Key Points:

  • Schooling in South Africa is making progress, but not inside the classrooms. In a CDE debate on schooling in South Africa, participants were asked to provide their views on whether the South African schooling system is progressing.
  • The role of NGOs must be emphasised. READ has created working partnerships in over 2 000 educational institutions. It has provided training to many principals, classroom teachers, and community educators, and has built up a cadre of leader teachers who, as volunteers, facilitate development in schools other than their own.
  • South Africa has too many poorly qualified teachers, while at the same time large numbers of highly experienced teachers have been lost under the voluntary severance option.
  • Building educational capacity is not just a departmental issue, but one for all structures involved in South Africa’s schooling.
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