Press Release
Prof Sibusiso Bengu, on the occasion of the launch of Curriculm 2005
24 March 1997
In the White Paper on Education and Training (1995), the central problem facing education and training in South Africa, was highlighted, namely that South Africa has never had a truly national system of education and training. Because education and training are central activities of our society and are of vital interest to every family and to the health and prosperity of our national economy, the government is committed, as a matter of national importance, to changing education and training in South Africa .
For the first time in South Africa's history, a government has been given the mandate to plan the development of the education and training system for the benefit of the country as a whole and all its people. Therefore the challenge is to create an education and training system that will ensure that the human resources and potential in our society are developed to the full.
The Government is further committed to the ideals set out in the White Paper, namely that successful modern economies and societies require citizens with a strong foundation of general education, the desire and ability to continue to learn to adapt to, and develop new knowledge, skills and technologies, to move flexibly between occupations, to take responsibility for personal performance, to set and achieve high standards, and to work co-operatively.
The most crucial and strategic intervention to transform the education and training system would be through the notion of lifelong learning development, which provides an increasing range of learning possibilities, offering learners greater flexibility in choosing what, where, when, how and at what pace they learn. This integrated approach implies a view of learning which rejects a rigid division between academic and applied, theory and practice, knowledge and skills, head and hand. It will also link one level of learning to another, thus enabling successful learners to progress to higher levels without restriction from any starting point in the education and training system.
Due to the concern about the effectiveness of traditional methods of teaching and training, which are currently still content-based, the curriculum will in future be couched in terms of learning outcomes. It will cut across traditional divisions of skills and knowledge, with the emphasis on what the learners should know and can do at the end of a course of learning and teaching, instead of the means which are to be used to achieve those results.
The starting point of such an integrated approach to education and training should th-erefore be a National Qualification Framework (NQF), specifying learning in terms of nationally and internationally accepted outcomes. The NQF will not only create an integrated national framework for learning achievements, but will also enhance access to, and mobility and quality within education and training.
As a result of an open, transparent and fully participatory process of curriculum development and trialling in which the teaching profession, teacher educators, subject advisors and other learning practitioners play a leading role, along with academic subject specialists and researchers, the Ministry of Education is proud to launch Curriculum 2005.
In doing so, all forms and phases of education, namely Early Childhood Development (ECD), General School Education, Further School, Vocational and Technical Education, Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) and Education for Learners with Special Educational Needs (ELSEN), as well as inservice education for teachers (INSET), the development of support material and evaluation and assessment have been taken into consideration.
Principles informing curriculum design for lifelong learning include:
Human resource development, Learner-centredness, Relevance, Integration, Differentiation, Redress and Learner Support, Nation- building, Critical and creative thinking, Flexibility, Progression, Credibility, Quality Assurance and non-discrimination, especially:
The following eight areas of learning have been approved for the new curriculum:
The new curriculum will be phased in as follows:
Grades Year of Implementation
1 and 7 1998
2 and 8 1999
3 and 9 2000
4 and 10 2001
5 and 11 2002
6 and 12 2003
All teachers will be introduced to the outcomes-based approach in 1997. Facilitators will be trained in each province and will then be responsible for conveying the information to the teachers. Teachers of grades one and seven will be targeted for in-depth training and a pilot project will be run in the second half of 1997, in order to assess needs and pre-empt problems which may arise. During 2004 and 2005 a fundamental review of the new curriculum will be undertaken in order to improve and refine the achievements of our curriculum goals.
The introduction of this new curriculum will play a major role in helping to transform our country into one in which we all want to live, by producing thinking, caring learners. It will be a giant step forward in ensuring quality education for all the people of South Africa and will be embraced by all those who have a part in the learning process.