The Education Minister, slated for the slow pace of change in education, promises to set the ball rolling, reports Gaye Davis
UNDER fire for not driving the pace of change in education hard or fast enough, Education Minister Professor Sibusiso Bengu says he is now poised to prove to his critics that he can deliver.
On Thursday, he received the report that will lay the basis for changing the face of the country’s schooling system.
A new National Education Policy Bill and another Bill for a new national qualifications framework are top priorities for consideration during this session of
They are key to helping fill the policy vacuum in which education has had to function for the past 16 months, but major political battles loom, which could be fought all the way to the doors of the Constitutional Court.
For Bengu, there is a lot at stake. As frustration has mounted at the lack of change in the country’s classrooms, so has criticism of the man in charge of delivering on the interim Constitution’s rosy guarantees of basic education for all and equal access to places of learning — and government’s commitment to provide 12-million children with 10 years of free
Criticism hurts when you’re trying to do your best, and Bengu was courteous but guarded when interviewed in his Pretoria office.
He had just won Cabinet approval for the new Education Policy Bill. “The struggle over this could have stopped us,” he said. “We have had to consult extensively and fight opposition from the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party. But we won the battle, and the Bill’s going to Parliament.”
The NP and IFP argue that the Bill undermines the provinces’ constitutionally granted executive authority over their own schools in terms of the executive powers it gives Bengu to ensure national norms and standards are adhered to.
Essentially enabling legislation, the Bill provides a skeleton on which the flesh of policy must still be
“We are not removing the province’s executive authority over schools,” Bengu said. “Determining national policy will involve consultation.” However, he would use his override powers where provincial policy clashed with that laid down nationally, he said.
Bengu needs the Bill enacted urgently so that he can start moving on implementing new policy.
The report of the Review Committee on School Organisation, Governance and Funding, released this week, advises on what Bengu described as his “biggest political problem” — the kind of schools the country should have, and how they should be financed and
The committee’s proposals will set him against a range of stakeholders — including the small but well- resourced and vociferous Model C constituency. But they will also end the uncertainty clouding the future of schools and send a signal to those impatient for a start to be made on democratising education.
“We are prepared to allow for one month of consultation (on the report) and, by September, we will be ready to take very hard decisions relating to the type of schools we have next year,” Bengu said. “That will be where we bite the bullet.
“This is one major area of decision-making and I am sure that, by October, there will be many stakeholders who will not be happy. But we will have given them a chance, we will have studied the situation and looked at ways of pulling it together so that it is streamlined and gives us fairness and equity, and is
“My belief is that everything is open to change. The future of Model C schools needed study. It would have been foolish to suck a solution out of our thumbs.”
The crunch will come with implementation — and much will depend on whether Bengu has the stomach for the political battles that lie ahead. He will need Cabinet support to get his decisions through, and the persuasive powers to win the necessary funding.
Criticism of him, whether fair or not, is thus relevant: there is simply too much at stake. As he himself said, transforming the country depends on transforming education.
He is said to be over-conciliatory, “too much an old- style gentleman intellectual, too little of a politician”. These concerns are expressed by educationists as well as politicians. Within his own caucus, members wonder if he has the energy to manage so weighty a portfolio.
“Some of those who criticise are people who speak out of ignorance and do not know it isn’t just Bengu who can decide something and then get it done,” he said.
“The Constitution bound us to consult with stakeholders and I personally think that is good, because whatever solution we come up with, even those who don’t agree will have to accept it because we will have consulted them and looked at all the options.
“It was not a job we could have done in a month because that would have meant imposing it on the country, and that would not have worked.”
He is wary of the press. Not a charismatic man, he lacks a media profile, which reinforces the impression of inertia. The stroke which felled him soon after he assumed office didn’t help either: “We had to spend a lot of time convincing people he was healthy,” says his media liaison officer, Lincoln Mali. “People were just interested in seeing if he could finish a speech without falling over.”
Bengu insists he now feels better than he did before his stroke, though among his Cabinet colleagues there is a view that his lack of dynamism could be attributed to his fear of suffering another. A new communications strategy now being refined could remedy this
His task is formidable; that progress has been slow can largely be attributed to the nature of his portfolio. Talk education, and you’re dealing with virtually every household in the country. Move too fast and you risk destroying what good there is; move too slowly and you court chaos and disruption.
His strategy of moving slowly, of launching thorough investigations and then consulting broadly, may have been costly in the short term, but he believes the pay- off will come in the long-term dividends reaped.
He quotes a Ghanaian educationist: “He said in Africa, the mistake they made was to go for quick-fix solutions which collapsed. We shall not do that. We’re committed to making sure the changes we introduce will guarantee quality and the maintenance of standards.”
Essentially, Bengu is caught in the cross-currents of the transition; between massive expectations and the need for fiscal discipline; between the urgent need to deliver and the excruciatingly slow pace of
The coming weeks will show how well he manages to steer his course.