Overview: The search for quality education

in post-apartheid South Africa

Yusuf Sayed, Anil Kanjee and Mokubung Nkomo

A concern with education quality has perhaps become the defining characteristic
of international and national policy. This is not surprising given the emphasis of
the Millennium Development Goals on physical access to quality education and the
research projects the development goals spawned (funded by various international
development agencies). However, the focus on physical access has tended to result
in a neglect of what people actually learn, along with a failure to address education
systems in a holistic manner. Yet, as Hanushek and Woessmann (2011a, 2011b)
remind us, it is the quality of education that has a more measurable and significant
impact on economic growth than physical access. Obviously, what people learn does
depend on whether or not they are in school, but this is merely the starting point of
the education journey and not an end in itself. This is why Goal 6 of the Education
for All agenda agreed at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 states:
Improving all aspects of the quality of education, and ensuring excellence
of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved
by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. Quality
is at the heart of education, and what takes place in classrooms and
other learning environments is fundamentally important to the future
well-being of children, young people and adults. A quality education is
one that satisfies basic learning needs, and enriches the lives of learners
and their overall experience of living. Evidence over the past decade
has shown that efforts to expand enrolment must be accompanied by
attempts to enhance educational quality if children are to be attracted to
school, stay there and achieve meaningful learning outcomes. (UNESCO
Bangkok 2010)
Notwithstanding the narrow and reductionist aim of this goal (Sayed 2010), the
focus on education quality is important and welcome. The focus on education
quality has driven education change in South Africa since 1994. This is especially
critical given the historical legacy of racism, segregation and economic exploitation,
which marginalised the majority of the population, for whom the idea of education
quality was reduced to the expectation that they have the ability to be hewers of
wood and drawers of water.

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The quality imperative in South Africa is profound in scope and scale. Yet the
production of policy outputs has seldom been matched by the analysis of policy
(Badat et al. 1994; Badat 1995) by the critical interrogation of ideas, values and
effects. In particular, scholarship has not brought to centre stage the multiplicity
of large- and small-scale interventions to improve education quality in South
African schools. It is this gap that this book seeks to fill, reflecting critically on such
interventions and paying particular attention to a selection of quality improvement
interventions implemented since 1994.

The genesis of the book

The idea for this book was developed during the review of the Human Sciences
Research Councils (HSRC) education work programme, the purpose of which was
to identify appropriate strategies for supporting what was then known as the national
Department of Education (NDoE) as well as education stakeholders (such as
universities, donors and NGOs) in addressing challenges encountered in improving
the quality of education in South African schools (NDoE 2001). To this end, the
Centre for Education Quality Improvement had been established in 2007 with the
primary objective of identifying evidence-based strategies to provide relevant and
practical policy options for improving education quality, with emphasis on difficult
delivery contexts.
In consulting crucial stakeholders on the objectives of the new centre, however, a
glaring gap appeared in our review of the literature, namely the limited information
available on the successes and failures of previous intervention programmes. There
was even less information available on the key lessons learnt and their implications
for policy-makers and education practitioners. Most disturbing was the realisation
that, despite the significant resources and time devoted to a range of school
intervention programmes that addressed the eradication of the apartheid base of
the education sector, and the relatively small South African education community
where almost all academics and researchers and many senior policy-makers are
known to one another, there was very limited sharing of experiences regarding the
effective implementation of school intervention programmes and their key lessons.
Given that this information could prove vital in our quest to address the challenge of
improving education quality in South Africa, it was decided to review programmes
implemented since the election of the post-apartheid government in 1994.
The primary purposes of this book are to:
share relevant experiences, lessons and good practices emerging from various
school-based quality improvement interventions implemented since 1994 in
South Africa;
provide a platform for those directly involved in these programmes to discuss
and reflect on their experiences, and to share these reflections with relevant
education role-players; and
contribute to the discourse on education change and school reform in South
Africa.
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Overview: The search for quality education in post-apartheid South Africa

There are three particular motivations for this book. First, the book seeks to voice
practitioners and frontline implementers understandings of efforts to effect quality
change, legitimising marginalised knowledge gained from experience on the ground
(Deacon et al. 2010). While the authors were provided with guidelines pertaining to
their contributions, they were granted flexibility in producing the final text.
Second, it is not surprising that there is a relatively large education reform industry
in South Africa, with multiple agencies and individuals engaged in the analysis of
education policy. While this is indeed necessary, this work has privileged support
over critique, reconstruction over analysis, and development over deconstruction.
In reviewing education interventions, the current book thus seeks to foster a
critical conversation about the history of education change in post-apartheid South
Africa, so that the conversation becomes more engaged nationally, regionally and
internationally.
Third, the book intends to bring together the voices of those making policy with
those critiquing it, enabling a more considered approach to education reform. To
this end, a number of workshops were held for participating authors, while external
reviewers provided a critical review of the work produced.

Book outline
The book is divided into three main sections. Section 1 locates interventions to
improve education quality in South Africa within a broader analysis of the trajectory
of education policy change. Specifically, this section critically interrogates education
policy development since 1994, a period that has seen the production of more than
160 policy documents. These policy documents mark the essential contours of
education transformation in South Africa and are characterised by values of social
justice and equity, non-racism and non-sexism, ubuntu and reconciliation. This
section brings together critical voices about the nature of education policy, the agents
or agencies that influence policy, and the meanings of education quality.
This interrogation of the history, theories and concepts of education policy leads to
an analysis of selected school-based interventions. Section 2 begins with a review of
education quality, beginning to contextualise the discussion in relation to selected
interventions to improve education quality in South Africa. We specifically consider
the Education Quality Improvement Partnership Programme (EQUIP, from 1995
2008), the District Development Support Programme (DDSP, from 19992003),
the IMBEWU Programme (from 19972000, and 200207), the Quality Learning
Project (QLP, from 200004), the Learning for Learning Project (LFL, from 2000
04), the Integrated Education Programme (IEP, from 200408) and the Khanyisa
Programme (from 200209). The seven interventions represent important efforts to
enhance education quality, reflecting a diversity of approaches, funding and coverage.
Collectively they mark the essential contours of education change in South Africa,
ranging from large-scale programmes with significant government support to those
that were modest in scope and coverage. The descriptions of these interventions
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are authored by those who were centrally involved from inception, and reflect the
interventions policy biographies and the theoretical ideas and frameworks upon
which the interventions drew at the time of implementation. To facilitate dialogues,
in the case of each intervention an external critical friend familiar with the project
was invited to offer commentary.
In Section 3, the voices of street-level implementers of policy complement the theory
and case-study analysis of the preceding sections, and space is provided to policymakers, a practitioner and an international development agency representative to
speak to the historiography of education policy change in South Africa. Their voices
reflect the national/international dialectic in education policy as well as throwing
into sharp relief the continuing need to address education quality.
The concluding chapter of the book reflects on the themes raised. It considers the
diverse influences that have shaped the history of post-apartheid education change
and spells out the theoretical and practical implications of the book. In particular
it notes ongoing and diverse efforts to enhance education quality, and raises for
discussion the question of whether the new policies that have been effected since the
book was written, and the many roadmaps and policy prescriptions that have been
devised, will lead to improving education quality.
References
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Deacon R, Osman R and Buchler M (2010) Education policy studies in South Africa, 1995
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Hanushek EA and Woessmann L (2011a) The economics of international differences in
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UNESCO Bangkok (2010) Quality education: Education for all: Goal 6. Accessed October 2012,
http://www.unescobkk.org/education/efa/efa-goals/quality-education

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