Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon said on Friday that Parliament’s new education bill, which if passed would mean the end of private school curricula, ran counter to the constitution’s democratic spirit.
Apart from proposing a national curriculum for both public and private schools, Leon said the proposed bill also took away from school governing bodies the power to select teachers.
He said the bill, known as the draft Education Laws Amendment Bill 2000, would put the entire appointment process exclusively in the hands of provincial education departments.
”Why this need for uniformity and enforced conformity …Why this need for control?” Leon, who was speaking at the University of the Witwatersrand, asked.
According to Leon, schools that wrote the Independent Examination Board’s (IEB) exams produced 10% of African matriculants with higher-grade maths and science passes in 2000.
”This despite the fact that only one percent of matriculants are annually educated by schools that write the IEB,” Leon said.
Leon also said that a single state-controlled curriculum which denied the possibility of competition and flexibility, would inevitably lead to a stagnating uniformity.
”Make no mistake, there are real, formidable problems in education. Problems that require the Minister’s immediate and full attention. But instead of applying his mind to the real problems at hand, the minister makes a show of attempting to fix that which isn’t broken,” Leon said.
Leon also criticised Education Minister Kader Asmal’s intention to impose dual-medium tuition at all historically Afrikaans-medium universities across the country.
”This obsession with uniformity, and misconception of the needs of transformation, runs completely counter to the spirit of our Constitution which consciously promotes the usage of all of South Africa’s official languages.
”Bear in mind that, out of 22 universities in the country, 17 conduct their business exclusively in English …there is no shortage of English-medium institutions to cater for those who prefer not to be taught in Afrikaans,” Leon said. – Sapa