Administration of education was divided between national departments and provincial authorities. Because education was differentiated by race, four separate systems were established. Education for whites was controlled by the Minister of National Education, and provincial–federal coordination was accomplished through a National Education Council and a Committee of Heads of Education. Education for Coloured and Indian population groups was administered through the legislative bodies representing these groups, the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates, respectively. Education for blacks was largely the responsibility of the black “homeland” governments. All four systems were supposed to follow the same basic organizational and curricular patterns. For blacks outside the homelands, the Department of Education and Training administered education.
Formal characteristics distinguishing the system of education for blacks included a slightly different school organization, designation of state-aided community schools with school committees, provision for limited African-language instruction, and separate administration. More important, however, were the effects of inequality on the system’s operation. Although the government introduced a limited experiment in compulsory education, the dropout rate among blacks was high. Many pupils were educated in factory, mine, or farm schools that were less adequate than general schools. Teacher qualifications were lower for blacks than for the other groups. Illiteracy was high. Rural schools were crowded and short of materials. Few black pupils attended secondary schools.
There were some attempts to close the gap between black and white education at both lower and higher levels. The government proclaimed the principle of equal educational opportunity and, from the 1970s, sharply increased budget allotments for black education. Private and community efforts augmented schooling and introduced experimental integrated schools, and some private schools and white universities were opened to black students. Black schools remained severely inadequate, however, and the government’s position that the immensity of the problem defied immediate solution conflicted with the demands of black activist student organizations, which multiplied after 1976 (partly through division) and intensified their resistance through strikes and boycotts. Violence and fear intruded on township schools and on black universities during the apartheid period.
By the Extension of University Education Act in 1959, nonwhites were barred from entrance to white universities, and separate university colleges were set up on an ethnic-linguistic basis. This well-organized system of differentiating groups began to break down, however, as first English and then Afrikaans universities stated their policies of admission by merit, as university decisions and legislation opened nonwhite universities to other groups, and as protests against government quotas on university admissions became increasingly effective. The universities became centres of agitation against apartheid.
A major government commission, conducted through the Human Sciences Research Council, in 1981 recommended that a single system of education under a single ministry be established. Although principles of the report were accepted, the government held to the cultural policy from which institutional separation was derived. The change from an ideological basis to a pragmatic basis for this separation, combined with the elimination of formal barriers to racial crossovers and black mobility in education, produced a policy that competed with revolutionary strategies for social change.
Before the apartheid era came to an end during the early 1990s, South Africa began to address the crisis in African education. An Education Renewal Strategy was released in 1993. Discussions involving government officials, educators, parents, and students were initiated in the mid-1980s and were formalized in the 1990s. A single Ministry of Education was established in 1993.
Educational reform faced severe challenges, however. The primary obstacle was the limited amount of resources available for expenditure on education. School facilities in predominantly white schools were far superior to schools in black areas. Many African schools, especially in rural areas, lacked primary necessities such as heat, plumbing, and electricity as well as advanced facilities such as science laboratories. Shortages of basic classroom supplies were common.
Teachers were often poorly trained, particularly in the rural schools. Many teachers in suburban school systems, who generally were the best qualified, were reluctant to move to rural schools. Efforts were accelerated to improve the teacher-training system: the previously discriminatory qualifications required for primary and secondary teachers as well as for teachers from the different racial groups were standardized. All teachers must complete a full secondary course plus a three-year training course.
Thus in the early postapartheid period, class differences and geographic considerations began to become more characteristic of social division than race in South African schools. Improvement in the system depended largely on increased availability of resources for education, which in turn depended on a strong South African economy.
A shift to a more Afrocentric curriculum was an important element of South African educational reform during the 1990s. The government and private publishers created new curricula in which racial stereotypes were eliminated and the African perspective of South African history was emphasized. New approaches, including the use of oral histories, were introduced during the 1990s.
Some of the basic features of South African education continued into the postapartheid period. The system was organized into four three-year cycles: junior primary, senior primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary. Because the first year of the junior secondary cycle was taken in the primary school, the primary and secondary units were seven and five years, respectively (replacing an earlier eight-four organization). Schooling was compulsory for students of all races from age seven to 16.
The general high schools were predominantly academic but offered a range of streams. Specialized high schools, at the senior secondary level, offered technical, agricultural, commercial, art, and domestic science courses. Apprenticeship could begin after the first year of the senior secondary phase (grade 10). Attempts were made to form regional comprehensive schools. Private schools were found mainly in the northeast and in the Cape region.
The tertiary sector of South African education included universities, technikons (successors to the colleges of advanced technical education, offering programs ranging from one to six years in engineering and other technologies, management, and art), technical colleges and institutes, and colleges of education. Technical centres, industrial training centres, and adult education centres extended training to early school-leavers. During the 1990s many black university students demanded reduced admission standards and increases in scholarships and faculty appointments for blacks.
Language is intimately related to politics and to African aspirations. It was the imposition of Afrikaans as the compulsory language of instruction that triggered the Soweto riots in 1976 and the subsequent wave of unrest. Black parents and students demanded recognition of their own language and culture (Africanization) as well as the access to the metropolitan culture of their own and other countries that English could provide. During the early postapartheid period, Afrikaans was dropped as a language of instruction for black students in favour of English and African languages. Robert Frederic Lawson General influences and policies of the colonial powers