“A South African Curriculum for the 21st Century” – An overview of Commission’s Report
The release during June 2000 of the Report of the Review Commission on Curriculum 2005 created a storm from many quarters right across South Africa. Press, radio, and television reports claimed that the C2005 and it’s Outcomes-based Education (OBE) framework had proved to be impracticable had failed and were to be abandoned and replaced by “A Curriculum for the 21st Century” – C21. The Review Commission had been established in February 2000 by the new Minister of Education, Prof. Kader Asmal, shortly after he took over from Prof. Sibusiso Bengu. This professor was then appointed South African ambassador in Germany! Within months of his taking over the Education Ministry, Asmal had declared that South Africa’s education system was in deep crisis. And then there began the formulation of a series of plans aimed to remedy at all levels a largely dysfunctional national education system.
Prof. Asmal appointed the Review Commission headed by Prof. Linda Chisholm of Natal University. She had previously led the Education Policy Unit (EPU) of the Witwatersrand University’s College of Education. Together with the ten other appointed members she was given the task of providing recommendations (i) on steps to implement new curricula for Grades 4 and 8 in 2001; (ii) on key success factors and strategies to strengthen the implementation of the new curriculum; (iii) on the structure of the new curriculum, and (iv) on the levels of understanding of outcomes-based education (OBE).
Clearly during his brief experience after taking over the education portfolio, Asmal must have learnt the obvious: that there was something rotten in the state of education. He was roundly criticised for not having consulted his cabinet colleagues, teachers’ organisations and other “role-players” before appointing the commission. Certain teacher unions, including the ANC-aligned and SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), which had backed the original C2005 and OBE policies, were affronted because they had not been asked to join the Review Commission, although they did make submissions to it.
There was further criticism when the Review Commission’s report was handed over on 31 May 2000, and Prof. Asmal announced that C2005 would be replaced by Curriculum 21 (for the 21st century). The new curriculum was devised to implement within the next three years a viable, adequately planned, staffed and resourced system of education. And the Prof. Asmal one-man-band faced further criticism when he announced that he had appointed Prof. Chisholm to head a committee to oversee the implementation of the new proposals. This she would do in concert with the national and provincial education departments, teachers’ organisations, NGOs involved in education and training and certain institutions of Higher Education that provided staffing, training and other support for the schools. Prof. Asmal arranged to have a special meeting on Monday 31 July with the nine provincial ministers of education to clue them up on the plans for C2001.
But on Tuesday 1 August the cabinet blew the new Asmal plan to pieces. Cabinet ministers rejected the Commission’s basic, important recommendations and instructed a shattered Asmal NOT to abandon C2005 and OBE, NOT to institute Curriculum 2001 and any adaptations of OBE but to go ahead with the old C2005 and OBE and to “streamline” these systems. Prof. Chisholm, appointed as overseer of the new proposals Asmal would have implemented, was unceremoniously pushed aside.
Divisions within the Mbeki Cabinet were obvious. After all, several of the ministers had approved the C2005 and OBE systems presented to them by Prof. Bengu. Sadtu and certain other teacher unions had accepted them.
What the Review Commission was able to say about the Bengu-sponsored C2005-OBE system embarrassed some Cabinet ministers and angered others. They had sought some support for the ex-colleague even before the crucial meeting of 1 August, more so since the Review Commission’s recommendations showed clearly that a revision of earlier policies was imperative.
So the cabinet chose the path of a face-saving political ploy in rejecting the Asmal-Chisholm recommendations. It implicitly rejected the huge mass of evidence exposing the failure of the original C2005-OBE policies. This cabinet rejection humbled a well-meaning Asmal; it had the effect of declaring valueless the review commissions work and that of more than 400 witnesses to the failure of C2005-OBE. It did not officially ban the report.
It is however vitally necessary for all serious teachers and students of education to know what the report contained. That will help them to understand just how hard the commissioners worked and just how the cabinet decision should be regarded.
The report outlines the steps the commission took to procure the information and material necessary to carrying out its review of “Curriculum 2005” and devising “Curriculum 21”. In a series of Appendices the commission presents an impressive list of resources upon which it drew. These included –
Despite this seemingly helpful effort on the part of the Education Ministry, in the vast array of evidence the commission studied, the general thread emerged that C2005 and its accompanying methodology, outcomes-based education (OBE), was in a state of terminal decline.
Among the obstacles in the way of implementing both C2005 and OBE – apart from the problems inherent in the systems themselves – were a lack of finance, a broad lack of physical resources and a lack of adequate human resources to breathe life into the systems.
The Review Commission certainly went to great lengths to expose the failures and the successes if any encountered since the launch of the Bengu “well-oiled machine” which he claimed in 1999 he and his education ministry had put on the road and which “was on track”.
And the commission’s findings make alarming reading indeed. Although its Terms of Reference did not require a critical review of the principles of OBE, the Commission was driven to reexamine the way in which OBE was shaping up in the implementation of Curriculum 2005. In any event, OBE encompassed both aims and methodology in implementing the curriculum at its different phases. The Commission not only found that OBE was generally little understood, partly because of the language in which it was presented. It also recommended that 12 of the critical outcomes detailed in the OBE document be retained but that 66 specific outcomes be dropped, together with assessment criteria, phase and programme organisers, range statements, performance indicators and expected levels of performance. The commission observed briefly that “teachers generally have a rather shallow understanding of the principles of C2005-OBE”. And it further commented that “teachers are working under conditions that are not conducive to their learning and development”.
To round off this evidence of woe among those entrusted with introducing C2005 and OBE into the nation’s schools, the commission reported that “only Gauteng and the Western Cape retained their Heads of Department for a full five year period”. One province had in fact had four different Department Heads over a six-year period. Both the system and its operators developed a casualty list unparalleled in the history of education.
Obviously without malice aforethought the commission recommended that the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) issued by the Education Ministry be revised, streamlined and recast in simple English. Nor could there have been any influence from the side of Lenin who eighty years ago wrote freely on education, when the Review Commission used as the titles for its specific recommendations “What Is To Be Done?” It did indicate, also, that what had to be done had to promote the African Renaissance – for safety sake? Or perhaps to make certain in advance of Thabo Mbeki’s approval.
The commission made detailed recommendations that would ensure some success with the proposed systems. It did not, however, comment directly on the fact that the majority of schools, pupils and teachers would still be burdened with the terrible social conditions in which they had worked and would still work. A significant warning was given that C2005-OBE emphasised the need to “enskill” children for work rather than the need for well rounded development. It recognised the old “werkgereedheid” (work ready) schooling doctrine of the Christian-National Education system of the apartheid era.
A detailed budget dedicated to the supply of learning materials for each province underlined the need to correct a screaming lack of such aids in most schools. And it added that the Education Ministry’s national guide – the National Curriculum Statement – should be revised and written in plain English. That recommendation was accepted by the Cabinet.
On the basis of the massive body of evidence before it the Commission was able to state tersely that experience among teachers over the past six years had proved to be “simultaneously alienating and frustrating”, but that, paradoxically, teachers were trying hard to make something of C2005-OBE because they were “committed to change and transformation”. And NGO workers engaged in helping teachers said this was the Education Ministry’s guides. “Even to first-language speakers the terminology is obscure, tortuous and imprecise.”
The Review Commission’s work cannot be dismissed. It opened up thoroughly, a Pandora's box, a can of worms. The facts, the realities, it exposed can never be wished away, nor covered up by the imposition of diktats from above especially when the Cabinets capacity to judge and guide in the field of education is patently minimal.
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL, PUBLISHED BY NUPSAW EDUCATION SECTOR, NOVEMBER - JULY-AUGUST 2000]
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