This is according to a survey consumer insights company Pondering Panda (we like to call them the Panda People, or PP for short). PP – read the footnote – say they have interviewed 2906 learners (we call them pupils), between the ages of 13 and 24, across South Africa in response to government proposals that school days should be one hour longer for grades 4 through 12 to learn a 3rd language. Almost 3 in 5 pupils (59%) felt that this was a good idea. 33% said it was a bad idea, and 8% did not have an opinion .
Among race groups, young black youngsters were most in favour of this proposal, with 62% saying that extending school hours was a good idea. In comparison, 49% of coloureds supported an extra hour added to the school day, and whites were evenly split, with 44% believing it was a good and a bad idea, respectively. Opinion on this question was consistent amongst both age and gender groups.
PP says respondents also came out in favour of learning another language. When asked whether they would like to learn a third African language, 63% of learners said they would like to do so. In comparison, 21% were uncertain, but willing to try, and just 14% said they did not want to learn another language. There were no significant differences of opinion amongst demographic groups.
The survey also found, however, that the majority of learners did not feel that learning a third language would be the best use of an extra hour of school. If a mandatory extension to the school day was implemented, 56% of pupils said they would rather spend the extra time learning science and maths. In comparison, 38% favoured using the time to learn another language.
Blacks and coloureds were more interested in learning science and maths than a third language, with 58% and 48% respectively. In contrast, whites said they would rather spend the time learning a third language, with 46% feeling this way, compared to 40% who said they would rather learn maths and science. Opinions were consistent amongst age and gender groups.
All interviews were carried out on cellphones between the 21st and the 25th of August, across South Africa, excluding deep rural areas. Responses were weighted to be nationally representative in terms of age, gender and race.
Footnote:
Not everybody is too excited about PP’s findings. The website Africa Check – sorting fact from fiction – has its doubts. Raymond Joseph writes that PP’s press releases contain an important caveat. “All interviews were carried out on cellphones … across South Africa,” they state, and the responses are “weighted” to be nationally representative of age, gender and race. Findings are generally attributed to “South African youth”.
What the press releases do not say is that all their research is done using an “opt-in system” that surveys users of the MXit social media platform. (It is an odd omission, given that the Pondering Panda website states that it has “exclusive access to MXit”, which it describes as “Africa’s biggest social network”.)
How are the surveys conducted? The company’s CEO, Butch Rice says “Data is collected by an opt-in option on the MXit base, which has 6.5 million active users on a monthly basis. The sample sizes are significantly larger than those of traditional research suppliers, often running into tens of thousands. Data from the Census is used to weight or balance the sample, in line with standard research practice by all companies,” he said, adding that “the key to sample representivity is dispersion”.
Herein lies a problem: MXit, like many social media tools, does not require people to use their real names when signing up. Many don’t.
Rice claimed Pondering Panda had checks and balances in place to ensure the platform yielded “valid and reliable data”, including checking a respondent’s identity against details they supplied when signing up to MXit and cross-comparing it to information supplied when they complete surveys.
How effective these checks and balances are remains unclear. An Africa Check researcher signed up for MXit under a false name, provided a false date of birth, downloaded the Pondering Panda app and completed a number of surveys. One of them asked for details on race and geographic location. The Africa Check researcher claimed to be a black male, aged 18 to 24, from the Northern Cape. (The age correlated with the date of birth given on signing up.) The researcher is, in fact, a 38-year-old white male from Gauteng.
A further problem is that there is some confusion about the number of active MXit users in SA. Pondering Panda claims on its website that MXit has 6.5-million active users in SA. But stats published by MXit in October 2012 stated there were almost 50-million registered users and 9,346,806 active users. Yet six months later, in March 2013, Vincent Maher, vice president of growth and product strategy at MXit, said the “latest active users’ statistics” for South Africa was 6.3-million per month.
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