Intention or in tension? Recent education reforms in South Africa

The major restructuring of the entire education system in South Africa has produced considerable policy tensions and contradictions. In the light of recent legislation, this paper examines the consequences of the Education Department's attempting to serve the demands for equity in terms of resource allocation and reprioritisation within and between provinces, while simultaneously on a micro school-based level attempting to insert a particular school culture (governance, funding, curricula, conditions of service and so on) across schools that were previously extremely disparate in terms of the elements referred to above. This attempt at equality in the face of the equity drive has considerable consequences for the delivery and provision of education services. The paper discusses these and analyses the policy-making domain which has produced somewhat contradictory outcomes.     

OBE,RPL and adult education: good bedfellows in higher education in South Africa?

As its title suggests, this paper explores the compatibility of outcomes-based education (OBE), the recognition of prior learning (RPL) and adult education in higher education in South Africa. OBE and RPL entered the consciousness of South African educators in the 1990s, when policymakers, responding to economic and political imperatives to develop a more skilled and flexible workforce, turned to overseas models of integrated education and training systems. OBE and RPL are often described as ‘learner-centred practices’, meaning that learning goals, teaching and assessment processes, content and pace of learning are mutually determined by the tutor and student. Such practices are grounded in a humanistic approach to adult education which places emphasis on the person as a holistic being and allows for considerable differences which characterize mature adult learners. The paper explores the relationship between OBE, RPL and the andragogical model of adult education proposed by Malcolm Knowles, whose theories have acquired the status of established doctrine in South Africa. The paper points to areas of compatibility and difference between OBE, RPL and adult education, and concludes that problems which arise in introducing OBE and RPL in higher education have more to do with features of the context, and the processes of design and implementation, than with inherent defects in the theories underpinning them.     

Globalization and higher education restructuring in South Africa: is democracy under threat?

My intention is to explore the link between globalization and higher education restructuring in South Africa and whether it looms as a threat to democracy. I contend that an argument can be made that the ascendancy of market-driven concerns in defining the restructuring of higher education in South Africa may have the effect whereby higher education institutions (universities and technikons) become subordinated to the demands of the market place, which situation in turn, can be detrimental to the consolidation of South Africa's newly found democracy. First, I argue that the restructuring of higher education according to the ‘logic of globalization’ would not necessarily minimize socio-economic inequality, thus providing a major barrier to the move towards deepening democracy. However, the economic, political and cultural effects of globalization as determinants of higher education restructuring in South Africa are not going to disappear, at least not for the immediate future. Already the South African government considers as a central feature of its economic policy the meeting of the ‘challenge of international competitiveness … (and) an inability to compete will increasingly marginalise the South African economy (and), have profound effects on its rate of growth and consequences for the social well-being and stability of South African society’ (CHE 2000a: 20)

Second therefore, in order to safeguard and promote democracy, in spite of the market-bound trend, I assess some democratic prospects of a globalizing world in the restructuring of higher education. Like Jones (1998: 153), I contend that an argument can be made for achieving democracy in a sphere of corporate dominance if higher education is considered as a public good that allows space for the development of relations of trust, individual autonomy and democratic dialogue.     

Information and advocacy: Forgotten components in the strategies for achieving inclusive education in South Africa?

Abstract

Commitment to a single, inclusive education system has been the aspiration of reform in education in a democratic South Africa as articulated in White Paper 6: Special needs education: Building an inclusive education and training system (Department of Education 2001). This article reports findings from a qualitative study which took place in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), which ascertained participants’ evaluation of the extent to which the policy ideals of inclusive education, as articulated in White Paper 6 were being achieved. Findings revealed that there was evidence of inclusive education beginning to be implemented in KZN in that barriers to learning for many students were being addressed and removed. The specific provision in policy documents directed towards children with disabilities was behind schedule, however, and there was little evidence of full inclusion of students with disabilities in regular education. One component that was furthest behind in the milestones was the implementation of the information and advocacy programme. Implications and further consequences of this are discussed.     

A world apart? Higher education transformation in the US and South Africa

Higher education transformation is context dependent. However, through a comparison of transformation in South Africa and the United States, this paper highlights challenges and issues confronting higher education leaders and policy makers. Contrasting the experiences and issues of transformation in a long-standing democracy and in a newly emerging one surface key elements such as the structures of national mandates, challenges of urgency and abundance, the importance of a language of “transformation”, and issues of legitimate and tested decision making processes. This paper raises some of the implications for effecting change based upon this trans-national comparison, and concludes with implications for leaders interested in affecting transformation.     

Levelling or Playing the Field? The politics of access to university education in post‐apartheid South Africa

This article identifies the three discursive forces of ‘equity and redress’, ‘development’ and ‘academic standards’ in the structuring of access and admission policies in South Africa. It is argued that these forces undergo a process of complex repositioning within the policy making arena of the National Commission on Higher Education. The discourse of ‘development’, couched in neo‐classical economic terms, emerges as a dominant discourse in this process and shapes the discourses surrounding ‘academic standards’ and, more fundamentally, ‘redress’ policies and strategies. Such oblique effects of the dominant discourse, it is suggested, have fundamentally reframed access and admission policies and strategies proposed by the Commission.     

Curriculum Reform in South Africa: a critical analysis of outcomes‐based education

Since South Africa's first national democratic elections in 1994, the Government of National Unity has issued several curriculum‐related reforms intended to democratise education and eliminate inequalities in the post‐apartheid education system. The most comprehensive of these reforms has been labelled outcomes‐based education (OBE), an approach to education which underpins the new Curriculum 2005. While the anticipated positive effects of the new curriculum have been widely heralded, there has been little criticism of these proposals given the social and educational context of South African schools. In this article the philosophical, political and implementational dilemmas of OBE are systematically analysed and assessed.

     

Moral Education or Indoctrination in South Africa? A Brief Response to Potgieter

Abstract

This paper is a brief and informal response to Professor P. C. Potgieter's paper Moral Education in South Africa which appeared in the January 1980 edition of this Journal (Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 130‐3). In response to Potgieter the author attempts to present some of the more obvious philosophical and sociological inconsistencies and problems appearing in Potgieter's paper. He concludes, basically, that Potgieter has assumed a marked consensual model of South African society and, therefore, his analysis serves only to misinform the reader as to the complexities of moral education in South Africa.     

Unearthing white academics’ experience of teaching in higher education in South Africa

The real and imagined racial differences and similarities between groups of students and staff have consequences in everyday experiences in South Africa. One aspect of engaging with the challenges facing higher education transformation post-Apartheid is through understanding how the racialized context interacts with the experience of teaching. This paper reports on what the narratives of four white academics reveal about their experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It analyses indicators of their identity as white academics and how they are both positioned and actively position themselves in relation to students and other academics at UCT. Their narratives reveal how academics simultaneously grapple with the privileges and limitations that accompany identifying as white. These tensions are explored through issues of black student development amid an alienating institutional culture and opposition to the behaviour of their white colleagues.     

Who benefits from public spending on higher education in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa?

Most countries are far from achieving the new sustainable development target of equal access to higher education by 2030, with those in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa furthest behind. This raises questions about the allocation of public resources across the education system to promote equity. We use data from Demographic and Health Surveys and UNESCO Institute for Statistics in 31 countries in these regions to assess who benefits from public spending on education. Our results reveal an overall pattern of pro-rich education spending, increasing with education level. We find that this pattern can be traced to an allocation of resources to higher education that is disproportionate to the sub-sector’s size: even when higher education spending overall represents a small proportion of total educational expenditure, per-capita expenditure is extremely high. Given that the richest predominantly gain access to higher education, the current spending patterns are likely to reinforce wealth-driven education inequalities.     

A basic education programme in Africa: The people's own?

This paper examines the issue of community ownership with reference to an adult literacy and basic education programme in NW Zaire. After a discussion of community ownership, stressing the need for local control and relevance to local needs, it outlines the context and development of the programme in NW Zaïre and considers the degree to which ownership is manifested in the design of technical aspects of the programme and its structures. Finally it identifies some key issues for continued progress, particularly the shape of partnerships between external agencies and strengthened local structures.     

Can engineering education in South Africa afford to avoid problem-based learning as a didactic approach?

In this article, the authors support problem-based learning (PBL) based on its high level of alignment in addition to providing learners in engineering with an additional opportunity in learning process competencies, as contained within the South African National Critical Cross-field and Developmental Outcomes (COs). Constructive alignment describes a process in which the learning outcomes (LOs) become the objective for designing a curriculum that enables LOs to be achieved through appropriate activities and an assessment process that enables these LOs to be demonstrated. PBL applies problem-solving as a vehicle in achieving LOs. The degree to which a learner manages to achieve a given LO still serves as the authentic criteria for assessment. In addition, PBL provides learners an opportunity in acquiring non-subject-related skills, also referred to as process competencies, soft-skills, transferable skills, or graduate attributes. These skills are required especially for the management of human capital and are considered as crucial for successful practice in the engineering profession. It is therefore questioned why a PBL approach is not implemented by engineering faculties at South African Higher Education Institutions. The successful implementation of PBL, however, depends on a number of non-didactic issues that are highlighted in this paper. It is concluded that very few didactic methods can achieve the quality of learning we provide to engineering learners when using PBL, and therefore, it is proposed that South African Higher Education Institutions should also provide their academic staff with training opportunities in this regard.     

Lifelong Learning Within Higher Education in South Africa: Emancipatory Potential?

In South Africa under apartheid higher education was inaccessible to the majority. This article argues that in the new South Africa there is an opportunity to redress this situation and promote equity though lifelong learning. This would involve greatly widening access and providing programmes to develop broadly applicable abilities such as computer literacy and problem-solving skills, which would increase the economic competitiveness and personal empowerment of learners. At the same time, the author argues, new educational approaches are needed to promote active citizenship.     

Generic gold standard or contextualised public good? Teaching excellence awards in post-colonial South Africa

ABSTRACT

Teaching Excellence Awards have raised the profile of teaching as a scholarly project. There are however a number of questions about what constitutes teaching excellence and how ‘excellence’ is understood in current higher education. In a post-colonial South Africa, where significant injustices permeate our society, we question whether excellence can be understood in a generic manner. Furthermore, we argue that as universities are a public good, teaching excellence needs to explicitly attend to the ways in which universities contribute to broad goals of transformation and inclusivity. We analysed data from the national Teaching Excellence Awards and 13 South African universities’ awards to interrogate the discourses that underpin ‘excellence’ in this context of social inequality. We found that while the awards have gone some way to enhancing the position of teaching in institutions, ‘excellence’ was largely articulated in fairly generic ways which failed to take into account the enablements and constraints of the discipline and the institution. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria privilege a decontextualised notion of excellence that seeks a ‘gold standard’ and validates performativity, rather than a contextualised response to the needs of the students.     

Expanding access to secondary education: Can India catch up?

In the last decade the national Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme has focussed on universaling access to elementary education (Grades I–VIII). Most recently the Right to Education Act provides the legislative framework to guarantee schooling to all children between 6 and 14 years of age. It remains the case however that less than half of all children attend and complete secondary school especially in the Northern states. Under the 11th National Plan Rastriya Madhyamic Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) has been launched to increase the numbers entering secondary school. This paper explores some of the key issues in planning and managing the growth in participation that is envisaged so that 75% or more enjoy the benefits of transition to Grades IX and X. The issues include the constraints on expansion that arise from the restricted output of elementary school graduates, the continued exclusion of the poorest and those from disadvantaged groups from progression to Grade VIII, the costs to households and government of universal secondary schooling as currently structured, the limits to growth of private provision, the massive infrastructure needs, and the problems associated with increasing teacher supply and deployment. Policy dialogue around secondary school expansion is a central concern if India is to close the gap between itself and China and other rapidly developing countries in educating most of its population beyond the elementary level.     

Curriculum reform and teaching in South Africa: making a `paradigm shift'?

South Africa's post-Apartheid Grades 1–9 curriculum, Curriculum 2005, has been introduced with many good intentions and an abundance of perceived educationally correct rhetoric. It requires that teachers make a `paradigm shift' from their old teaching practices to new ones. In order to understand better the processes which might be involved in such a transition, a small study was conducted of the way in which Grade 4 teachers performed the assessment of English reading. The results of the study pose fundamental questions about the manner in which Curriculum 2005 has been conceived and introduced.