Education minister Kader Asmal said on Monday he foresaw that metropolitan city councils would ”in the fullness of time” run primary and secondary education.
He said the current constitutional compromise at provincial level was too distant from the community. Asmal was addressing a one-day meeting organised by the Council on Higher Education and the City of Johannesburg on strategic partnerships between local government and higher education in the city.
City councillor Prema Naidoo, speaking on behalf of executive mayor Amos Masondo, said the meeting was the first of its type and would see the city and all the higher education institutions in it come together to explore co-operation.
Naidoo said previous efforts at co-operation had been ad-hoc and informal. He believed higher education institutions had an important role to play in social and economic development at local level. – Sapa