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Education in Retrospect Policy and Implementation Since 1990 edited by Andre Kraak and MichaelYoung Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za I EDUCATION IN RETROSPECT Policy and Implementation Since 1990 edited by Andre Kraak and Michael Young Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria in association with the Institute of Education, University of London Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za II Human Sciences Research Council Private Bag X41 Pretoria 0001 South Africa Institute of Education University of London 20 Bedford Way London WC1 HOAQL ©HSRC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder. ISBN 0 7969 1988 7 Technical editing and production supervision by Karin Pampallis PO Box 85396, Emmarentia, Johannesburg 2029 pamps@global.co.za Cover design and layout by Hilton Boyce Vico Graphics, 8 Victory Road, Greenside, Johannesburg 2193 hilton@vicographics.com Cover photograph by Omar Badsha (082) 459-1067 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za III Acknowledgements This book is a product of the collective wisdom of all those colleagues who participated in the HSRC Round Table on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 October 2000, entitled An Education Policy Retrospective, 1990-2000: Analysing The Process of Policy Implementation and Reform. The Round Table was initiated as a forum for dialogue between government, policy analysts and critics from within the HSRC and beyond. We are indebted to the contributions of the following participants who made the Round Table such a success: ! Dr Ihron Rensburg, Deputy Director General, General Education and Training, National Department of Education ! Mr Khetsi Lehoko, Deputy Director General, Further Education and Training, National Department of Education ! Mr Ian Macun, Director, Skills Development Planning Unit, Department of Labour ! Mr Haroon Mahomed, Director, Gauteng Institute for Curriculum Development (GICD) ! Professor Linda Chisholm, Faculty of Education, University of Natal, seconded to the National Department of Education ! Professor Michael Young, Institute of Education, University of London ! Professor Joe Muller, School of Education, University of Cape Town ! Professor Jonathan Jansen, Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria ! Ms Rahmat Omar, Senior Researcher, Sociology of Work Programme (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand ! Dr Nico Cloete, Director, Centre for Higher Education Transformation (CHET) ! Mr Botshabelo Maja, Chief Research Specialist, Human Sciences Research Council ! Dr Andre Kraak, Executive Director, Research on Human Resources Development, Human Sciences Research Council ! Dr Mokubung Nkomo, Executive Director, Group Education and Training, Human Sciences Research Council ! Dr Andrew Paterson, Chief Research Specialist, Education and Training Information Systems, Human Sciences Research Council ! Ms Shireen Motala, Director, Education Policy Unit, University of the Witwatersrand ! Dr Michael Cross, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand ! Dr Nic Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, Joint Education Trust ! Dr Mark Orkin, Chief Executive Officer, Human Sciences Research Council ! Mrs Hersheela Narsee, Policy Analyst, Centre for Education Policy Development, Evaluation and Management (CEPD) Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za IV ! Mr Michael Cosser, Chief Research Specialist, Human Sciences Research Council ! Mr Trevor Sehule, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria ! Ms Sarah Howie, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria The Editors would also like to thank Karin Pampallis for her excellent editorial work in bringing the book to print. The Human Sciences Research Council and the Institute of Education, University of London, are both thanked for their support of this joint venture. Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za V Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Contributors Chapter 1 Introduction Michael Young and Andre Kraak Chapter 2 Educational Reform in South Africa (1990-2000): An International Perspective Michael Young Chapter 3 Rethinking Education Policy Making in South Africa: Symbols of Change, Signals of Conflict Jonathan D. Jansen Chapter 4 Progressivism Redux: Ethos, Policy, Pathos Johan Muller Chapter 5 Human Resource Development Strategies: Some Conceptual Issues and their Implications Michael Young Chapter 6 Policy Ambiguity and Slippage: Higher Education under the New State, 1994-2001 Andre Kraak Chapter 7 Reflections from the Inside: Key Policy Assumptions and How They have Shaped Policy Making and Implementation in South Africa, 1994-2000 Ihron Rensburg Chapter 8 Macro-Strategies and Micro-Realities: Evolving Policy in Further Education and Training Anthony Gewer Page III VII X 1 17 41 59 73 85 121 133 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za VI Chapter 9 The Implementation of the National Qualifications Framework and the Transformation of Education and Training in South Africa: A Critique Michael Cosser Chapter 10 Developing Skill and Employment in South Africa: Policy Formulation for Labour Market Adjustment Ian Macun Bibliography 153 169 177 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Michael Young and Andre Kraak The broad aim of this book is to present and extend the dialogue between education policy makers and researchers that was initiated at the HSRC-sponsored Round Table that took place in Pretoria in September 2000. It brings together revised versions of the key presentations at the Round Table as well as two additional papers, and draws on the discussions that took place in response to the papers. The book is a dialogue in two senses. First, it is an ongoing critical reflection on education policy design and implementation throughout the last decade. Second, the book not only includes a number of chapters (by Muller, Jansen, Young and Kraak) that are critiques by researchers of policy and its implementation; it also includes several contributions (by Rensburg, Macun, Cosser and Gewer) that offer insider views of policy that to some degree reflect on the theories that underpin the critiques. The focus of the book is on education policy in South Africa and the unique set of circumstances faced by both government and researchers. However, we want to stress not only the common global context that has shaped South African education policy, but also the wider relevance of the issues raised in South African policy debates. This global context is not just reflected in the demands of international corporations and organisations and the increasingly transnational character of labour markets, but in the policy options themselves and in the kind of critiques developed by researchers. The pressures for improved performance and for making public services more accountable, and therefore the search for measurable educational outcomes, are found to varying degrees in most countries, both developed and developing. No less widespread has been the increasing emphasis by governments on the economic role of education and its expression in the increased emphasis on human resource development. There have also been parallel efforts by researchers (Ashton, 1999) to find alternatives to discredited economic theories – whether those associated with the Left such as the economistic interpretations of Marxism, or the human capital approaches that have been endorsed by the Centre and Right. The tensions between a commitment to equality and social transformation and the associated intention to replace old institutions and practices with new ones, and the awareness that some old institutions and practices may need to be built on rather than abolished, is also not unique to South Africa. Likewise, the embeddedness of educational institutions and practices in the wider society and the enormous constraints that such embeddedness places on educational reforms fulfilling their more ambitious goals is part of the reality facing all reforming governments. Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Chapter 1 2 Introduction However, the lessons from the South African efforts to overcome the unique circumstances that have been inherited from apartheid dramatise the problems of achieving radical educational change in two important and distinct ways. The first is the urgency of the problems faced by the incoming government in 1994 and the extent of exclusion of the majority of the population from anything beyond elementary education. The second distinctive feature of the South African situation is the far closer link between those involved in policy research and theory and policy makers, practitioners and others involved in implementation than is found in most developed countries. Background to the Round Table It is widely recognised that the major priority of the second ANC-led government, elected in April 1999, has been the implementation of policies. To this end a National Strategy for Higher Education and two major reviews – one of Curriculum 2005 and one of the National Qualifications Framework – have been initiated. Furthermore, in the last two years a National Skills Development Strategy and a Human Resources Development Strategy have been launched, as has a new programme for work-based training (known as learnerships). These initiatives, together with the wider public debate and criticism of the new policies and their implementation, provided the intellectual context for the Round Table and for this book. Briefing notes sent to contributors to the Round Table suggested that by the year 2000 education policies in South Africa appeared to have undergone a profound shift away from the original premises that had been established by the democratic movement in the early 1990s. Despite continuing official commitment to a unified and integrated system of education and training at all levels, policies appeared to retain the traditional divisions between education and training, and between colleges, technikons and universities. Furthermore, in contrast to the earlier endorsement of a progressive view of pedagogy and an outcomes-based approach to curriculum and qualifications, the emphasis of current policy and practice has tended towards more traditional notions of schooling, a ‘back-to basics’ view of curriculum and pedagogy, and a more ‘managerialist’ approach to education policy generally. Contributors to the Round Table were asked to consider a number of questions that follow from these claims. These were: ! To what extent do you agree that this shift in policy has taken place? ! What do you think has been achieved over the past decade in relation to the original policy goals? ! What constraints and opportunities for reform have been generated by: (a) the form of the emerging post-apartheid state; (b) the wider political and economic conditions within which the government is operating; (c) the impact of international trends on developments in South Africa Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Chapter 1 Introduction 3 (especially in relation to such policies as outcomes-based education, the integration of education and training, creating unified systems of further and higher education and training (FET and HET), and establishing a National Qualifications Framework? ! What do you think should be the role of educational researchers in the policy process and what alternative ways are there of conceiving of the relationship between policy, theory and practice? ! What ways forward are there for government and to what extent should the original policy goals be sustained or modified? From the perspectives of the different areas of provision on which they were focusing, contributors were asked to consider the emerging character of education and training policy as a whole, how it might have been viewed in the early 1990s, how it might be described today, and what might have been the causal factors involved in any policy shifts. In particular, it was hoped that contributors would focus on two historical moments. The first was the period after 1990 when policies for a new system of education and training were launched, including the establishment of: ! integrated education and training; ! a single national Department of Education; ! a single FET band incorporating both senior secondary schooling and technical colleges; ! a single nationally co-ordinated system of HET; and ! a single qualifications framework (NQF) regulated by a single qualifications authority (SAQA). The second moment that contributors were asked to focus on was the present period (2000/2001), when policy appears to be characterised by: ! major debates and uncertainties about the feasibility of earlier policy goals; and ! an awareness that the implementation of agreed policies for education and training has proved to be far more complex and difficult than was ever imagined by those involved in developing the policy. Finally, contributors were asked to consider the extent to which they saw the difficulties associated with implementation as the ‘teething problems’ that any major reforms face or whether they called into question the basic assumptions of the original policy goals. Issues in the implementation of education policy Education policy debates within the democratic movement in South Africa in the early 1990s were visionary and, with hindsight, somewhat utopian. This phase of policy Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za [...]... always retain their critical role in challenging existing reforms and clarifying their purposes in terms of the continuing need to expand opportunities and reduce inequalities The second issue crucial to the link between research and policy implementation is the importance of developing and disseminating knowledge of pedagogic practice, in particular the links between teaching and learning This is... secondary and technical college education in the new FET band of provision? The UK’s experience of bringing the Departments of Labour and Education together is not a happy one Since its incorporation into a single department, vocational education and education and training have been increasingly marginalised by the high political profile given to policies for schools It is worth noting that some of the most... policy makers, in relation to the school curriculum but also in relation to further and higher education and training, and adult and work-based learning Education beyond school The three final chapters of the book document the lack of movement in a number of areas of policy concerned with post-school education in South Africa Post-school education and training was given considerable emphasis in the 1990s,... redistribution of resources; ! pedagogic and curricular issues that underpin the achievement of particular educational goals; these issues roughly parallel the ‘micro-processes’ involved in learning and teaching that were referred to earlier; and ! administrative issues involved in expanding institutional and governmental capacity and co-ordinating different levels of government These three types of issues are... of improving techniques, but of rethinking assumptions about teaching and learning and the practical implications that follow Examples include the importance of: ! ! ! the essentially social character of the learning process while at the same time not neglecting the centrality of individual learners; the need for a clear, progressive and unified system of qualifications in promoting learning, at the... and its institutional logic The former refers to what a policy stands for and the wider goals it represents, and the latter to the power relations and social interests involved in the implementation of any policy In the UK, and it seems likely in South Africa, a focus on the intrinsic logic of qualifications has led to the fundamental undervaluing of the institutionality of education An examination... no opportunities in the more conventional institutional learning or career pathways This suggests that instead of setting up a polarity between developing a qualifications framework and strengthening institutions – that are dependent on each other – it is better to see them as alternative and in many cases complementary strategies for promoting learning and progression Our argument in this section has... useful It reminds us of the inherent fallibility of even the best of policy intentions Perhaps it is not just a question of lost idealism, of policy makers giving way to practical exigencies or governments not willing to grasp the nettle It may be more a matter of grappling with the complexities of educational reform, and of continuing to examine assumptions about knowledge and learning in different... is involved in implementation, the move away from the utopianism of the early 1990s could easily degenerate into a new form of conservatism and a licence for accepting the inevitability of existing inequalities The papers presented at the Round Table and the discussions that followed ranged widely, not only in the aspects of education and training policy that they covered, but in the kind of political,... attractive to those involved in the democratic struggle It appeared to offer a way of guaranteeing opportunities for all in sharp contrast to existing institutions and curricula, that had systematically excluded the majority However, an outcomes-based approach to educational provision can also be seen as reflecting political pressures to find a short cut in the long road of building new forms of institutional . of education and training were launched, including the establishment of: ! integrated education and training; ! a single national Department of Education; !. education, the integration of education and training, creating unified systems of further and higher education and training (FET and HET), and establishing a National