Howard Barrell Minister of Education Kader Asmal takes his controversial plan to rescue South Africa’s school education system before a special meeting of all Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers in Pretoria on Tuesday (July 18) amid resistance in the African National Congress and the Cabinet. The combative Asmal, who is thought to have the support of President Thabo Mbeki for his shake-up of the school curriculum, will brief his senior government colleagues and discuss the changes with them in the meeting at the Union Buildings, which is expected to last several hours. There were suggestions in political and educational circles earlier this week that Asmal could be forced to resign in the face of the resistance. However, such forecasts now appear to have been misplaced. The way in which Asmal is shaking up schools has offended the powerful teachers’ unions, who had grown used to his more pliant predecessor, Sibusiso Bengu, who consulted widely at every stage. Asmal has also irritated senior colleagues in the ANC for what they see as the high-handed way in which he has overturned Bengu’s legacy. Some are particularly displeased with what they see as his use of the media to advance his policies. But, while mounting hostility has resulted in suggestions that his resignation may be called for, well-placed sources this week indicated that opposition to his plan was very unlikely to halt him or, even less, unseat him. “He’s pissed a lot of people off. But he has the president’s mandate,” said a colleague in government. Asmal’s plan involves changing the structure, design and name of Curriculum 2005 – the school education programme bequeathed by Bengu. Educationists agree, however, that no change to educational policy is involved. “Outcomes-based education, which formed the basis of Curriculum 2005 remains the basis of what is likely to be called Curriculum 21,” said one who did not want to be named. The changes Asmal is planning were stimulated by a report coordinated by Professor Linda Chisholm, an educationist at the University of Natal. Chisholm’s report confirmed the opinion of many teachers and educationists: that Curriculum 2005 was unworkable in its original form and threatened chaos and a breakdown of learning in many schools across the country unless it was amended. Some media reports on Asmal’s planned amendments implied, however, that they involved a change of policy. These reports are being blamed for a lot of Asmal’s political troubles over the past six weeks. Some senior colleagues in the ANC thought Asmal was bypassing them, and possibly the Cabinet as well, while making an important policy change. It would be a breach of Cabinet convention if a minister announced a policy change without first taking the change through the Cabinet. Asmal explained his plan to the ANC’s parliamentary caucus on June 8, a week after the release of details of the Chisholm report, then to a Cabinet cluster meeting on June 21 and, a week later, to the full Cabinet. At this last meeting, discussion was “robust” and went on for so long, said a well-placed government source, that it was decided that there should be a special, further meeting on the new plan. The result is the meeting set down for July 18. Among members of the Cabinet hostile to Asmal’s changes has been Membathisi Mdladlana, a former teacher and one-time leader of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, an organisation now at the forefront of Asmal’s critics. Last week, just ahead of the ANC national general council meeting which began in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday, Asmal had a meeting with ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe on the changes to the schools curriculum. The meeting is understood to have gone well. At the ANC’s general council this week, both Mbeki and Motlanthe appeared to have accepted Asmal’s changes. In his opening address to the gathering, Mbeki spoke with apparent equanimity about “the streamlining of Curriculum 2005”.
In his report to the council, Motlanthe said: “The recent review of Curriculum 2005 pointed to a number of problems with its implementation and made proposals for a more medium- to long-term view of curriculum transformation [Curriculum 21], simplifying the new curriculum and addressing issues of content, learning materials, teacher training and so on.”
The ANC secretary general reserved his critical comments on education for others. Among other things, he said the education sector committee of the tripartite alliance – which includes some of Asmal’s strongest critics – “met infrequently” and lacked “capacity, focus and direction”. One of Asmal’s colleagues in the government said this week: “In an organisation in which ideas are debated and debated, and often killed by debate, people like Kader, who are effective, often get into this kind of trouble.”
Asmal could not be reached for comment.