The African National Congress has always been strong on education policy. However, the vision has been over-ambitious. The ANC would have been better off putting some of its grandiose plans, like Curriculum 2005 and a restructured higher education system, on hold, and grappling with some of the more urgent problems, like poorly trained teachers and incompetent provincial structures. Hampered by the bureaucratic nightmare of turning 17 departments into nine provincial ones and faced with the political imperative to bring equity to a skewed education system, the ANC has been up against a lot and hasn t done a bad job. But the Department of Education should have stood up better to both, and could have done so with a more powerful minister.
More money is essential.
But the provincial overspend has left many schools worse off than they were 10 years ago. We are still left with insecure teachers who have recurring nightmares about the neverending redeployment saga. Thousands of the best were lost to the public system via the disastrous voluntary severance package scheme. The Government by the People Green Party, headed by Judith Sole, has jumped into the gap left by the other parties. Unfortunately, it comes across as too breathless, too loopy, too fringe.