Issued by: Minister of Education
REMARKS BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, PROFESSOR SME BENGU, AT A MEDIA CONFERENCE TO MARK THE LAUNCH OF THE ORGANISATION, GOVERNANCE AND FUNDING OF SCHOOLS (EDUCATION WHITE PAPER 2), 120 PLEIN STREET, CAPE TOWN, THURSDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 1996, AT 13:00
Deputy Minister, Fellow Members of Parliament, Director-General, Colleagues in the Department of Education, Ladies and Gentlemen of the media.
This is a day for celebration, another milestone in the democratic transformation of our country.
As you know, yesterday Cabinet approved my Ministry's second white paper, School Organisation, Governance and Funding.
It is almost a year since our first white paper was approved by the Government of National Unity. That document set out the case for bringing our schools into a coherent national framework, laid down the principles on which it should be based, and mapped out the process we would adopt to get where we needed to go.
In March last year I appointed what became known as the Hunter Committee. Professor Hunter presented the committee's report to me at the end of August last year. We asked for the public to debate its findings and recommendations fully and fairly, and give us their views.
In November last year we published the draft white paper on school organisation, and another wave of public comment and advice ensued. In addition to written submissions and media statements, my colleagues in the Department and I have discussed the issues with numerous visiting delegations.
I thank every organisation and every citizen who has contributed time and effort to help us find the right way forward. We have listened and learnt. Our policy is the richer for your contributions.
The media have played an outstanding role in the conduct of the debate, and I thank you all, and the news organisations you represent, for the public service you have performed.
The Review Committee Report and this white paper have been subjected to intense scrutiny by the provincial MECs for Education and their senior officials. The schools are pre-eminently a matter of provincial interest. This document seeks to ensure that the progressive unification of each provincial school system takes place within an integrated, coherent and constitutionally sound national framework.
The revised document received its final touches in the process of Cabinet consideration. It is a matter of immense pride to me, and to my Department, that the two most important strategic documents in this incredibly sensitive field, have been forged in the arena of public debate and agreed and adopted by the Government of National Unity. I thank my colleagues in the Cabinet for this evidence of solidarity and confidence in the ongoing democratic transformation of our school system.
Cabinet approved my proposal that this white paper should serve as a principled framework for the drafting of three important documents; the South African Schools Bill, the document we are preparing on the financing of schools, and the document which will set out by Ministry's negotiating position for the negotiations we shall be undertaking with public school governing bodies in terms of section 247 of the Constitution. I intend to take these documents to Cabinet for approval in April 1996.
I wish to make two further comments before giving you an opportunity to ask me about the white paper.
Firstly, Cabinet took note of the fact that, since September last year, the National Education Policy Bill has been before the Constitutional Court. We agreed in Cabinet that both I and the petitioning parties in Cabinet would abide by the decision of the Court in that matter, and that the rights of the petitioning parties in Cabinet with respect to that matter would not be prejudiced by Cabinet's approval of the white paper. I shall say no more about the Constitutional Court case, and will take no questions on it.
Secondly, many commentators and reporters have persisted in framing the new policy in terms of whether it permits or does not permit the Model C pattern of schools to continue inn part or in whole. Hundreds of meters of column inches have been consumed in this silly speculation.
Throughout my entire period in office I have made it clear that all inherited models of school organisation are indelibly branded with the apartheid mark and all must go. We have had one goal and one goal only: to devise a new system of school organisation and governance which fits the dignity and the mission of a democratic school system in a democratic South Africa. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the course of doing so, we were committed to incorporate the best experience of all the school traditions and create something new. With the help of countless thousands of participants, we have done so. The new pattern of school organisation and governance is a new pattern period. It grows out of the rich soil of the struggle for democratic, non-racial education. It represents a massive expansion of local democracy. It is built on the central notion of a living, growing partnership between provincial education departments and school communities across this land.
I dedicate this document to all who have struggled and suffered and died for a free democratic and united school system, and to all who are working now in all the schools and all the school communities of this land. On all of them, without exception, rests the wonderful responsibility of bringing high quality and equal schooling opportunities to all our young people in peace, dignity and freedom.
I thank you.