Education After Apartheid

This collection of readings aims to provide readers with a critical perspective on the unfolding educational policies of South Africa and provides a platform for participating in future educational debates.

"Elusive Equity" chronicles South Africas efforts to fashion a racially equitable state education system from the ashes of apartheid. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd draw on previously unpublished data, interviews with key officials, and visits to dozens of schools to describe the changes made in school finance, teacher assignment policies, governance, curriculum, higher education, and other areas.

This title was first published in 2002: Has the South African post-apartheid state been able to achieve its stated goals? What has been the relationship between the process of educational reform and the impact on the state of the Constitution and other laws? This seminal book responds to these questions by examining the development and implementation of social policy in South Africa during the first years of democratic government, particularly in relation to education. The post-apartheid state was immediately faced with a broad spectrum of political, social, economic and human rights issues. The research analyzes whether the aims and objectives of the new administration were achieved; no other single collection of research in South Africa collectively explores the issues raised in this endeavour. The book will appeal to a wide range of professionals including researchers, academics, planners, policy makers, public servants and postgraduate students.

The main purpose of this book is to provide a concise overview of educational transition – to document, discuss and analyse key changes (and continuities) in South African education since the end of apartheid. What makes this period particularly fascinating for educationalists is that the legacy of apartheid and the years of international isolation meant that educational reform had to be fundamental and wide ranging if South Africa was to become a modern, democratic state participating in the global political economy of the twenty-first century. The result was that in the final five years of the twentieth century South Africa became something of a laboratory or crucible for educational innovation. From 1948 to the early 1990s South African government was based on an institutionalised system of ‘racial’ separation and inequality formally known as apartheid. A white minority dominated a black majority in a context of stark social, political and economic differentiation. While the apartheid state used force to maintain this system, formal education was also used to try to make the basic tenets of apartheid ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ in the minds of South Africans. From the apartheid government’s point of view, the role of education was to help to perpetuate and reproduce a racist system and to encourage obedience and conformity to that system. It is not therefore surprising that in the 1970s and 1980s education also became a key site in the struggle against apartheid or that educational reform was high on the agenda of the first democratically elected government after April 1994. However, while the direction of educational reform has inevitably been strongly influenced by the nature and history of the anti-apartheid struggle inside South Africa, the global political and economic context has also played its part in shaping educational debate and policy outside South Africa. Clive Harber’s book recognises that there is a difference between planned reform and the actual nature of educational change on the ground and tries, where possible, to set reform in the contextual realities of South African education as they presently exist. It aims to understand the difficulties and ambiguities of transition as well as the overt aims and goals as enshrined in policy documents and legislation.

An evaluation of South Africa's post-apartheid education system.

"This book considers these issues by reviewing selected large-scale interventions to improve education quality in South African schools. These interventions include the District Development Support Programme (DDSP), the Education Quality Improvement Partnership Programme (EQUIP), the IMBEWU programme, the Integrated Education Program (IEP), the Khanyisa School Programme, the Learning for Living (LFL) Project, and the Quality Learning Project (QLP). It locates these interventions by providing a chronology of education policy development in South Africa since 1994 as well as engaging with key debates about the notion of education quality. Furthermore, it invites policy-makers to critically review and reflect on the changes to improve education quality in South Africa since 1994. By bringing together academics, policy-makers and practitioners to reflect on education development the book sheds light on the continuous but elusive search for quality education for all. In so doing, the book provides a basis for a critical conversation about the history of education change in post-apartheid South Africa, and the implications for interventions aimed at improving education quality."--Publisher's note

Teacher education programmes seek to provide student teachers with the knowledge and expertise to provide qualtiy teaching and learning in a diverse and challenging school context. Learning to Teach in post-apartheid South Africa: Student Teachers' Encounters with Initial Teacher Education addresses the complexities of teacher education programmes in preparing students to teach. It adds to the knowledge about teacher education, contributing critical understanding of education and the schooling system. The book provides important insights to deepen researchers, academics, teacher education providers, policy-makers, and students' understanding of the importance to address equity, redress, and quality in South African educaiton in a post-apartheid era. This book further helps to build student teachers' capacities to work creatively and to become active and critical agents of transformation. It ultimately outlines the challenges face in designing and delivering successful Inital Teacher Education programmes, and the impact this has on delivering equitable and qualtiy education.

Fifty years after the US Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" was "inherently unequal," Paul Street argues that little progress has been made to meaningful reform America's schools. In fact, Street considers the racial make-up of today's schools as a state of de facto apartheid. With an eye to historical development of segregated education, Street examines the current state of school funding and investigates disparities in teacher quality, teacher stability, curriculum, classroom supplies, faculties, student-teacher ratios, teacher' expectations for students and students' expectations for themselves. Books in the series offer short, polemic takes on hot topics in education, providing a basic entry point into contemporary issues for courses and general; readers.