N Pandor: Launch of amalgamated National Professionals Teachers'
Organisation of South Africa

27 February 2007

The President of NAPTOSA, Mr Dave Balt
The Deputy President, Mr Dangazele
The Vice-President Mr Manuel
The Executive Director, Mr Hendricks
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

The greatest challenge that we all face in education is how to achieve
quality learning outcomes for learners, optimal conditions for quality teaching
for our teachers, and embedded and effective support mechanisms that create the
basis for a working system of education and not one that seems to be jerked
from one crisis to another.

These challenges are owned by all of us because like players on a stage, we
all have parts in the different scenes that make up this important production.
And unlike Shakespeare's plays each role player in this sector is a main
actor/actress, not a bit player, a jester or brief walk on. Education in South
Africa is a serious business and has to be taken seriously and dealt with
seriously.

I am the first to honestly admit that there is much that is troubling in
education. But I also call for the courage to stand up from time to time, put
aside our stakeholder caps and state that a great deal has been courageously
achieved and an opportunity awaits us to finally "make good" for all the young
people of our country.

There is no momentous change anywhere in the world that has occurred without
irritating errors, setbacks, surprises and outright mistakes. Japan rising from
Hiroshima in 1945 took on the challenge of recasting herself as a modern State
and succeeded amidst devastating destruction.

Singapore, small and fearing larger Malaysia, challenged and threatened
neo-colonialism, sought an economic and innovation niche and became one of the
most successful nations of the world.

Brazil after years of inadequate social redress, bullying by criminal gangs
and the absence of democracy is rebuilding her society slowly but surely.

Bolivia, poor, disadvantaged by ethnicity and racism has thrown off poor
governance and committed to being a focused developmental state that will
withstand imperial intrusion.

All difficult and different conditions but proof that rational will, popular
action, readiness to innovate and change and recognition of the key role of
education offer real possibility for change to all countries.

South Africa is similar to these countries in many ways. The impact of
active disadvantage and discrimination imposed on a nation, the legacy of an
education that was provided as unequal and unproductive, all gave rise to the
legacy you and I must overcome through our partnership in education.

We have come a long way but still have a long way to go.

The development and implementation of a national curriculum is possibly one
of the more significant achievements. There are imperfections, as "NAPTOSA's
comment on the state of education in South Africa" says, but the fact that
today for the first time in South Africa's very long education history children
from grade 1 to 11 are following the same curriculum must be applauded.

Of course the primary achievement of all our people is the Constitution we
crafted together and adopted in 1996. It enshrines the right to education and
so ended the discrimination that denied opportunity to millions.

It is not surprising that the new national curriculum continues to confound
and annoy many in our system. It is learner centred, it is oriented toward
creative teaching, active planning and enthusiastic engagement with global
knowledge. These are all areas we were not trained in, so no surprise that all
of us struggle.

There can be no turning back, as modernisation was a necessary part of our
democratic achievements.

Our task therefore is to explore how we can make things work. Our unions are
part of the developmental project we are pursuing. They cannot opt out when we
confront difficult challenges and opt in when things are going well.

Let us celebrate that all our learners will have access to numeracy through
mathematical literacy, that all learners will benefit from the broad content of
life orientation. In 2008, all grade 12s will sit for the national senior
certificate, seven subjects out of a modern choice of 29 and writing nationally
set and internationally benchmarked papers.

I reported yesterday at the Council of Education Ministers that we intend to
expand the opportunity to study maths and science to all schools. We need to
find more qualified teachers to appoint to teach these subjects. Are our unions
able to assist us to identify qualified teachers, able and ready to be
appointed anywhere in the country to teach these important subjects?

I was informed yesterday by journalists that my past statements that we
should devise a system for linking performance rewards to learning outcomes was
strenuously rejected by union leaders. This is an unusual rejection to hear in
the 21st century, since performance frameworks and rewards are so much a part
of the global working world. Of course, I agree we should not be crass and
unfair in our intentions, that is, not blame teachers for underperformance
where failure or poor achievement is a result of our underperformance as
government.

I agree that we must address all aspects of our own non-delivery. However,
given that there are employed persons, paid to perform a specific job in our
sector, how would you suggest we achieve, reward and monitor learning
achievements? As with heart surgeons who must perform a successful bypass, we
as teachers must get learning right. How do we promote positive action in this
aspect? I would value our unions' advice on this.

You as active participants in education are fully knowledgeable about all
our challenges, so I do not need to report them here. All that I can probably
do this evening is to reflect on my tentative views on the role of unions in a
developmental State.

Recently a senior political leader in our country lamented the absence of
transformative radical content in the curriculum, he called on education to
pursue a transforming pedagogy because he views education as the site where new
attitudes, ideas and ideals are formed and possibly nurtured. I support the
idea of a transforming pedagogy but would resist it assuming an ideological
character.

Our teacher unions could consider the role they might play in our planned
teacher development programmes and perhaps support the emergence of our
concrete views on the kind of young person we want to see coming out of our
educational institutions.

Is she critically engaged or a mere observer and lazy participant. Is she a
person able to give new shape and meaning to a society? Is she enterprising,
creative, innovative, what sort of teacher will give educational life to these
individuals? Are they Africa wise, world wise or insular and pedantic?

What character of teacher union leads these individuals in this important
sector? Is it a union that is fully appraised of South Africa's challenges, do
they see South Africa as a progressive country promoting a progressive agenda
on the African and world stage? Or are they remuneration unions with no social
conscience or national interest?

I choose to believe that the teacher union we launch today is a union
bearing the latter character, a progressive professional, socially engaged
union, alert to the interests of its members but also fully appreciative of the
mandate handed to us by history to transform our country into a viable
democratic nation in which the potential of every young person has the
opportunity to be nurtured, developed and utilised to the common good and the
development of the entire society.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Education
27 February 2007