The country’s education system will take ”decades” to shake off apartheid’s legacy, African National Congress (ANC) general secretary Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday.
”Denying blacks access to education was the policy of the apartheid government. This will take decades to correct,” Mantashe told the Black Management Forum’s annual conference in Midrand.
In 1953 apartheid’s architect, prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, said it was no use teaching ”the Bantu” mathematics when they could not use it in practice.
”So now it’s 2009 and they expect us to have enough maths and science teachers. This is an exaggerated expectation,” Mantashe said.
South Africa’s schools also had problems for which history could not be blamed, he said. A problem for the present education system was the time both teachers and pupils spent in class.
”At former Model C schools teachers work for seven to eight hours, but in the townships they teach only for three-and-a-half hours. In this case we cannot blame disparities on history.”
A recent survey also found paperwork was consuming too many hours for teachers.
Mantashe said there were currently 800Â 000 students at universities, but only 400Â 000 in Further Education and Training institutions.
It was common knowledge that for every engineering university graduate, the economy needed eight technicians.
”We must correct this distortion.”
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga told the conference the curriculum was the main challenge.
”We will definitely implement reform in 2010. We’ll eat humble pie and there will be changes in the curriculum and at the end of this month we’ll issue instructions that have to be implemented next year.
”Outcomes based education is very noble, but what has happened is that our education system has been compromised ‘big time’,” she said.
It was all very well to have teachers in class, ”but what they teach must be teachable”.
Like Mantashe she cited teacher absenteeism as one of the problems facing education. — Sapa