Volume 6, 1999

Linda Chisholm and Tracey Petersen

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Provincial Education: Financing
• Provincial Education: Non-Personnel Spending
• Provincial Education: Challenges and Possibilities
• Education, Training and the Economy
• Skills Development and School Effectiveness
• Racism in Schools
• HIV-Aids and Sexism
• Curriculum 20005 and Outcomes-Based Education and Training
• Assessment and the Matric Exam
  • 1998 Matric Results
  • Draft Assessment Policy of 1998: An OBE Vision
  • OBE and Matric
  • Naidoo Committee on Matric Exam (September 1998)
• Higher Education
• Conclusion
• References

Summary

To explore the chnages and continuities in education and training over this period this Quarterly Review focuses on

• some of the patterns underlying increased spending in education identified in the Medium Term Expenditure Review;
• challenges and possibilities in provincial educational development;
• new evidence on the relationship between education, training and the economy;
• new research in the areas of skills development and school effectiveness in South Africa;
• new research on racism in schools;
• new policy on HIV/AIDS;
• new developments in curriculum policy;
• debate and research in the area of assessment and the matriculation examination; and
• new developments in higher education.

Teachers in South Africa: Between Fiscal Austerity and Getting Learning Right :
April - June 1999

Salim Vally

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Getting Learning Right
  • Curriculum 2005 and Assessment
  • Teaching and Learning
  • Teaching and Learning Materials
  • Language Issues
  • Critique
• Teachers Morale
• The Budget, Personnel versus Non-personnel Spending, and Redeployment
  • Western Cape
  • KwaZulu-Natal
  • Eastern Cape
  • Northern Province
  • North West
  • Northern Cape
  • Mpumalanga
  • Free State
• The Mpumalanga Matric Results Debacle
  • Investigation into the Senior Certificate Exam
• Trading in Futures
• References
• Appendix One
• Appendix Two
• Appendix Three
  
  

Summary

Effective educational service delivery should be seen in the light of an increasingly exacting and punitive budgetary stringency and a taxing fiscal austerity regime. This Quarterly Review focus on this predicament, particularly on its impact on the life and work of educators and the pursuit of their professional duties. The Review begins with the Joint Education Trust s Getting Learning Right report on the President s Education Initiative. An initiative comprising thirty five projects on teacher development issues. It then examines areas omitted by the President s Education Initiative but nonetheless vitally important for the everyday existence of teachers: issues such as teacher motivation, violence in schools and the teacher rationalisation exercise. We argue that the latter is driven by the logic of fiscal austerity and the requirement of the state to curb public sector expenditure. At the behest of globalisation and the often stated to be internationally competitive we have witnessed the steady encroachment of private providers of education and the increasing logic of the market place applied to education. The section on Trading in our Futures examines this trend.

"A Call to Action"
A Review of Minister K. Asmal s Educational Priorities

Edited by Shireen Motala, Salim Vally and Maropeng Madiba

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Priority 1
  • We must make our provincial systems work by making co-operative government work - Contribution by Shireen Motala, Wits EPU
• Priority 2
  • We must break the back of illiteracy among adults and youth in five years - Contribution by Jane Castle, Department of Education, Wits University
• Priority 3
  • Schools must become centers of community life - Contribution by Salim Vally, Wits EPU
• Priority 4
  • We must end conditions of physical degradation in South African schools - Contribution by Shireen Motala, Wits EPU
• Priority 5
  • We must develop the professional quality of our teaching force - Contribution by Maropeng Modiba, Department of Education, Wits University
• Priority 6
  • We must ensure the success of active learning through outcomes-based education
    - Contributions by Haroon Mohammed, Gauteng Institute of Curriculum Development and Maropeng Modiba, Department of Education, Wits University
• Priority 7
  • We must create a vibrant further education and training system to equip youth and adults to meet the social needs of the 21st century
    - Contributions by Nis r Mohamed, Human Sciences Research Council and Salim Vally, Wits EPU
• Priority 8
  • We must implement a rational, seamless higher education system that grasps the intellectual an professional challenges facing South Africans in the 21st century
    - Contributions by George Subotzky, EPU, University of the Western Cape and Salim Vally, Wits EPU
• Priority 9
  • We must deal urgently and purposefully with the HIV/AIDS emergency in and through the education and training system
    - Contribution by Mary Crewe, Centre for the Study of Aids, University of Pretoria
• References
• Appendix 1

Summary

Minister Kader Asmal s call to action and statement of priorities (DOE, 1999) on the 27 July 1999 to revitalise South Africa s education and training system has elicited favourable comment in the print and electronic media and in society generally. The Minister s statement represents an honest and open appraisal, and presents a vision of education transformation which prioritises the key areas of education requiring urgent attention. The general interest cannot be attributed solely to the highly visible media presence of the Minister, conjuring up as it does the image of a very energetic leader determined to sweep aside the supposed inertia of the past five years. Nor is the interest generated because of anything remarkably new in the Minister s statement. Most of the priorities identified by the Minister were the very ones which sustained the pre-1994 struggles, on the crest of which the democratic government took office. The Poverty and "Inequality Hearings" convened last year also reiterated these priorities. Rather, the Minister s statement was widely welcomed because it resonates with the sentiments of many and because of its refreshingly candid view that education transformation has proceeded at a slow and uneven pace in the past five years. While acknowledging the work of his predecessor, Minister Sibusiso Bhengu, in putting in place important legislative, regulatory and policy frameworks to guide the transformation process, Minister Asmal notes that the delivery of a quality education to the majority of our children and youth continues to be poor. Despite some success stories he notes that the education system has failed to serve poor urban and rural communities and that rampant inequality continues to exist in many parts of the education system. For Asmal, the most troubling features of our education and training system are the massive inequalities in access and facilities, the poor state of morale of the teaching force, failures in governance and management, and the poor quality of learning in much of the system. Having prioritised key areas, the challenge facing the Education Ministry is for effective and demonstrative delivery. Pronouncements of priorities and desired goals is one thing; contending with the realities of implementation is another. The Minister has to move quickly from critical observations and vision to action, and to distinguish between what can and cannot be accomplished within the limits imposed by varying constraints. This special issue focusing on the Minister s nine priorities is a departure from our normal Quarterly Review of Education and Training for the following reasons:

• The Minister s statement is an instructive starting point from which to analyse developments in education and training and represents a signpost against which the past and future paths of educational developments can be evaluated. It is necessary to understand the underlying rationale for the Minister s chosen priorities and to establish whether the critical factors he refers to as the most urgent do indeed represent important starting points for analysing the challenges that lie ahead.
• The Minister s statement has great value because it seeks to encompass the totality of educational challenges and does not focus on one aspect alone. The Minister s openness about the problems of education and his engagement with important voices in the field is itself encouraging to the process of critical discourse and signals - perhaps more directly than hitherto - an invitation to engage. It is hoped that the discussions in this special issue will be a constructive contribution to a spirited and vigorous debate.

This special issue consists of contributions made by a range of individuals on each of the nine priority areas identified by the Minister. The areas are:

• provincial and national relations;
• eradicating illiteracy and strengthening Adult Basic Education and Training;
• turning schools into centres of community life;
• ending conditions of physical degradation in schools;
• developing the professional quality of the teaching force;
• enabling active learning through outcomes-based education;
• creating a vibrant further education and training sector;
• implementing a seamless higher education system ; and
• dealing purposefully with HIV/AIDS.

Education and Innovation: Rethinking the Familiar :
15 September - 15 December 1999

Michael Gardner

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Education Minister Reports to the President
  • Senior Certificate Examination
  • Learner Support Materials
  • Norms and Standards
  • Admissions Policy
  • Provincial Management
  • Conclusion
• New Legislation
  • The Higher Education Amendment Act, No 55 of 1999
  • The National Student Financial Aid Scheme Bill, 1999
• Financial Information
• Education for All 2000 Assessment (EFA)
• Education and Innovation: Rethinking the Familiar
  • Shifting the Discourses
  • Norms and Standards
  • Questions of Quality
  • Human Rights
  • Community Justice
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
  
  

Summary

This issue of the Quarterly Review reasserts its primary function of providing a survey of some of the major developments affecting education which have taken place in the last three months. The previous edition took up the important announcements by the Minister of Education about his priorities, and concentrated upon responses to those. As a continuation of the last Quarterly Review s focus, there is at the outset a brief discussion of the five areas highlighted by the Minister in his quarterly report to the President. The intense focus upon the provinces is particularly striking in this report, and signals a determination on the part of the Minister to be frank about shortcomings in these areas and to intervene so as to make provinces function more efficiently. This is followed by a description of two new pieces of legislation, both on higher education. They cover significant areas of institutional and student life, the one being the Minister s right to intervene in the administration of universities, when necessary, and the other to do with student financial aid. Two sources of financial information have become available recently: the Intergovernmental Fiscal Review as well as the Medium Term Budget Statement. Tables from both have been selected and included as appendices. The release of the Education for All 2000 Report on South African Education coincided with the major EFA conference. As a late participant in EFA 2000, South Africa has not been assessed fully in terms of global criteria, but benchmarks are being laid down against which our international reputation as educators will be measured infuture. A presentation of the findings of the EFA Assessment is followed with an extended reflection on ways in which some of the familiar and often intractable-seeming questions in our educational experience might be looked at so as to produce the possibility of fresh perspectives. Complexity is essential if educational thought is to bear any relation to the diversity which education by definition embraces.