In 1994 the African National Congress (ANC) published its policy framework on education and training in a document which became known as the Yellow Book. This was the culmination of a long process of policy development in which the ANC and its allies had engaged over the period since the establishment of the National Education Crisis (later Co-ordinating) Committee (NECC) in 1986.
This process was marked by a number of different phases and policy development exercises, the most important of which were the NECC-initiated National Education Policy Initiative in the early 1990s (NEPI, 1993) and the National Training Strategy Initiative (NTSI) which was developed by a multi-stakeholder team including the ANC/ Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) alliance, business representatives and representatives of former government. (NTB, 1994). The latter was developed simultaneously with the Yellow Book, but fed into it, largely as a result of ongoing consultations and a partly overlapping membership.
One of the most important policy positions of the Yellow Book (and also the NTSI) was the idea that we should stop thinking of education and training as separate phenomena but that we should think about them (and plan them) as part of an integral whole. The expectation of education and training policy developers at the time was that post-apartheid South Africa would have a single Department of Education and Training. As it turned out, this did not transpire as there were other interests and views in the ANC which saw things differently. The result was that after the 1994 election responsibility for workplace and in-service training of workers remained with the Department of Labour and the formal education system became the responsibility of the Department of Education and the provincial education departments.
The intention of the new government was that the two departments should cooperate in establishing and managing the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and that they should develop an integrated approach to education and training (DoE, 1995 and 1997). To some extent this happened, but institutional interests and the tendency of government departments to think rather narrowly about their own responsibilities militated against a close cooperation and the relationship between the two departments was often characterised by tensions and disagreements which slowed co-operation.
In a modified form, we have now come back to the ANC's original approach to education and training. We have now split the Department of Education into a Department of Basic Education (DBE) which deals only with schooling and the Khari Gude adult literacy campaign on the one hand and a Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) on the other. The latter takes responsibility for higher education, the college sector (including the FET colleges and other colleges such as nursing and agricultural colleges), all post-literacy adult education and broadly workplace skills development.
The latter includes the infrastructure of the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), the National Skills Authority and the National Skills Fund, this will all soon be transferred from the Department of Labour to the new DHET. So the idea of an integrated approach to education and training at the post school level (which is after all where training mostly occurs) is back on the agenda once again. This new development poses challenges and opportunities that require our collective thinking and participation.
Before I go on to describe what the main focus of the DHET is, let me say a few things about the relationship between education and training. If we reflect on these concepts, we soon realise that the distinction between them is not as obvious as it may seem at first.
In the policy language that we have used in South Africa over the past 15 years, training usually refers to the teaching and learning of a particular set of skills which are required to do a specific job. We do not usually associate it with studying theory or with the development of critical thinking skills, but with learning to do something practical. One trains to be a motor mechanic or a welder but not a philosopher or a sociologist.
Education may also be thought of as learning certain skills but is usually associated with more than this even when those are high-level skills such as operating on a sick patient or designing large buildings. A well educated person is usually assumed to be able to think independently and to understand underlying theories and cognitive principles. Training is normally thought of as a requiring a lower level of learning than education, at least at the post school-level. Universities are seldom thought of as training institutions; vocational colleges are.
Although all this seems fairly obvious, when we look a little closer we realise that the distinction is not always easy to sustain. Universities often prepare people to do specific jobs for example civil engineers, architects, accountants or teachers. Artisan training whether in a Further Education and Training (FET) College or a training institute run by a public or private enterprise such as say Spoornet or Anglogold increasingly requires a level of theory which will enable learners to more easily extend their knowledge and skills further in a rapidly changing economy with rapidly developing technologies. So we should recognise that there is an over-lap between the concepts of education and training and be careful not to treat them as processes which exist in separate silos, completely distinct from one another.
Nevertheless, I don't believe that this means that we should throw out the generally accepted meaning of the concepts of education and training. Universities and vocational colleges have been doing different things for a long time and we all have a commonsense understanding of what the difference is even if it is difficult to define it precisely. To conflate their functions would not help to produce artisans, technicians or semi-skilled workers on the one hand or highly skilled scientists, social researchers or physicians on the other. What is important, though, is to see the close inter-relationship between education and training and try to develop and institutionalise ways in which they can articulate with one another.
There will always be overlapping areas that we will have to grapple with, but we must just learn to live with this. Certainly the Department of Higher Education and Training will have to learn to live with it. The department needs to have a glue to hold it together. This glue is the preparation of post-school youth for the labour market and to help them to further develop the skills, values and ethics needed to participate usefully in the social, political and cultural life of their communities and society as a whole.
Although we will also have to continue our emphasis on overcoming the shortage of scarce professionals such as engineers, scientists and accountants and also increase the numbers of competent artisans and technicians, we must not neglect the social sciences and humanities. These areas are essential to understanding the society and the world that we live in and also help to produce the knowledge and skills on which our societies depend. Overcoming ideological tyranny and totalitarianism
To illustrate some of the points I have just made above and to locate and contextualise some of the challenges of higher education and training, let me briefly turn to the current global capitalist crisis. Since the end of the Cold War humanity has been subjected to what I can call the tyranny of a singular ideology, a single economic idea, or what we can perhaps describe as a particular form of ideological totalitarianism an untrammelled free market, unfettered by any state intervention, as the only vehicle to tackle the many problems facing humanity today. This is neo-liberalism
I call it totalitarian and tyrannical because under the guise of ‘freedom' it is highly intolerant of divergent views, and uses its economic base and muscle to intimidate or blackmail all those who hold different views. Let me illustrate through an article that was in the Business Report of Tuesday 21 July 2009, under the headline “Cosatu challenged on inflation”. It quotes Iraj Abedian, who has become one of its prominent local economic and ideological hit men, as saying that COSATU was remiss in its critique of the policy of inflation targeting. In his usual way he goes on, without providing and substantive argument to point out that foreign investor perceptions were vital to the economy.
At the onset of the current capitalist crisis, Abedian had been telling everybody willing to listen that no alternative views to the current neo-liberal economic trajectory should be raised as these would upset the markets and the investors. Yet it is the very same singular kind of thinking of neo-liberalism that has brought about current economic crisis!
The media too engages in this gangster mentality. Whilst projecting itself as the champion of freedom of speech and media freedom, it is highly intolerant of divergent views when it comes to matters relating to the economy. It also uses intimidating language about the possible wrath of the markets against any developmental idea that can better benefit the majority of our people, often ridiculing them as populist and unrealistic. This means we are being asked to be free in whatever we want to say, except one intellectual no-go zone, criticising neo-liberal ideas!
In fact, the current global economic crisis, is not only a financial and an economic crisis, it is also the crisis of an ideology, of the single totalitarian idea of neo-liberalism. It is also a crisis of those values that have come to become dominant since the end of the Cold War. Put differently, the current crisis marks an end to the ‘end of history thesis', advanced from the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War.
The above has fundamental implications and challenges for education and for the tasks we need to undertake in order to build an education system better able to respond to our enormous developmental challenges. I will touch on only a few in order to foreground what I want to say in the rest of this lecture.
Firstly, it means that we need to ensure that our education system must deliberately foster the teaching, learning and critique of divergent views and not be hostage to a single totalising idea as has increasingly been the case over the past 20 years or so. This call for a crusade on curriculum transformation, especially in our higher education system, so that views that seek to elevate the interests of the poor, the vulnerable, the exploited, and those discriminated against are given prominence.
Secondly, and closely related to the above is the need for an education and training system that fosters the values of social solidarity and caring, in order to confront the ideological companion of neo-liberalism, that of promoting greed and selfishness.
Thirdly, the current economic crisis, poses serious threats to the funding of education by governments, especially in developing countries. As the crisis bites, this threatens to roll back whatever modest educational advances made by developing countries in the recent past. In response to the crisis, the recently held United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) conference on higher education adopted a declaration which, amongst others, urged all governments to protect and even increase investment into education, especially higher education
When raising the above contextual issues, some of our detractors argue that the Minister of Higher Education talks about many things other than education. Yet it is these very many other things, including the current crisis, poverty, unemployment, that pose a threat to our educational objectives. In short, our democracy and education agenda is encumbered by the very same contradictions it seeks to resolve, patriarchy, class and racial inequalities. In other words, education transformation is not narrowly about technocratic policy choices, but is about advancing a developmental agenda to benefit the overwhelming majority of our citizens.
It is against this background that we should locate the many tasks facing higher education and training. The challenges of post-school opportunities for South Africa, recent research funded by the Ford Foundation shows that there are almost 3 million young South Africans between the ages of 18 and 24 years of age who are neither in employment, education or training. In other words, they're not working and they're not learning. This is an enormous number of youth whose prospects for the future are very bleak. The higher education and training system must ensure that these prospects are substantially improved by the expansion of education and training opportunities in the universities, the colleges and the workplace.
We live in a developing country and one of the key brakes on our development at present is the shortage of skills, both high and middle level skills. This, of course, is ironic given our high rates of unemployment; we have many people without jobs and lots of jobs without the people able to do them. The education and training system by itself cannot resolve the problem of unemployment a more rapid rate of economic growth and faster job creation is necessary. But education and training can certainly play a critical role in this. In order to do so, its quality must improve and so must its capacity to educate and train more of our youth. In South Africa, this inevitably means bringing more black youth into the universities and colleges.
The best way to bring more qualified youth into universities and colleges is obviously to improve the quality of our schooling system. But we can't just say that schools need to be improved and then wait for this to happen before we can provide a decent higher education for more young people. The Department of Basic Education is putting a lot of effort to ensure that schooling improves, but we all know that this can only take place gradually and that it will take time. We can't afford to wait we must begin right now with the process of expanding the quantity and quality of both university and vocational college graduates. We have to find alternative means to bring young people with potential into the higher education system.
I have been criticised by sections of the media and the public for suggesting that the matric endorsement should not be the only route to university. My suggestion seems to have driven some into a frenzy of fear that we are hell-bent on decimating academic standards. But my suggestion is not what they present it to be nor is it something new in South Africa. Mature-age exemptions for university admission have existed in this country for over half a century I believe they were first introduced to make it easier for white war veterans (but not black war veterans) to enter university after the Second World War. In the early 1990s, special courses were introduced by some universities to prepare matriculants who were not academically ready for admission to university. Some remnants of these courses may still exist and I know that some universities are investigating other entry routes.
What I am suggesting now is that these kinds of interventions need to be systemised and made more widespread. This is a challenge for both the universities and the college sector, working with the DHET. Not only is it a waste for the country to ignore the fact that many young people with the potential do not have opportunities to develop that potential. But surely our underprivileged (and even privileged) youth should have the right of a second chance if they do not succeed in their matric exams as young people in many, many other countries do.
To some this may appear that the barbarians are at the gate, clamouring to get in and destroy their gentile lifestyles and their high standards. If that is what they think, then that's too bad. This is South Africa and most of our people are poor and black and many of our youth do not have the benefit of private or ex-model C schooling. These are the youth that we have and these are the ones that we must educate, even if they are poor and have not had the benefit of first rate school education. The government that these South Africans elected cannot be expected to pander to the class and racial prejudices of the privileged whether they are white or members of the black elite.
This irrational fear that the government is seeking to lower standards, swamp the universities with the poor and the unwashed and in the process destroying academic standards is also manifest in the uproar regarding the ANC's supposed intention to introduce free education for all up to first degree level. Let me be clear. I have never said this and neither has the ANC. In order to clarify matters, let me quote from both the resolutions of the ANC national conference at Polokwane and the ANC's election manifesto. The Polokwane resolution on education states that the ANC resolves to progressively introduce free education for the poor (my emphasis) until undergraduate level. The ANC election manifesto stated that, ‘The ANC government will ‘encourage students from working class and poor communities to go to tertiary institutions by reviewing and improving the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. This is the ANC's policy.
I have already started implementing it by appointing a ministerial committee to review the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) with the intention of making it more effective in extending educational opportunities for poor South African youth and ensuring that no capable young person is denied the opportunity to study in a university or college for financial reasons. This way of expanding educational opportunities for the poor also recognises the need for academic institutions to be funded for expanding their enrolment of non-fee paying students.
This will be particularly beneficial for historically black universities which continue to have a high proportion of poor students who struggle to pay their fees. The growth of the NSFAS is already in government's budgetary plans and I will do all in my power to ensure that growth is accelerated over the next few years. However, the attainment of free undergraduate education for all poor youth will no doubt be a process and will not be implemented immediately, particularly given the current economic crisis. However we will continue expanding it and it will become a reality as soon as it is possible.
I have dwelt on the issues of access to further and higher education because of the misunderstandings surrounding my position that have surfaced in the last two months. However, I also want to emphasise that the issue of success is just an important priority for the South African higher education system as is access. We must not only find ways to admit non-traditional students but ensure that we provide them with the support that they need to succeed as long as they are prepared to put in the necessary effort. Universities must take the provision of academic support very seriously. I know that many universities do take it seriously and I will work to encourage them to continue expanding their academic support programmes and try to ensure that appropriate programmes are extended throughout the university and college systems.
Students also drop out of higher education for non-academic reasons. The Soudien Report on Transformation, Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in the Higher Education Sector (DoE, 2008) eloquently describes and analyses the difficulties faced by students because of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Such practices contribute to failure and drop-out rates as do many other social reasons. It is likely, for example, that much of the failure rate among first year students can be attributed to young people entering the unfamiliar world of the university and struggling to cope with a new social environment and with academic demands which are quite different to those of schools. These are all issues that universities and colleges must tackle and my department will monitor and encourage their efforts.
In this respect, I think that it would be useful for institutions to look at the new grounding programme at the University of Fort Hare which is going to become compulsory for all students and is aimed at preparing them for university life both academically and socially. It will also encourage all students to locate their learning in South African realities by presenting knowledge as an instrument of social development and liberation, as a means of enhancing service to communities and of understanding their own responsibilities to their society. Obviously any university thinking along the same lines as Fort Hare would obviously need to adapt the concept to their own needs.
Failures and drop-outs for any reason among students after they access universities or colleges are an enormous waste of both taxpayers and parent's resources. Minimising this must become a priority and my department will ensure that institutions will be encouraged and supported to increase success rates and subsequently to increase through-put rates. As part of realising the above, our department has committed to significantly expanding the college sector, especially further and education colleges, without at the same time departing from the need to significantly increase access and success into universities.
Another key challenge for higher education is the fact that we have an ageing group of academics, with their average age being over 50 years. We need to focus on strengthening our post-graduate programmes and ensuring that we retain a significant number of these committed to be university academics. I will conclude by saying that my aim is to establish a coherent post-school education and training sector. I have focussed today mainly on the higher and further education and training systems, but I have already started discussions with the training system which is currently preparing to move from the
Department of Labour to the Department of Higher Education and Training, this will be done by November this year. By that time we will provide much more concrete plans on how to move forward towards an integrated system of higher education, vocational colleges and the workers' training with separate components that speak to each other, compliment and reinforce one another and form the core of South Africa's human resources development. I appeal to all of you and to the sector in general to join me in ensuring that such a system becomes a reality.
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Education
23 July 2009
Source: Department of Education (http://www.education.gov.za/)
