The Education Department is considering reopening teacher training colleges, says Education Minister Naledi Pandor.
In a written reply to a question in Parliament by Desiree van der Walt of the Democratic Alliance, Pandor said the department is investigating options for expanding the provision of teacher education.
A service-linked bursary scheme for teacher training at universities was introduced last year, with R180-million allocated in 2008 for nearly 5 000 student teachers.
The aim is to train more primary-school teachers, more teachers to work in rural schools, and more maths and language teachers. ”However, we are still short of teachers in these three areas,” Pandor said.
Therefore, one of the options under consideration is the establishment of dedicated units, colleges or institutions in each province to strengthen this triple need and to support provincial and local governments’ integrated development plans.
In the past, teacher training colleges were a provincial competence and colleges were mainly responsible for training primary-school teachers.
When the decision was taken to close them in the 1990s, colleges were training too many teachers in a fragmented and uncoordinated system.
Moreover, the quality of college training was uneven, some colleges were too expensive for provinces to run, and the majority of African students were disadvantaged by being locked into colleges in former homeland areas.
”At the time, most stakeholders supported their closure. At the same time, most stakeholders supported the associated policy decision to raise the professional status of the teaching profession by locating teacher education and training at universities.
”The argument that primary-school teachers do not need a university education is part of the call to reopen teacher colleges and it is a policy proposal that is under review,” Pandor said.
Riposte
African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma last week received terse documents minutely detailing the government’s decision to close teacher training colleges from the mid-1990s, the Mail & Guardian reported.
It was the riposte by former minister of education Kader Asmal, who was publicly attacked the previous weekend by Zuma for that decision.
Speaking in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma had reportedly said: ”Asmal is a man who thinks he knows every-thing. What he did was worse than what the apartheid regime did to our education system.”
Asmal confirmed to the M&G that he had faxed the document detailing the closure of the colleges to Zuma’s office at Luthuli House, ANC headquarters.
He said the document showed that the Cabinet’s decision to close the colleges was taken during the tenure of his predecessor, Professor Sibusiso Bengu. ”I was only responsible for the implementation,” he said. Asmal was minister of education from 1999 to 2004.
The document states there was wide consultation about the closure of colleges. The provinces were particularly involved and this was at a time when ”Comrade Zuma was MEC [provincial minister] for economic development in KwaZulu-Natal”.