Volume 7, 2000

Shireen Motala

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • The 1999 Senior Certificate Examination
  • Introduction
  • Administration
  • Data Analysis of the 1999 Senior Certificate
  • Examination
  • Decrease in the Number of Candidates
  • Pass and Endorsement Rates
  • Distribution and Frequency of School Level Pass Rates
  • Subject and Subject Pass Rates
  • Subject Enrolment by Gender
  • Concluding Comments

• 2000/2001 Budget
  • Introduction
  • The National Budget
  • Education Spending
  • Provincial Education Budgets
  • Comment

• Education Governance and the District Development Challenge
  • Introduction
  • The Policy Reserve Fund
  • The District Development Project
  • Role and Limitations of Districts in South Africa
  • The Provincial District Development Conferences
  • The Way Forward for District Development?
• Tirisano Implementation Plan
• Admission Age Policy
  • Introduction
  • Responses to the New Admission Policy
• Higher Education: Foreign and Private Higher Education Institutions in South Africa
• The Draft South African Council for Educators Bill
• Conclusion
• Obituary
• References
• Appendix

Summary

A key feature of education transformation in this quarter is the attempt to shift more firmly from policy vision and goals to systemic reform processes. This is underscored mainly by Minister Kader Asmal s implementation plan ? Tirisano ? which he outlined on 23 January 2000. Systemic reform has two major foci; on the one hand the emphasis is on comprehensive change in various parts of the system; on the other it stresses the notion of policy integration, co-ordination and coherence around a clear set of outcomes. What is being witnessed in South Africa is the shift to greater co-ordination by assembling a set of policy and systemic reforms that undergird a more focused set of policy goals. This Quarterly Review addresses the challenges of this process and looks at both constraining and enabling factors. The Review analyses the matric results of 1999, and attempts to indicate areas that require more in-depth research and data analysis. South Africa s national budget, and the provincial and national education budgets are reviewed in terms of how they address the overall goals of quality, redress and equity. Decentralised governance and the challenge of district development is critically discussed. Tirisano 2000 is used to introduce a broader discussion on one of the key obstacles to effective implementation - the building of appropriate institutional capacity to manage and deliver education change. Education reform is also contextualised in terms of broader social reform processes, in particular in the discussion of the age admission policy for schools. The urgency of a regulatory framework for foreign and private higher education institutions and the draft bill for the South African Council for Educators highlight the ongoing need for sound, transparent, and inclusive policy development.

Salim Vally

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Report on Curriculum 2005
  • Key Findings and Recommendations of the Review Committee
  • Council of Education Ministers (CEM) Response
  • Commentary
• Values in Education Report
• HIV/AIDS and Education
  • Government s Plans, Strategies and Programmes
  • Implementation of Plan
  • Education Sector Responses
• Size and Shape of Higher Education - Final Report
  • Reconfiguring the Shape and Size of Higher Education
  • Size and Shape Task Team: Discussion Document - 7th April 2000
• Farm Schools
• Further Education and Training (FET)
• New Legislation
  • Education Laws Amendment Bill
  • Adult General Education and Training Bill
  • General and Further Education and Training Quality Assurance Bill
  • Higher Education Amendment Bill
• Acknowledgement
• References
• Appendices

Summary

The feverish melodrama gripping most South African households prior to the announcement of the 2006 World Cup host, encouraged and amplified by state officials and the mass media, reached its climax in an outpouring of anger and disappointment at South Africa s exclusion. Roughly at the same time, the renowned urban theorist and professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Manuel Castells, was touring South Africa. Castells evoked the possibility that South Africa "like its ravaged neighbours" could fall into "the abyss of social exclusion" of the global economy. He argued that "the real problem for South Africa is how to avoid being pushed aside itself from the harsh competition in the new global economy once its economy is open". Although South Africa, according to Castells, has more of a chance relative to the rest of the continent to escape marginalisation and to enter "the charmed circle of those countries that are technologically and economically salonfahig" it is, like the expensive gamble involved in the World Cup bid, a risky option. In response to accusations that such perspectives encourage a debilitating Afro-pessimism , John Saul, a visiting Canadian sociologist and veteran anti-apartheid activist retorts: . . . the real Afro?pessimists are those who state that Africa (including South Africa) has little choice but to tag along behind a global capitalism that offers very little by way of development prospects for the continent ? there are stronger grounds upon which to build an Afro-optimism than through a feckless flight to the right. The resolute endeavour to compete in the global marketplace permeates most socio-economic initiatives undertaken by the South African state. Education policy documents are not immune from this desire and are replete with exhortations to mould learners and institutions into global competitors. The committee appointed to review Curriculum 2005 (C2005), in analysing the values and purposes of the curriculum, mention a dual challenge confronting curriculum designers. The first is the "post-Apartheid" challenge which is to ensure a requisite knowledge, values and skills base which will, in turn, "provide the conditions for greater social justice, equity and development". The second is the need to align the curriculum to the "global competitiveness challenge". The Review Committee explains that the role of the curriculum in relation to this challenge "is to provide the platform for developing knowledge, skills and competencies for innovation, social development and economic growth for the 21st century". Earlier official documents on C2005 were more blunt. They unashamedly touted the curriculum as a panacea for South Africa s economic woes, in the very way a successful World Cup bid, in the minds of many, would significantly ameliorate South Africa s unemployment crisis. The Curriculum Review Committee (Committee), while seemingly accepting the dual challenges posed above, contradicts the global competitiveness challenge by arguing elsewhere in their Review that: . . . there is a perception that schools are not assisting in either creating new social values or the skilled population that the country requires in order to compete globally. In part, it must be recognised that education (or even a curriculum) cannot change society or on its own produce national development. Vesting such hopes in education are bound to lead to disillusionment. The Committee correctly insists that more and better education can create the conditions for enhanced social and personal development and act as a lever for social change. However, their criticism of the exaggerated claims that education can on its own solve economic problems is muted. A clearer and explicit indication that economic problems can best be understood by analysing the economic and political choices made by the state is required. In the same way, it needs to be asserted, as the Values in Education Report does, that the education system does not exist simply to serve market needs. The HIV/AIDS pandemic also is a distressing and compelling reason why we need to reassess whether our policies speak to the chimerical and distant promise of success in the global market place or to the dire and immediate need to address local problems. In a country which records at least 1700 new HIV infections per day and tens of thousands of deaths from AIDS-related illnesses annually, there should be no debate. Clearly, the cost of effective prevention, care and treatment will require a radical re-think of the state s macro-economic policies - currently aimed at making South Africa globally competitive - and South Africa s acquiescence to the World Trade Organisation s drug patenting dictates. The state s predicament, then, is whether education and other policies should be aligned with global competitiveness trends with its attendant cuts in budget expenditure for social sectors and the downsizing of personnel and resources, or aligned with the "post-Apartheid" challenge. This dilemma is captured by Castells when he states that: . . . (The) more states emphasize communalism, the less effective they become as co-agents of a global system of shared power. The more they triumph in the planetary scene, in close partnership with the agents of globalization, the less they represent their national constituencies. End of millennium politics, almost everywhere in the world is dominated by this fundamental contradiction. Finally, while curriculum change, innovations in schooling and general education reform are critical, the precondition for ultimate success in these endeavours is changing the socio-economic status of learners. The physical, emotional and social damage inflicted on children who live in poverty is abundantly documented in numerous reports. The vast majority of South African learners live in poverty, a situation that, if not ameliorated sufficiently, will reduce the effectiveness of education reform, however enlightened. The HIV/AIDS pandemic will immeasurably aggravate this situation.

Vol 7, No 3
15 September 2000

The Personal and the Global: Grinding Gears?
Reconsidering Efficiency Debates in General Education July - September 2000

Kim Porteus

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Social Mandate: Racism, Values and Safe Schools
A Budget Review: Re-Asking the Basic Questions
Reviewing System Inefficiencies
The Financial and Fiscal Committee (FFC) Recommendations
Unlocking Equity and Performance in the System
Reconsidering the Personal and the Global
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References
Addenda: The Personal of Poverty and Education

Summary

The government blames the teachers, the teachers blame the parents, the parents blame the students, the students blame the government and in the end, instead of working it out, everyone gives up and goes off to a shebeen ? and drink themselves into oblivion. (Asmal, 2000a: 4)

Throughout the last quarter, several challenges were placed at the door of educators and education policy analysts. In July, the Director General of Education challenged the joint EPU/CEPD Policy Conference to reconsider the meaning of education transformation and the extent to which we are meeting the progressive agenda envisioned prior to 1994. In his address to the Annual General Meeting of the CEPD, the Minister of Education called for a review of the concept of quality in education, in light of current expenditure patterns. Perhaps most importantly, teachers participating in the education policy conference sponsored by CEPD 2000 Plus intimated that the impact of policy on people was not fully alive in the policy discourse. In her summary of the conference, Professor Linda Chisholm highlighted the need for a greater understanding of the interface between policy and people. In this Quarterly Review, we attempt to take a first step in confronting some of these challenges through the lens of recent events.The 1997 Medium Term Expenditure (MTEF) Review for Education has had a long lasting impact on the discourse of budget efficiency in the education sector. As was said in the 1998 MTEF Review, prior to [the 1997] report, debates circled around issues of access to schooling, classroom backlogs, infrastructural deficiencies, inefficient procurement processes, and the level of funding in education (MTEF, 1998: 11). The 1997 report shifted the focus from these issues to system inefficiency as demonstrated by flow through, pass rates, over-enrolment and inequity in the system (MTEF, 1998: 9). The assumptions emerging from the 1997 and 1998 MTEF cycles have impacted the implementation narrative. This narrative is based on three premises. First, the national budget provides the education system with enough funds. Second, equity drivers are shifting budgets to the greatest extent possible to previously disadvantaged schools. Third, if local managers and educators were more effective they could release economic efficiency and thus harness resources for currently unmet needs. As underscored by the Minister of Education on several occasions, South Africa spends over 20% of its national fiscus on education, relatively high by international standards. The implicit question in this statement is ? why the low return on investment ? The narrative points blame to the personal -- the failure to improve efficiency reflects upon the poor capacity, morale, and judgement of local managers and educators. In this Quarterly Review, we take a step back, and consider the efficiency arguments emanating from the 1997 MTEF review in light of recent data and developments. In the first section, we explore the role of education in the social development of young people. We consider the National Conference on Racism, values in education, and safe schools programming. We draw some conclusions about the parameters of quality education through the lens of these events.In the next two sections, we review the most recent budget and expenditure patterns, and then consider the form and location of systemic inefficiencies, and the capacity of these inefficiencies to release redistributive capacity. In order to evaluate the problem of implementation , and particularly the slow pace of quality improvements in previously disadvantaged schools, we consider whether the current framework provides previously disadvantaged schools with a fair chance at improving organisational performance in the short and medium terms. We use this analysis to frame our consideration of the recent recommendations put forward by the Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC, 2000).In exploring the form and location of systemic inefficiencies, we consider new data to better understand the role of flow through rates, which challenge the conclusion that flow through rates are simple measures of system inefficiencies in the context of poor neighbourhoods. We use this analysis to refocus our attention on more basic and core problems, and particularly teacher and management development and organisational systems. In this context, we review the developments emerging from the Curriculum Review Committee Report (DoE, 2000b).In each of these areas we put a special emphasis on the implications of the personal and the global, and conclude by reviewing budget integrity through as it relates to the global and the personal. Is it efficient in the eyes of the global? The personal? By the global, we mean the qualitative and quantitative elaboration of real-time economic and cultural integration unleashed through the last decade, and the patterns of power and rules that govern it. By the personal, we mean the day to day impact on people s lives. At times it is individual, at times it has everything to do with how individuals relate to each other and their world. It is about what macro logic looks like in the life of a vulnerable learner, a gang member, an educator who fails, an educator who holds onto hope, a parent who engages with the system, a parent who feels alienated. It is about how much space is perceived for power and change, how much inevitability is perceived with reference to repeating old patterns. Through the lens of recent events, this Review suggests that the current system of education is not yet aligned to release an appropriate return on investment or tap into the human potential that the system requires. In an era where education becomes increasingly important for personal and communal survival, the global has the power to undermine our efforts to transform the education system ? arguably pushing the personal to the shebeen. While we don t come up with easy answers or irrefutable conclusions, we begin to question some of the overriding logic about expenditure and efficiency, and suggest ways in which the drinking ourselves into oblivion cycle, could perhaps, be replaced by more hope in the possibility for change.

The Holy State?
Values, Legitimation and Ideological Closure in South African Education

Nazir Carrim and Margaret Tshoane

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Holy State? Values in Education
Democratising School Governance
Teacher Awards
Alternatives to Corporal Punishment
Transforming Further Education and Training (FET)
Curriculum 2005: Since the Review What s Happened?
Conclusion
References

Summary

This Quarterly Review covers developments in the South African education and training sector in the last quarter (September-December) of 2000. It focuses on ?values in education?, corporal punishment, school governance, teacher awards and developments with regard to curriculum 2005 (C2005) and in the further education and training (FET) sector. Apart from these issues being predominant in the last quarter of 2000, they also point to trends within the education and training sector in South Africa currently. These trends include: increasing concern with questions of implementation; reflections on what has and has not worked in education and training since the establishment of democratic rule in South Africa; and, an attempt to streamline to the point of ideological closure.

In the coverage of teacher awards and alternatives to corporal punishment in this issue, two things stand out. First, the teacher awards, like alternatives to corporal punishment, attempt to positively reinforce the behaviour of educators and learners respectively in order to establish ?discipline?. Here positive, constitutive views of ?discipline? are noticeable, moving away from notions of ?discipline? as negative, repressive and controlling only (Foucault, 1979). In the case of educators, the discipline is aimed at professionalisation of educators, in the case of learners the discipline is intended to socialise them into a culture of learning in non antagonistic and self affirming environments. In both instances, though, educators and learners are expected to regulate themselves in significant ways.

Regulation of the self, by oneself, is also what is common to the alternatives to corporal punishment and teacher awards. In both cases, educators and learners are called on to reflect on and take responsibility of and for their own actions. Failure to do so is immediately noticeable since such learners and educators would not reap the benefits of affirmative and positive acknowledgements that alternatives to corporal punishment and teacher awards provide. In addition, what is significant about these developments is the realisation on the part of government that implementation of policies in regard to educators and learners are not being implemented effectively because of the lack of available alternative approaches and incentives.

In this concern with implementation the national department of education (NDE) increasingly moves towards more qualitative and specific interventions. These are most welcome. Equally, in developments within the FET sector the NDE reflects on what has and has not worked within that sector. As the report on the FET ?convention? in this issue notes, the concern is again with implementation, generating strategic plans and becoming more qualitative and specific in terms of interventions.

The same is noticeable in the developments in regard to school governance. The NDE and provincial departments are consciously evaluating what has and has not worked, and reviewing experiences ?on the ground? in order to put into place specific interventions which take the processes of democratisation of school governance forward qualitatively. In this light, the NDE is becoming increasingly reflective, specific and qualitative; moving from policy formulation to questions of implementation.

Nonetheless, in this concern with implementation there is an emerging trend to also streamline, simplify and trim things down. This is noticeable in the attempts to develop a national curriculum statement and in curious ways within the Report on Values, Education and Democracy. In the case of the development of a national curriculum statement, the attempt is to streamline and simplify C2005 in order to facilitate its implementation. In the case of the Report on Values, Education and Democracy the attempt is to reduce the complexities of democratic values to six ?core? values, which can be easily promoted and thereby facilitating their implementation.

Whilst, there may be sound reasons for wanting to do so, particularly in the areas of epistemology and morality such streamlining and simplification can also be read as attempting to establish ideological closure. Although it may be important to make things simpler in the contexts of policy implementation, because policies may be easier to implement and monitor, if such simplification results in ideological closure, in the name of implementation, then such strategies can lead to rather disastrous results. Success in implementation is, at the same time, a significant indicator of government legitimacy (see Weiler, 1990). But this cannot be done at the expense of democracy and a culture based on human rights, which such interventions are meant to consolidate in their implementation in the first and final instances. In this regard, implementation successes and government legitimacy are argued here to be not necessarily desirable motivations for ideological closure. The complexities of human life cannot simply be reduced to prerogatives of political legitimacy and facilitation of policy implementation. The task of any government is to work with and through, rather than artificially reduce, the complexities of human lives and worlds.

This Quarterly Review, then, is forced to work with the complexities of the developments that have occurred in the education and training sector of South Africa. It walks on the difficult and slippery road of the interdependencies, tensions and contradictions between bipolarities, where ?discipline? is both negative and positive; ?awards? are acknowledgements and mechanisms of control; knowledge is contested and defined; and, where ?values? are ?political? and the ?moral? is and is not ?political?, all at once. We travel upon this road to open up the issues for debate in the interests of ideological openness and inclusivity, which we view as endemic educational characteristics and conditions for a culture of human rights and democracy.