The mindset to change the Matric pass rate from 60% to 90% is at our fingertips. Dr Kelvin Kemm tells us how

Kelvin Kemm has a doctorate in Nuclear Physics, but he puts much more energy and effort into providing school children with the mental agility to be able to pass examinations and to be confident in their selected roles in life. He uses an unlikely national sport to achieve this.

Dr Kemm’s definition of leadership is subtle. He runs courses on Technology Leadership, where he encourages his students to provide vision, to create credibility and to inspire others to follow.

However, he sees the role of the follower, the team player and the situational leader as being far more crucial to the sustainability of South Africa’s future development.

Not everyone can be the president or the chief executive officer – the workspace is too limited. This does not mean that people cannot make a valuable and meaningful contribution to the sphere in which they happen to be operating.

People often have the ability to take the lead in situations where they know they have the solutions to a particular problem. The sad thing is that they often lack the confidence to make the contribution at the right time.

The same is very true at school level. There are teachers who can tell you within the first two weeks of the school year whether a child will “make it” or not. Sadly, these children are not placed back into their previous class to learn the skills that are required for “making it”, but rather – due to the pressures of the system – are promoted all the way to Grade 12, at which point they become a part of the 40% who fail the final exam or, worse, one of the significant number of pupils who take their own lives rather than face the ordeal.

The problem does not lie with the pupils, nor really with the teachers, but with a system that does not teach either group to think.

Two centuries ago, most of Europe was illiterate. Today, most of Europe is literate, yet its educational statistics do not necessarily reflect a 90% pass rate at examination time. The turnaround in South Africa will not happen overnight, just as the turnaround in Europe took a long time to filter through.

But there is a tried and tested way of ensuring children are taught and encouraged to think for themselves and to have the confidence to enter an exam, knowing what they know and ensuring the examiner knows this as well. And it is simple and inexpensive.

Dr Kemm is one of five members of the Supreme Chess Trust; he is a strategist. The others are Mickey Scheepers, an engineer; Marisa van der Merwe is an accomplished chess teacher; IM Watu Kobese is one point away from becoming an international chess grandmaster; and Afrika Msimang is a sociologist.

Together, they have developed a programme called Moves for Life, and it uses chess to prepare children for life in general and school in particular.

South Africa is indeed a Rainbow Nation, but the multifaceted nature of the rainbow is perhaps reflected most clearly in the vast differences in the pupils who arrive at school on the first day of Grade 1. Some have been exposed to households where music, books and conversation are a part of everyday life, and these children will benefit from the lessons that chess can teach.

How much more beneficial will be the experiences of those who have never seen a book and have never been asked a question about themselves or their environment?

Dr Kemm is at pains to point out that the Supreme Chess Trust’s programme is not competition to the Chess Association of South Africa, but will rather complement it. The latter is looking for superstars who will one day represent South Africa at chess and go on to grandmaster status.

The Trust is using chess to promote thinking ability and confidence in children. And it is winning.

The first thing it is doing, is breaking down the myth that chess is a game for boffins. In its pure form, it is a very simple game and anyone can learn how to play it.

Like everything in life, the complications and the difficulties come into play when the competition between people becomes a factor.

This aspect of chess is borne out by President Jacob Zuma, who learnt how to play the game on Robben Island. Unwittingly, the powers-that-were created a mini university for strategy among the future political leaders of the country by introducing chess.

One of the lessons President Zuma learnt, was that one shakes hands with one’s opponent at the beginning and – win or lose – at the end of every game.

He further learnt that one’s opponent is not the “enemy”, but merely another player who is trying to win a game through strategic thinking – exactly as you are.

But children learn things in different ways.

Just as apprentices learnt their trades by watching and doing rather than through reading and writing, so young children learn chess through the same process.

For this reason, Moves for Life has developed two distinct teaching methods: MiniMoves for Grade 1 to mid-junior school pupils; and MasterMoves for pupils in senior primary school and upward.

To the MiniMoves learner, there is no difference between chess and tiddlywinks – both are simply games, but the process of problem-solving becomes embedded in the brain as a framework from a very early stage.

At the MasterMoves level, the intra-school, inter-school and national competition aspects of the game are introduced.

Dr Kemm is heartened by the fact that the Department of Sports and Recreation has added chess (along with cricket, soccer, rugby and netball) as one of the sports that will be sponsored for inter-school and inter-provincial competition.

The objective is not to select Protea, Bafana Bafana or Springbok stars, but rather to teach the children the value of play and learning; to get them to develop respect for themselves, their teammates, their opponents, the rules of the game, and for the officials who ensure they happen.

One of the major lessons they will learn, is how to lose gracefully – because everyone does lose at some point or other in life.

All of which is very interesting, but how is chess going to move the Matric pass rate up from the 60% level to somewhere closer to the desired 90%?

As mentioned, it is a fact that the vast majority of children enter our school system having had little or no analytical stimulus.

It is also a fact – a sad one, but a fact nonetheless – that by the time a pupil has reached the age of 12, his or her learning experience up until that time will determine whether or not a Matric pass is a possibility.

The objective of Moves for Life is to get to the children before this prognosis is imprinted and to help them to acquire these analytical skills as early in life as possible.

For those who demand empirical evidence, Van der Merwe has undertaken a study at a school in Eersterust (a very depressed and disadvantaged area near Pretoria). Within three months of the introduction of the Moves for Life programme, the academic results of the participants had improved by 30% on average.

In addition, Melissa Greeff, who is a normal, bright, attractive young girl – and no-one’s stereotype of an intellectual nerd – has become South Africa’s first women’s grandmaster, at the age of 15.

The chess players at Eersterust come from all areas, particularly from the rugby teams – thus shattering another myth about both games.

It was assumed that the Grade 10 class would fail maths en masse; the class average was 20%. Within the three-month period, the class average had risen to 60%.

And, whereas chess is specifically beneficial for maths and science marks, the spillover effect into all other subjects has been remarkable.

This phenomenon has been noticed worldwide, but is particularly remarkable in South Africa, as there are such vast differences in the baseline analytical capabilities of our school population.

And the sport is gaining in popularity. At an inter-school competition held recently, the organisers were expecting a smattering of participants.

More than 600 children (ranging in age from 10 to 18) arrived by the mini-bus load, and the biggest problem that Moves for Life had was how to source enough pies and cooldrinks to satisfy them.

So from Tzaneen to Prieska, from Durban to Cape Town, Moves for Life is donating 20 chess sets and the necessary literature to get the programmes up and running to each participating school.

The president has fully embraced the initiative, as have the ministers of Sport and Recreation, and Basic Education.

President Zuma has accepted the patronage of the Moves For Life project. A chess tournament, the “JZ Challenge”, was held in his home-town of Nkandla, and a programme embracing some 43 schools in Meadowlands has been launched.

But, as with all such initiatives, the organisation requires funding. The departments of Sport and Recreation and of Basic Education have made significant funding available, but Moves for Life still needs help from private enterprise.

At a recent launch (where speakers were introduced by pupils who would not previously have had the confidence for this role), two sponsors came forward immediately.

The first was BHP Billiton’s Aluminium Division, which pledged R1.5 million over a three-year period to support the programme in Richards Bay and Nkandla.

The second was far more remarkable. Uitkyk Butchery does not have a corporate social responsibility trove, but it donated R150 000 to support the programme in Eersterust and Mamelodi.

If anything can be shown to be making a real difference to the lives of teachers and learners in South Africa, then Moves for Life must take the title. In a very short period of time, it has proven it can do what it claims and its achievements must point the way forward to even the most cynical of critics.

Moves for Life has the belief that it can make a difference. It has the strategic design to make a success of the process; all it requires, is the largess of corporate South Africa (and SMME South Africa as well) to ensure the next Nobel Prize for Physics, Chemistry or Medicine is not only born in South Africa, but develops the theory and practice of the innovation here as well. ▲

John Doolan