South Africa’s education and training system has undergone massive changes since the student
uprising of 1976, including rapid expansion and a reorganisation of the institutional landscape in all
three sectors: schools, further education and training, and higher education. Expenditure on
education has risen from R43 billion in the 2000/01 financial year to a budgeted R189,5 billion in
2011/12. At the school level, this has resulted in much more equitable per capita expenditure on
learners and learner/educator ratios, as well as a substantial and increasing proportion (60% in
2011) of schools providing free education. Across all levels of the system participation rates have
increased substantially.
However, the draft World Bank report Closing the Skills and Technology Gaps in South Africa (World
Bank, in press) notes that in the labour market differences in pay based on educational level have
increased, and concludes that to a large extent these trends are fueled by a persistent human capital
gap that prevents the country from making greater progress in reducing poverty, inequality, and
exclusion, and that South Africa is foregoing significant economic growth due to the weaknesses of
its education system. The large majority of recent surveys by government and private agencies, local
or international (OECD, 2010; World Economic Forum et al , 2010), agree with this conclusion, and
we will not make the case anew here. A diagnosis of the country’s educational ills also enjoys high
levels of concurrence, and the present review will give the briefest recap of these arguments, and
focus mainly on ways of addressing the current problems.
Before turning to a situation analysis of the provision of education and training, and the possible
technical solutions to the crisis which manifests in all three main sectors, we discuss the politicocultural
milieu that permeates society and the public service in particular at the present time, since
these conditions enable and constrain the possibilities for renewal and reform.