before progressing.

The Foundation Phase is not a rehearsal for the schooling that comes later. It is the ground everything else is built on. Until we treat it that way, we will continue to mistake curriculum coverage for learning and produce classrooms full of children who were taught to perform but never discovered that they could think. DM

*Rendani is a pseudonym.

Andisiwe Hlungwane is the project lead at Teachers CAN. Michael Sterksen is the project’s network mobiliser.