In South Africa, there is increasing state monitoring of curriculum coverage. This is a response both to classroom research which shows that teachers do not always cover the official curriculum in the specified year and to learners’ poor achievement in international tests. In the province of KwaZulu-Natal from 2013 to 2016, the provincial department of education embarked on a systemic reform programme called Jika iMfundo in 1200 schools, which is focused on improving curriculum management and coverage. We interviewed 29 Heads of Department (who are also teachers) in fifteen schools who had participated in the Jika iMfundo programme for these three years, asking them about their experiences. The findings show that teachers experience tension between the fast pace required by the curriculum trackers and slow pace of learners and they believe that increasing pacing to cover the curriculum hampers the quality of the learning. Teachers also said that the curriculum coverage trackers do not account for different school contexts. We argue that while the programme has provided clear curriculum guidance to teachers who need it, it has not sufficiently acknowledged the huge variation in learners’ competence. Nor has it yet enabled teachers to develop the content knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge necessary to teach learners who are not at the same grade level (although they are in the same classroom). Curriculum coverage is a necessary, but not sufficient intervention, unless there is also a focus on pedagogy and teaching at the right level. We recommend an intervention that enables teachers to identify individual learner’s existing learning gaps, and equips them to teach at the right level in order to provide learners with opportunities to develop foundational knowledge and skills to succeed in further education, rather than one whose primary focus is only curriculum coverage.

在南非，国家对课程覆盖率的监控越来越多。这是对课堂研究的回应，该研究表明教师并不总是涵盖指定年份的官方课程，也反映了学生在国际考试中成绩不佳。从2013年至2016年，在夸祖鲁-纳塔尔省（KwaZulu-Natal），省教育厅在1200所学校中启动了名为Jika iMfundo的系统改革计划，该计划的重点是改善课程管理和覆盖范围。我们采访了参加这三年的Jika iMfundo计划的15所学校的29个系主任（也是教师），向他们询问了他们的经历。研究结果表明，教师在课程跟踪器要求的快节奏与学习者的慢节奏之间遇到紧张关系，他们认为提高节奏以覆盖课程会影响学习质量。老师们还说，课程覆盖率追踪器并不能说明不同的学校环境。我们认为，尽管该计划已为需要该计划的教师提供了明确的课程指南，但并未充分认识到学习者能力的巨大差异。它也尚未使教师开发出必要的内容知识和教学内容知识，以教给不在同一年级（尽管他们在同一教室）的学习者。课程覆盖是必要的，但不是足够的干预，除非也注重在正确的水平上的教学法和教学。我们建议采取一种干预措施，使教师能够识别每个学习者的现有学习差距，并使他们具备正确的教学水平，以便为学习者提供发展基础知识和技能以使其在继续教​​育中取得成功的机会，而不是主要关注于仅课程覆盖。