PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION: American Support 1986–2009 September 2009 This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared under Purchase Order 674-O-00-09-00020-00 by Gayla Cook-Mohajane. Produced by Acumen Publishing Solutions, Johannesburg, RSA. The authors’ views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the First Lady of the U.S. when she visited Entandweni Primary School in Soweto in 1996. She taught part of an English in Action radio learning class, engaging students in the subject, in keeping with techniques of the Open Learning Systems Education Trust (OLSET) program. Ms. Primrose Sishi (left) was the Principal. Ms. Clinton is now the Secretary of State of the U.S. (Photo: OLSET) Cover: USAID supports South Africa’s Department of Education national strategy to improve math, science and technology education in schools dedicated to these subjects. The program is called “Dinaledi”, which means “stars” in the Northern Sotho language, lighting the way as centers of teaching and learning excellence. (Photo: Reverie Zurba) PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION: American Support 1986 – 2009 September 2009 table of Contents Acknowledgments viii Abbreviations and acronyms x Executi ve summar y 1 Apartheid Education to World Class: Bridging the Gap Equipping More Disenfranchised South Africans with Skills Improving Education Delivery at the School Level Education Technology Innovations Building Education Policy and Systems to Advance Equity and Quality South Africa’s Future – Youth Development and Skills for Jobs Models to Increase Functional Adult Literacy Beyond a Level Playing Field: Transforming Higher Education Effective Partnership – Why South Africa? I.  APARTHEID EDUCATION TO WORLD CLASS: 22 BRIDGING THE GAP America’s Strategic Contribution to South African Education – Why this Report? South Africa’s Inheritance Preparing More Black South Africans to Lead: the CAAA 1986 Scholarships to Build High Level Skills Short-Term Skills Building Programs Helping NGOs Fill the Gaps During the Education Transition Success Factors: S.A. Staff and NGOs The Impact of USAID’s Early Skills Building Programs II.  TRANSFORMING BASIC EDUCATION: BALANCING 39 QUALITY AND QUANTITY USAID Responding to S.A. Education Priorities Improving Education Delivery at the School Level Dinaledi and the National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education From Pilots to Sustainability: S.A. DOE Initiatives Education Technology Innovations School Infrastructure Education Policy and Systems Reform Support Mitigating the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Education Ongoing Challenges of Basic Education Transformation v table of contents III.  S.A.’S FUTURE – YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, SKILLS, 59 AND JOBS The Youth, Education, and Unemployment Context Youth Development: Building a Foundation Further Education and Training: Early Phase USAID Involvement Department of Labor, SETAs, Other Programs Towards Universal Functional Adult Literacy FET Sector and Youth Development Progress and Challenges IV.  BEYOND A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD: TRANSFORMING 68 HIGHER EDUCATION Higher Education: the Transformation Imperative Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP): Leveling the Playing Field Policy Implementation and Systems Development Capacity Building at Historically Disadvantaged Institutions Gender Balance in Higher Education – Partial Progress Higher Education Battling HIV and AIDS, Serving Communities, Building Skills Higher Education Striving to Achieve Equity and Excellence V.  OTHER USAID FUNDED EDUCATION PROJECTS 80 VI.  EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIP – WHY SOUTH AFRICA? 83 APPENDIX A: SUMMARY OF USAID EXPENDITURES APPENDIX B: PERSONS CONTACTED APPENDIX C: REFERENCES CONSULTED Books Articles, Research Papers, Reports, and Administrative Documents Web Pages vi List of boxes Box 1. Robert McNamara on Apartheid Education 22 Box 2. South Africa firsts 24 Box 3. The Legacy of Apartheid Education 26 Box 4. Case Study: Educational Opportunities Council 28 Box 5. American Scholarship Alumni: How They Gave Back 29 Box 6. Degree Programs Sponsored for Previously Disadvantaged Individuals at South African Universities 31 Box 7. Genesis of Dinaledi Project 48 Box 8. Who are Youth in S.A.? 61 Box 9. khwelo accomplishments 65 Box 10. S.A. Historically Disadvantaged Institutions in TELP 71 Box 11. Speech-Language Pathology Program – Example of a Sustained New Curriculum 75 Box 12. Case Study: Walter Sisulu University 76 List of Figures Figure 1: RSA world competitiveness ranking – most 25 problematic for doing business vii Abbreviations and Acron yms AAI African-American Institute ABET Adult Basic Education and Training AEI Africa Education Initiative AGSP Ambassadors’ Girls’ Scholarship Program ANC African National Congress BIS Business Information Systems BNC Binational Commission (U.S.-S.A.) CAAA Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 CASME Center for the Advancement of Science and Mathematics Education CEM Council of Education Ministers CERT Center for Economics Research and Training (University of the Western Cape) CBO community-based organization COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions CPUT Cape Peninsula University of Technology DACST Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology DDSP District Development Support Program DOE Department of Education DOL Department of Labor DST Department of Science and Technology DTET Desmond Tutu Educational Trust ECD Early Childhood Development EFA Education For All ELRU Early Learning Resource Unit EOC Educational Opportunities Council ESAT Education Support and Training FET Further Education and Training FY Fiscal Year GET General Education and Training HAI Historically Advantaged Institution HDP Historically Disadvantaged Person HDI Historically Disadvantaged Institution HEARD Health Economics and AIDS Research Division (University of KwaZulu￾Natal) HEI Higher Education Institution HEQC Higher Education Quality Committee HIV and AIDS Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome IAs Innovative Activities ICT Information and Communication Technology IEP Integrated Education Project IIE Institute of International Education IPs Implementing Partners IRI Interactive Radio Instruction KZN KwaZulu-Natal viii abBreviations and acronyms LURITS Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System MDG Millennium Development Goal M&E Monitoring and Evaluation MESAB Medical Education for South African Blacks MESP Mandela Economics Scholarship Program MIS Management Information System MSI Minority-Serving Institutions MTT Mobile Task Team NQF National Qualifications Framework NCHE National Commission for Higher Education NEEDU National Education Evaluation and Development Unit NGO Nongovernmental Organization NPHE National Plan for Higher Education NRF National Research Foundation NSFAS National Student Financial Aid Scheme of South Africa NSMSTE National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education OBE Outcomes-Based Education OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OVC Orphans and Vulnerable Children PAI Previously Advantaged Institutions PDI Previously Disadvantaged Individuals PEPFAR President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief PMS Performance Management System PPP Public–Private Partnership PROTEC Program for Technological Careers PURP Presidential Urban Renewal Program QIDS-UP Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Program RNCS Revised National Curriculum Statement RSA Republic of South Africa S.A. South Africa SABER South African Basic Education Reconstruction Project SACHED South African Council for Higher Education Development SAEP South African Education Program SAQA South African Qualifications Authority SAG South African Government SAOIC South Africa Opportunities Industrialization Center SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations ZAR South African Rand SDU Schools Development Unit SGB School Governing Bodies SMME Small, Medium, and Micro-Enterprise SMT School Management Team STEP Support for Tertiary Education Project TELP Tertiary Education Linkages Project TLMP Textbooks and Learning Materials Program TLMs Teaching and Learning Materials ix TREE Association for Training and Resources in Early Education UCT University of Cape Town UDF United Democratic Front UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UP University of Pretoria UNIVEN University of Venda U.S. United States USAID United States Agency for International Development USAID/S.A. The United States Agency for International Development Mission in South Africa USG United States Government WEF World Economic Forum WHEEL Women in Higher Education Executive Leadership WI Winrock International ZAR South African Rand abBreviations and acronyms ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have contributed to this review of activities of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve education equity in South Africa. Assisting disenfranchised South Africans to get an education is an American endeavor that goes back beyond the historic watershed election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, to the late seventies. This review is a compilation of many education projects ranging from formulating crucial policies to redress education inequities, to training educators from the pre-school to the post-graduate levels. USAID funded scholarship programs in America and at home helped to ensure that black South Africans had the multitude of skills critical for the success of their new democracy. The current Mission Director, Dr. Carleene Dei, must be commended for supporting this undertaking. The review would not have been possible without the institutional memory and voluminous records maintained by Ms. Mathata Madibane, long-time USAID education team member and Co-Team Leader, who guided this report. While many separate reports exist, these two people had the vision to put the entire remarkable history of the education partnership together in one document. Many other USAID officials shared insights on how the relationship between South Africa and the U.S. evolved over the years. Thoughtful analysis was also readily available from South African education officials. Though they were often overworked, they made time, noting the value of South Africa’s education partnerships with the U.S. They did not gloss over difficulties, were forthright about the challenges facing South African education, what they would like to do better, and how to improve future cooperation with USAID. Representatives of South African and American nongovernmental organizations and firms were very willing to provide perspective on why and how projects were implemented, the lessons they learned, and how the lessons shaped their work. While there were many views about which USAID strategies and projects had the most impact, there was one point that interviewees were unanimous about: educational opportunities change lives. For teachers, it was new confidence from skills that gave them better mastery of their subjects – some compared their challenges with some teachers in America because of going to a leadership development program there. For Mandela Economics Scholars alumni, they spoke about feeling empowered to better tackle the problems they had to solve in agriculture, macroeconomic policy, municipal government, and other arenas of a still transforming society. The long and productive engagement between Americans and South Africans to help transform education in South Africa was possible because of all of these people. They represented a fraction of the thousands who were involved in one way or another. Any errors and omissions are those of the author alone. Johannesburg, September 2009 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 This is a review of a remarkable partnership of nearly three decades between the United States (U.S.) Government and South Africa (S.A.) – first with individual citizens and then with the legitimate government – to transform education from the universally deplored apartheid system to one befitting a democratic and equitable society. Recognizing that a successful nation is built on its people, their skills, and its education system, the U.S. Congress enacted the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986. This marked the beginning of a new era in U.S. relations with South Africa, from the compromise and accommodation of a policy of “constructive engagement” with apartheid (Congress overrode the veto of the President) to an overtly political purpose: “the empowerment of the ‘disadvantaged’ population.” This led to the opening of the United States Agency for International Development Mission in South Africa (USAID/S.A.), which was quite different from most other USAID programs because it worked unilaterally with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), rather than bilaterally with a host government; the CAAA precluded USAID from funding any government entity. USAID’s entry into S.A. in 1986 came at a time when state repression and mass resistance were intense; USAID staff had to work hard to gain trust. USAID in South Africa thus conducted its work in a difficult political and social environment that sometimes affected its staff and the organizations it funded. For example, in 1988 an estimated 3 million black workers participated in a three day nationwide strike to protest anti-labor legislation and government’s prohibition on organizations from engaging in political activities. The government-to-government partnership began with the watershed 1994 elections and by 2009, the U.S. continued as one of the few international partners in education with South Africa, having made the largest bilateral contributions (the European Union has been the largest funder overall) to both basic and tertiary education in the new democracy. USAID has remained the largest development aid donor to South African education, amounting to $400 million as of 2009. Of the total $400 million funding to South Africa $153 million was direct bilateral support to the South African Department of Education. An additional $11 million in unilateral USAID funding has flowed to South Africa through regional programs bringing the total contributions to the education sector to $411 million. Thus, the year 2009 marks 15 years of bilateral cooperation between the United States and South Africa to transform South Africa’s apartheid education system to an egalitarian one appropriate to the largest economy of the 54 countries comprising Africa (Nigeria and Egypt follow in terms of gross domestic product). Before democratic elections in 1994, USAID unilaterally funded tertiary-level scholarships and later, the work of NGOs preparing for the transition to democracy. From the beginning of its operations in South Africa following the passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, USAID made strategic decisions to focus its limited resources on the education sector. This was later broadened to democracy and governance including voter education, economic development, and health. Ongoing EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 strategic planning processes with the post-1994 South African Government (SAG) kept education as a focus. Now in 2009, the USAID budget mainly supports the education sector in combating HIV and AIDS and strengthening programs at Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. This report depicts this unusual period in U.S. developmental aid history, as a record for ongoing dialogue and cooperation. Apartheid Education to World Class: Bridging the Gap South Africa is “first world” in some respects: it is the country that produced the first heart transplant, oil from coal, and numerous scientific innovations. The head of the University of the Western Cape, Prof. Brian O’Connell, describes it as the “inheritance” that the new South Africa received from the apartheid regime in 1994: the most technologically and commercially developed country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The formidable goal for the first democratic government was to claim that inheritance for the majority of South Africans rather than the few – a target yet to be achieved. This challenge is illustrated in the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 of the World Economic Forum (WEF). South Africa was ranked 45th overall out of 134 countries, in the company of Puerto Rico (four ratings ahead), and four and five rankings ahead of Italy and India, respectively. Consistently it is the highest ranked country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, the report cited an “inadequately educated workforce” as the number one most problematic factor for doing business in South Africa. The country’s anomalous economic competitiveness ratings in the WEF report illustrate the difficult human resource development challenges – including education – which South Africa faces. At odds with good marks in financial market sophistication (24th), intellectual property protection (23rd), and market size (23rd), a major concern was the health of the workforce, ranked 129th out of 134 countries, due to high rates of communicable diseases and poor health indicators generally. Also, while rating well on research and development spending accompanied by strong collaboration between universities and the business sector in innovation (both ranked 28th), the report cautioned that the country’s innovative potential could be at risk with a university enrollment rate of only 15 percent, or 93rd overall. Anticipation of the challenges that a democratic South Africa would face – managing the most developed economy in Africa while redressing decades of inequality – has shaped American support of a democratic South Africa, even when the signs of change were only hopeful glimmerings. USAID/S.A. worked in partnership with the National Department of Education from the 1994 elections to 2009 to jointly implement a series of projects in primary, further, higher and adult education. Bilateral projects were used to develop policies and systems, and to EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 enhance capacity in the areas of curriculum, governance, school-funding norms, quality assurance, and HIV and AIDS prevention and mitigation. Equipping More Disenfranchised South Africans with Skills The USAID scholarships component is perhaps most widely recognized for its continuing impact on South Africa in empowering its black1 citizens and enhancing their leadership skills. Through 1994, the education sector received the lion’s share of the USAID/S.A. program budget. American colleges, universities and corporations also made laudable contributions to enable South Africans to study in the U.S., supplying an enormous amount in scholarships and tuition waivers to complement USAID funding between 1979 and 1992. By 1994, nearly 6,000 black South Africans received tertiary-level training under USAID scholarship programs; by 1993, more than 2,000 alumni were working in middle￾and senior-level positions in S.A. related to policies, programs, and budgets. After the 1994 elections, instead of overseas studies it was more cost-effective to provide scholarships at South African universities, resulting in a shift from overseas bursaries except for graduate studies. After 1994 more specialized training programs phased in, including the Mandela Economics Scholars Program (MESP) and targeted in-service short term training, such as for math and science teachers. Another program was established for parliamentarians to acquire degrees in economics. Altogether the U.S. Government has funded tertiary-level studies for over 14,000 previously disadvantaged South Africans, probably more than any single donor. The Mandela Economics Scholars Program funded by USAID responded to the need to boost the capacity of government departments, universities, and policy research groups or think tanks, to generate information and analyses to advance South Africa’s macro￾economic agenda; 117 Mandela Scholars upgraded their economics credentials to the masters or PhD degree level. In a bid to enhance faculty research skills of historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs), 223 faculty members at 17 participating institutions were sponsored to pursue masters or doctoral degree studies at American and South African universities in the period leading up to and just after the rationalization of higher education that began in 2004. Medical Education for South African Blacks (MESAB) was formed to provide financial aid and other support for the education, training, and development of black healthcare professionals. It was a collaborative partnership of South Africans and Americans, which became the largest single source of private funds for black students preparing for healthcare 1 “Black” is used in this report to refer collectively to South African individuals of African, colored, or Asian (Indian) descent. These groups, which comprise the majority population, are also referred to as “historically disadvantaged” by apartheid, or the underserved population. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 careers in South Africa. USAID provided funding up to 2004 to support 475 deserving students to become health care professionals. Leading up to 1994, USAID/S.A. also funded education-related NGOs whose work involved a range of activities in anticipation of a new democratic dispensation. This included formulating policy options for a future democratic government, designing curricula in line with the new society and addressing apartheid ills, promoting adult literacy, supporting early childhood development, and seeking alternative education models for formal and informal education. Most administrators of USAID scholarship funds for South Africans said in their reports that the demand always outstripped the supply. Long term study opportunities for South Africans evolved to specialized programs in areas not available in South Africa. Americans can be proud of the many scholarship programs for South Africans to which USAID provided significant funding. They made a strategic contribution to improving the skills of previously disadvantaged South Africans to lead their nation. Imparting and upgrading skills has continued to be an important element of all USAID funded programs up to today. A total of 37,000 South Africans have participated in short￾term and long-term training programs in the United States and South Africa. Approximately two thousand more South Africans have pursued masters and doctoral degree, research and career development programs in America through the J. William Fulbright Program, the Hubert H. Humphrey Program, and the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Program. Improving Education Delivery at the School Level A 2008 review of South African education since 1994 by a team of experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) determined that “… there was an underestimation of the time, resources and qualitative teaching force required to make operational the policy aspirations in the schoolrooms throughout the country. Experience has shown that sustained, multifaceted resourcing and supportive action are also required and the timescale for transformation is much longer than was initially anticipated.” USAID has been a partner to the Deparment of Education, providing the type of resources and support called for by the OECD. From the Bottom Up, Improving Education Quality at the School and District Level. The District Development Support Program (DDSP) was a comprehensive whole-school improvement strategy that supplied trainers, materials, and organizational skills to promote effective teaching and learning practices, and better school organization, governance, and management in four under-resourced provinces: Limpopo, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The heart of education reform in S.A. was the comprehensive curriculum change to a progressive model of education based on the principles of Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) to improve students’ critical thinking skills through EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 student-centered learning. The DDSP provided a large injection of resources to help make the necessary shifts to the new curriculum. The major achievement of the Integrated Education Project (IEP), successor to the DDSP, was a 21 percent improvement in learner performance across all learning areas (except science) and provinces, reaching 513,000 learners in over 1,250 participating schools. IEP used lessons learned from the DDSP for a more focused approach, capitalizing and improving on successful methods in the two major implementation tracks: • Teacher training focused on improving teacher content knowledge, the ability to develop and apply continuous assessment, and teaching according to the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) of 2002 that had streamlined and strengthened Curriculum 2005 (introduced in 1998), using regular school-based support. • School management and governance centered on regular training and on-site support of school principals and school management team (SMT) members by project personnel and district officials. IEP demonstrated how the poor content skills of many teachers could be improved with substantial inputs of training and follow-up support. The sustainability of the impressive gains and important lessons learned through IEP depend to a large extent on the ability of the DOE and participating provinces, districts, and schools, to both continue to support the systems and teachers’ newly acquired skills and behaviors. Dinaledi & the National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (NSMSTE). The NSMSTE is the flagship strategy of the DOE to increase the number of mathematics, science, and technology graduates in response to the socioeconomic needs of South Africa and to build human resources. Responding to a DOE request, USAID participated in a consortium of public and private sector partners that provided the training, equipment, baseline research, and other resources to help the DOE to launch Dinaledi in 2001. Dinaledi had three major thrusts: • Raise participation and performance of historically disadvantaged learners, especially girls, in Senior Certificate Mathematics and Physical Science • Provide high-quality mathematics, science, and technology education for all learners taking the first General Education and Training (GET) Certificate and Further Education and Training (FET) Certificate examinations and • Increase and enhance human resource capacity to deliver quality mathematics, science, and technology education (recruitment, retention, pre- and in-service training). Now in 2009, Dinaledi has succeeded in its objective of increasing the pool of learners taking mathematics and physical science and improving performance in these subjects; in turn, meeting goals for the percentages of national targets for passing to be achieved by Dinaledi schools. The number of Dinaledi schools grew from the initial 102 in 2002 to EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 500 in 2008. A growing critical mass of schools is being upgraded in equipment, teaching skills, and other supports. At the same time, a body of knowledge is deepening about how to improve underperforming schools and to use a differentiated approach to school improvement. South Africa Sustains What Works. Dinaledi is a good example of a South African education solution where donors and the private sector were invited to lend assistance to accelerate progress, from which point the DOE has injected its own resources, continuing to build student and teacher capacity in mathematics, science and technology education. “Many aspects of the DDSP and IEP migrated to the Foundations of Learning Campaign of the DOE,” was the observation of a senior DOE manager commenting on the lessons learned from DDSP and IEP. Many elements of the two pilots reverberate in major quality improvement measures taken by the DOE in 2008-09 including focusing on time spent on literacy/language and numeracy/mathematics, minimal contact teaching time requirements, and assessment feedback. DOE senior personnel said that a major value of USAID, beyond funding, has been USAID’s willingness to manage pilot projects, modeling the importance of reliable before-and-after data and analysis, and helping to distill lessons learned that the DOE could then utilize as it sees fit. It also provided “intellectual” inputs, as one DOE official put it, “bringing energy to government.” The Takalani Sesame Street cast. The Muppet characters include Kami, Moshe, Zikwe Kupukeji and Zuzu. Elmo’s name in the show is Neno. Tanzania adapted material from Takalani Sesame to make their version called Kilimani Sesame. (Photo: Takalani Sesame Street) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 8 Dinaledi, the National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, and other DOE campaigns are evidence of how South Africans are devising thoughtful ways to channel resources and support to work within the prevailing conditions and how partners like USAID can work with them. A major advantage of education partnerships with the DOE is the ability of the SAG to institutionalize successful interventions through policy, procedures and budgets. School Infrastructure Backlogs Affect Quality and Equity. School backlogs are worse in rural communities, usually already subject to lack of infrastructure generally. Despite SAG progress in electrifying schools, backlogs persist for school buildings, sanitation and water facilities, and communications systems. The DOE asked for USAID assistance after severe flooding destroyed schools in rural areas. USAID contributed to school rehabilitation from 2000–2, including installing bore-holes and communications systems for schools in disadvantaged areas to help reduce the large infrastructure backlog and to improve capacity to deliver quality education programs. HIV and AIDS: Multi-Faceted Strategies for Schools. HIV and AIDS information and prevention is a cross-cutting theme in all USAID education activities, included in curriculum design, teacher training, materials production, and mentoring for scholarship recipients. USAID supported publication of the report of the Conference on HIV and AIDS and the Education Sector, which put forth a plan of action emanating from a coalition of institutions, community-based organizations (CBOs) and the DOE. The Mobile Task Team on the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Education (MTT) was a unique technical support network that operated Africa-wide, managed from the University of Natal in South Africa. MTT helped to empower African ministries of education and their development partners to expand sector-wide HIV and AIDS policy and prioritized implementation plans to systemically manage and mitigate impact. USAID supported its work from 2002 to 2005 in 20 African countries, including South Africa, where support is ongoing. Education Technology Innovations Redressing the Early Childhood Education Gap. Takalani Sesame Street, the award￾winning television and radio program that premiered in 2000 is one of the most successful education innovations in South Africa. USAID supported development of a South African version of an American educational TV success, with an objective of reaching out to vulnerable children. In 2002, a five-year-old Muppet named Kami became South Africa’s most popular AIDS orphan when the program joined the global fight against HIV and AIDS by developing the first HIV and AIDS curriculum for preschool children, also funded by USAID. Children from three to six years old improved their life skills grasp, such as positive self-esteem and self-image. Research found that older children and caregivers also increased their knowledge about HIV and AIDS. A public-private partnership sustains funding for the program beyond USAID involvement, to this day. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 9 Technology Supplements Teacher Skills, Helps Students Learn. USAID also provided the development funds for Mindset Cabanga, a dedicated Primary Education and Teacher Training Channel targeting primary schools (Grades R to 7). In 2002, Mindset Cabanga started delivering high-quality content in numeracy, literacy, early mathematics, science, and technology and was installed in 50 schools in South Africa. The content enriches and reinforces the existing South African national primary school curriculum, supplementing class instruction and serving as a support to learners and teachers. Building Education Policy and Systems to Advance Equity and Quality With the advent of the new democratic government in 1994, USAID provided short￾term technical assistance to national and provincial governments through the Bilateral Agreement Program. Policy assistance continued through to 2009, using successive funding vehicles. Initially, this assistance was valuable for the interim period as provinces geared up for the first time, to access short-term skills in legal drafting, launching consultative workshops, reviewing systems, and a range of related tasks. Subsequently, USAID assistance funded local and international consultants on a task-order basis as requested by provincial and national governments. USAID supported the DOE’s Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training: Umalusi is the statutory body that assures quality in the general and further education and training levels. Supporting Umalusi was key to building the capacity of the structures required to implement the National Qualifications Framework and to facilitate the implementation of the new curricula at all education levels. USAID also supported technical assistance to the national and provincial departments through the District Development Support and Integrated Education Projects. Services included research and analysis of policies for internal budget investment scrutinies, funding formulas, the FET bursary structure, teacher compensation, no-fee schools, and interpretation of drop-out rates. Services also included assisting with designing education systems, installation, and training, such as the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS) in 2008. South Africa’s Future – Youth Development and Skills for Jobs When apartheid ended and the Government of Nation Unity (GNU) came to power in 1994, they were keenly aware of the youthfulness of the population: about 40 percent was 19 years of age or younger. There is a direct correlation between the undereducation of youth and national social cohesion and economic performance. An analysis by a working group of Harvard University and South African economists advising the SAG put this relationship in perspective: “Those currently not working in South Africa are predominantly young, black, women, and are poorly educated. While over 85 percent of those with a university degree are working, fewer than 35 percent of those without a matriculation certificate [high school diploma] have jobs…While 60 percent of those between the ages of 35 and 50 are working, fewer than 25 percent of those between 20 and 25 are. While the unemployment rate of whites is less than 6 percent, it is above 30 percent for Africans.” EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 10 A major challenge to tackling the youth education and employment problem has been the overlapping policies and implementation modalities related to multiple sectors, including youth, education (basic, adult, vocational and tertiary levels), labor, as well as skills training. Over the period from 1997 to 2009, USAID has made available research, technical assistance, and project implementation services as the SAG has made progress in tackling the daunting challenges of youth and employment, further exacerbated by the current economic climate. These partnerships have involved policy support and projects in the youth sector, FET, and ABET, and have been with the Departments of Education and Labor (DOL). USAID support to the youth sector began in 1997, assisting with logistics for the vetting and ratification of the National Youth Policy at the National Youth Summit. USAID also supported various aspects of the National Youth Service Policy (draft policy funded by USAID), facilitated the development of relevant documents for the Interdepartmental Committee on Youth, the Young Positive Living Ambassadors activity, and the Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Clearinghouse (a project funded by USAID and later taken over by the Umsobomvu Youth Fund). These activities assisted the National youth Commission to achieve the objectives of the provincial youth commissions. The DOE requested USAID assistance with the support to underperforming high schools and colleges located in the Presidential Urban Renewal areas of the Free State and the Northern Cape. This support through the Presidential Urban Renewal Project (PURP) emerged as a forerunner and important learning phase as FET policy and implementation was refined. Support was launched in 1999 as part of the poverty alleviation program of the SAG and represented the implementation of the new FET policies of the time, focusing resources on selected urban communities in each of the nine provinces. Through its Support for Tertiary Education Project (STEP), USAID implemented demonstration projects in Thabong in the Free State Province and Galeshewe in the Northern Cape Province, to implement models for FET teaching and learning mandates. By the time the DOE and USAID cooperated to refine the Dinaledi school model and operational framework leading to the pilot 102 Dinaledi Schools Project, many techniques from PURP were transferable to Dinaledi, and Dinaledi inputs were also made available to PURP schools. These inputs included voluntary supplemental classes, general teacher training and follow-up support in OBE and continuous assessment as well as training related to the new curriculum statements in the key subjects of mathematics, biology, physical science, English, and accounting. In demonstrating the effects of focusing resources on the comprehensive development of FET institutions with full involvement of national, provincial, and district education offices, apart from the direct benefits to the FET institutions and students involved, the Free State and Northern Cape PURP projects added to the growing body of knowledge and experience about how to improve the FET model. Youth Leaders Confront HIV and AIDS. USAID supported concerns of the National Youth Commission at its first joint national and provincial strategic planning processes that identified HIV and AIDS as a second critical area (after unemployment) for youth services EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 11 to address by funding a Study Tour to Uganda for Young Positive Living Ambassadors. There South African youth leaders observed and discussed program interventions with their Ugandan peers who had experienced successful results. Another USAID-supported HIV and AIDS intervention was the Rutanang Series: Standards of Practice, Implementation Guides and a Self-Improvement Process for Peer Education Programs in South Africa, published in 2002. This work was one of several activities emanating from the U.S–S.A Binational Commission (BNC), also called the Vice-Presidential BNC because it was headed by Vice Presidents Al Gore and Thabo Mbeki. Rutananag was a collaborative project funded by USAID and led by the U.S. Center for Disease Control in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health; South African Departments of Heath, Education, Social Development; the South African Vice Chancellors Associations; and local NGOs. All parties contributed to the development of coordinated resources to facilitate effective peer education programs in S.A. Workforce Development Programs. The SAG undertook a period of research, implementation and assessment of skills development projects. The S.A. DOL assigned tasks to USAID through another assistance vehicle, the Workforce Development Project. This was specifically aimed at providing the DOL relevant technical assistance services and support to organize the work of the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) . An example was a Placement Verification Study of the unemployed upon completion of skills development programs sponsored under the Social Development Funding Window of the Department of Labor’s National Skills Fund. USAID funded Development Associates Inc. and subcontractor Khulisa Management Services to manage a collaborative effort with the DOL, the Employment and Skills Development Services Branch, and Provincial Offices and Labor Centers of the Labor Market Information Systems and Planning Unit, training providers and the unemployed who were the beneficiaries. The South Africa Opportunities Industrialization Center (SAOIC) focusing on jobs and vocational skills was established in 1996 in Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province, established by the U.S. Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, Inc. (OICI). The KZN center offered unemployed adults training in auto mechanics and other vocational/technical skills. The center supported skills training for the unemployed through courses and modules accredited by the old Training Boards registered with the Department of Labor. The SAOIC board of directors included an advisory group composed of representatives from the industrial sector, service organizations, and other training institutions. USAID support of the Amy Biehl Foundation also had a workforce development objective. The foundation was established in 1997, honoring the life of a young American student who had come to Cape Town to work with disadvantaged youth to improve their life prospects and communities. Amy Biehl’s life was tragically cut short in August 1993 in an act of political mob violence in the Gugulethu Township outside of Cape Town. When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established, the four young men who were convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for her murder applied for and received amnesty. Amy’s parents supported their application, witnessing Amy’s love of South Africa EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 12 and her belief in the truth and reconciliation process. Two of the youth later worked in the foundation. USAID provided support to the foundation’s youths skills development and HIV and AIDS Peer Education projects. Supporting the New FET College Thrust. As part of this transformation of technical and vocational education, 50 FET colleges have been created through rationalizing the smaller and weaker among the 152 which existed formerly to produce stronger multi￾campus institutions capable of offering high level skills training. The SAG has committed a recapitalizations grant of ZAR1.9 billion (about $238 million) for upgrading workshops and classrooms and staff training and has set aside ZAR600 million (about $75 million) over three years for scholarships for disadvantaged students (http://www.info.gov.za/aboutsa/ education.htm). In line with the new FET thrust, in April 2009, USAID and the DOE announced a new cooperative effort aimed at strengthening curriculum and expanding workforce development programs at a dozen FET colleges in South Africa. This is a three-year, $6.7 million program funded by USAID/S.A.. The project will help South Africa to tap into lessons learned from the experience of American community colleges in expanding learning opportunities for disadvantaged youth. The U.S. managers, the American College on Education (ACE), and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) represent 1,600 colleges and 1,200 colleges, respectively, including related organizations. The newly formed National Youth Development Agency and Right to Care (HIV and AIDS service experts), are the implementing partners in South Africa. The partnership will offer a series of small grants to participating FET colleges to assess and strengthen their institutional operations and services. At a presentation on vocational education in South Africa, prominent academic Dr. Linda Chisholm of the Human Sciences Research Council cited researchers observing “What makes [the South African skills development case] unusual is that there was genuine national leadership of the process throughout. In the broadest terms, the relationship with donors was positive. South Africans led the process; South Africans were facilitated to learn from other experiences rather than being presented a particular version by agencies or consultants...” Notwithstanding major progress in the vocational education sector, Dr. Chisholm points to numerous challenges ahead. Models to Increase Functional Adult Literacy The Ikhwelo Project (1999-2003) was a pioneering endeavor where the DOE joined forces with communities with the highest adult illiteracy rates in Limpopo and Eastern Cape province, other government departments, South African NGO, Project Literacy, and an international donor, USAID, to implement a large-scale adult basic education and training (ABET) program. Ikhwelo was a demonstration of one of the most critical challenges in adult literacy to combat poverty alleviation in rural areas: how adults can attain functional literacy and numeracy skills at the same time as income-generating and small, medium, and micro-enterprise (SMME) skills. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 13 Ikhwelo was a comprehensive undertaking that trained more than 300 ABET practitioners, enrolled 3,000 learners in agriculture and SMME programs, and equipped 52 Provincial Adult Learning Centers. Currently, the SAG is implementing the Ka Ri Gude (“let us learn”) mass literacy campaign, officially launched in February 2008. South Africa is spending ZAR6.1 billion about ($763 million) over five years to enable 4.7 million South Africans to achieve literacy by 2010, to improve on the 2006 literacy rate of 74 percent. South African capacity in the field of adult literacy is high. There are strong NGOs and the number is reported to be growing dramatically with an increasing number of emerging organizations being accredited as service providers. Beyond a Level Playing Field: Transforming Higher Education U.S. development strategy recognized the considerable capacity of South Africa to meet its own higher education development needs. The U.S. strategy also noted the requirement for further capacity in higher education among the disadvantaged majority which had been largely excluded historically from the higher levels of government, business, and the professions. To date, USAID has been the largest international donor to tertiary education in South Africa, on the basis that the quality and equitability of the tertiary education system would be key to South Africa’s development. Establishing Policies to Create an Equitable Higher Education System. Between 1994 and 1998, USAID supported higher education policy through a grant to the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE), appointed by President Nelson Mandela to review the provision of higher education and project a plan in line with the transformation of South Africa and the country’s Constitution. Through a succession of consultations influencing SAG policy enactment, NPHE provided the implementation framework for achieving the vision of a single national coordinated higher-education system that would be affordable, sustainable, and responsive, contributing to the human resource and research needs of South Africa. Eventually, the NPHE mandated the reduction of higher education institutions from 36 to 21 (eventually 24). Through the Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP), USAID assisted the DOE by supporting stakeholder empowerment programs, investigative studies, and development of three-year rolling plans for the Historically Disadvantaged Institutions (HDIs). To this end, TELP arranged five summits for the HDIs and related constituencies to enable the parties to explore issues and contribute to policies and implementation plans related to: Cooperation in Higher Education; Mergers and Rationalization; Three-Year Rolling Plans; Teacher Education; and Policy Development for the New Academic Policy (later the Higher Education Qualifications Framework). A major strategy of the rationalization of higher education was to elevate the preparation of teachers to the university level from the disparate teacher training institutions managed by the former provinces and racially defined homelands. To assist this important area EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 14 of policy and implementation TELP supported workshops investigating: Public Distance Teacher Education; the National Plan for Teacher Education; Colleges of Education; the South African College for Teacher Education; and the South African College of Open Learning. A contentious element of equity was, and continues to be, funding: how to allocate it and the relationship of post-secondary teaching institutions in the various sectors. TELP made possible a series of research projects to sort through the policy issues and propose recommendations, including: the New Funding Formula; the National Student Financial Aid Scheme; Management Information Systems; Incorporation of Nursing Colleges and Agricultural Colleges; Private and Public Higher Education; A Regulatory Framework for Private Higher Education; and Approaches to Cost Modeling for the Higher Education Sector. During that period of profound shifts in higher education, the managers of TELP, who were predominantly South Africans, used approaches “that allowed people time to understand and incorporate change into their thinking and their actions.” Strengthening Historically Disadvantaged Universities. Recognizing the ongoing negative ramifications of structural inequality on 17 HDIs, apart from the crucial arena of policy, USAID focused development planning before the 1994 elections, and post￾election resources in higher education on these entities. Higher education is the purview of national government, whereas all other education levels are governed by concurrent national and provincial competencies. After 1994 the new SAG acknowledged that HDIs had to contribute more effectively to the nation’s economic and social growth; they had to produce graduates with the relevant skills and knowledge to both maintain the economy Higher Education Transformation Statistics 1991/94 2006/7 Public Higher Education Institutions 36 24 Universities/Comprehensives 21 17 Universities of Technology (ex “Technikons”) 15 5 National Institutes 2 Enrollment Percentage Black African students 40 61 White students 47 25 Indian students 7 7 Colored students 5 7 Female students 48 55 Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2008 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 15 with the most advanced financial, technological, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors in Africa, as well as assist in the development of an increasingly technology-driven economy. Over an eight-year period from 1998 to 2006, USAID’s Tertiary Education Linkages Project approved the implementation of a series of activities in consultation with the DOE and an advisory panel composed mainly of vice chancellors of the targeted 17 HDIs. Support for HDIs collectively helped to strengthen financial, management and research capabilities at the 17 HDIs that were marginalized by the apartheid education system of separate university facilities and unequal resources for racial groups. The HDIs used TELP resources for curriculum and program development to enhance their competitiveness and relevancy. These activities aided HDIs to adapt to the outcomes-based learning program requirements of the new National Qualifications Framework, requiring: changes in teaching and learning practices; preparation of outcomes-based learning materials to support students; development of outcomes-based assessment practices; and relevant quality promotion and assurance processes for the ongoing review and evaluation of the learning programs. With TELP resources, HDIs developed Quality Assurance systems in accordance with the Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) framework and the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC). Student academic development is another area where TELP funds assisted. All of the 17 HDIs received support to improve and offer academic development programs to all first￾year students. TELP supported compensatory bridging programs mandated for at least 75 percent of those students who required help in the key learning areas of mathematics, English, science, research and study skills. Most of the programs became permanent features in the institutions. HDIs also developed financial management information systems (MIS) to effectively manage their institution’s finances. The financial MISs were developed and implemented to help generate and implement three-year rolling plan projections. This process strengthened leadership capacity to effectively manage the institutions at a crucial time when financing was in flux due to national policy changes. In the case of the University of Zululand, TELP funding made possible a complete assessment, reorganization, and training program for the finance division, resulting in major improvements according to Rector Dr. Rachel Gumbi. Still in practice to this day is a performance management system (PMS) initiated with TELP support. Development of processes and tools for the system, including the Balanced Scorecard and the Integrated PMS Handbook, were funded by TELP. South African universities accessed budgets through TELP to fund linkages; they implemented 18 linkage partnerships with U.S. universities. Examples include: • Durban University of Technology (DUT) and Savannah State University to add Membrane Technology studies to the DUT Department of Chemical Engineering, including staff development and a new curriculum. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 16 • Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the University of Michigan to increase CPUT’s capacity in Science and Engineering, specifically smart materials and cleaner production. • University of Venda (UNIVEN) and Georgia State University partnered together to expand UNIVEN’s School of Business, Economics and Administrative Sciences, by developing Business Information Systems (BIS) curricula, improving infrastructure, technology, and skills development for faculty. • In 2003, there were only 19 black speech and audiology therapists who spoke the mother tongues of the majority of South Africans, out of about 1,200 registered therapists in the country. A collaboration sponsored by TELP brought together the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA), now merged with the University of Limpopo, with the Communication Disorders Department at the University of Massachusetts. A series of faculty exchanges resulted in a curriculum in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology that was accredited by the professional board of Speech-Language practitioners in South Africa. From the first 19 students in 2001, the enrollment has grown steadily to 66 in 2009 and is expected to double in the upcoming years. TELP’s last phase included assisting with the institutional merger activities that resulted from the complete restructuring of higher education in South Africa. Following the 2001 release of the National Plan for Higher Education and subsequently, the June 2002 Transformation and Restructuring: A New Institutional Landscape for Higher Education, where most of the HDIs were merged and/or incorporated into historically advantaged institutions (HAIs) or other HDIs. TELP allowed HDIs to be better prepared as they entered those historic mergers. USAID investments into curriculum development, financial systems, and in human resources left behind sustainable gains at historically disadvantaged universities. Though small compared to the overall budgets of the HDIs, TELP resources focused on upgrading the quality of teaching and learning, and supportive systems, while the existing government budget was more focused on core functions. Today, the constant progress of Previously Advantaged Institutions, and the flow of staff and students from HDIs to them, present ongoing challenges for the HDIs. Achieving Gender Balance in Higher Education. Gender equity was a TELP cross-cutting component. HDIs were facilitated to incorporate gender equity into all TELP activities. In a sample of eight HDIs, a study funded by TELP looking at trends between 2003–6, showed that there had been little change even though most had gender equity plans in place: representation of women barely increased from 43 percent to 46 percent, but women generally occupied fewer strategic and management positions or high-level academic positions. The persistently low numbers of women in executive positions in higher education, even as they have achieved parity in some cases in lower levels, led TELP to form Women in Higher Education Executive Leadership (WHEEL) in 2006, together with Higher Education South Africa (HESA). In the first WHEEL intake in 2006, 20 women in higher EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 17 education competed to engage in a year-long skills development program. HESA (formed in 2005) represents a unified body of leadership that grew out of the restructuring of the higher education sector; it was the successor to two former bodies, the South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association (SAUVCA) and the Committee of Technikon Principals (CTP), making it an ideal place to position WHEEL. Female enrollments in all higher education institutions have increased considerably. However, female students remain underrepresented in the fields of science, engineering and technology. Women are being appointed to senior academic positions in public higher education institutions and sometimes reaching parity in permanent staffing plans. Nevertheless, white males still dominate senior positions overall in public HEIs according to the 2008 review by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. S.A. Universities Battle HIV and AIDS, Serve Communities, Build Skills. The imperative for higher education institutions to serve their communities is particularly strong in South Africa. Supporting the efforts of South African universities to counter the high HIV and AIDS rates in the country is cost effective and sustainable as USAID’s strategic investments leverage existing capabilities. USAID under the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is continuing to assist local universities to fight the AIDS pandemic in their institutions and their adjacent local communities. USAID under PEPFAR supports local universities working in collaboration with international and local organizations to improve the health status of grassroots communities as part of their students’ honors (a distinction added to a bachelor’s degree) projects and supports Voluntary Counseling and Testing and Prevention programs on campuses. Most of the activities are spearheaded by university faculties, campus health clinics and organizations such as John Hopkins University, Dance4Life and DramAidE. PEPFAR funded activities cover almost all university campuses nationwide. Other targeted programs with local universities are specifically aimed at supporting the basic education system through linkages with feeder schools and local communities on HIV prevention programs. S.A. Universities Target Equity and Excellence. As in basic education, in higher education there is a continuing challenge to South Africa to balance the need for equity with the need for quality if the country is to become a strong, united, democratic, and prosperous nation in the 21st Century. South African universities are forging ahead to preserve areas of strategic advantage and position research outputs on par with the best in the world. An example: since 2004, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) have established seven university centers of excellence to spearhead advancement in disciplines that include biomedical tuberculosis, biotechnology catalysis in the chemical and manufacturing sectors, and epidemiological modeling and analysis. These centers monitor participation of black and female students, reporting about 50 percent participation in both categories in 2008. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 18 Implications of the reorganization of higher education are still unfolding. Although South African universities have large infrastructural and human capacity, they are challenged in meeting the skills demands on the nation, while the country has to simultaneously make financial trade-offs that limit investments in higher education. Effective Partnership – Why South Africa? USAID has cooperated side by side with every level of education in South Africa: early childhood development; primary and secondary schooling; FET, adult literacy; and higher education. USAID has worked with South African academics, NGOs, educational statutory bodies, community leaders, teachers and principals, student groups, unions, private providers and public educators, and officials at the school, district, provincial, and national levels. USAID balanced its resources – though small compared to total South African spending, they have sometimes been significant when applied to specific targets – between strategic technical assistance and key investment areas. The USAID method of having a number of funding vehicles in place allowed project responsiveness in an environment that often changed quickly due to the years of intense policy formulation and implementation. When the United States Government began its support of South Africa’s black majority in 1986, the possible extent of the impact of HIV and AIDS was unknown. Later it was to become a devastating drain on resources and human dignity, producing huge numbers of orphans and vulnerable children, reducing the already inadequate teaching corps, further compromising effective teaching and learning. Consistent efforts by many partners are beginning to show progress, with reduced infection rates. USAID has been a partner with the SAG in weaving HIV and AIDS interventions into every level of education, from preschool, to school-based life skills programs that have been an important part of the battle, to university outreach and research efforts. South African institutional strength has been a major success factor of USAID programs. Attaining the USAID objective of “increasing the cadre of qualified black professionals and technicians for the post-apartheid society; where blacks will play a central role in managing the multifaceted economy of the country” was possible because of the rich array of South African NGOs, educational bodies, and private sector firms that worked with USAID and their counterparts in the U.S. Even with continuing challenges to make quality education accessible to the substantial poor segment of the population, South Africa is demonstrating that it is a knowledge resource for other African countries and the world. The 2006 USAID Policy Framework for Bilateral Foreign Aid of the USG specifies that ideally, other countries should be at the center of their own development, with American bilateral foreign aid in a supporting role. It also states the intention of supporting strategic states to help achieve major U.S. foreign policy goals of especially high priority in specific countries as key allies from a strategic standpoint. South Africa’s conduct of its education sector in relationship with America meets both criteria for a constructive international partnership. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 19 In 1997, when asked why the Clinton Administration placed so much importance on South Africa and established the U.S.–S.A. Binational Commission, Vice President Gore replied: First, we are on the same journey, trying to create a nonracial democracy with justice and economic opportunity for everyone regardless of gender, religion, or ethnic origin. If South Africa succeeds, it will have a global impact [by demonstrating a model of community that works for all its citizens], second, if South Africa succeeds economically, it will not only create a model for development, but it will be a beacon of hope for the whole continent. A strong South African economy could become the engine of growth which powers other countries, especially in Southern Africa. South Africa is small in economic stature, generating less than one percent of the global economic output, but South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy has imbued the country and its leaders with international and moral authority that go far beyond the size of the economy or population. We are pleased, therefore, to have South Africa as a partner that shares many of our values and interests. Vice President Gore’s words are just as true today. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY MAIN REPORT 22 I. APARTHEID EDUCATION TO WORLD CLASS: BRIDGING THE GAP America’s Strategic Contribution to South African Education – Why This Report? The relationship between the United States and South Africa, from the beginning, has taken place on two tracks: government-to-government and people-to-people. It is impossible, therefore, to speak of United States – South Africa relations without speaking of the extraordinary range of individuals and institutions engaged with each other across a wide spectrum of these two democracies…Very few South Africans are aware, however, of the scope and scale of that support. Very few know how many Americans supported and helped to sustain the anti-apartheid struggle, and very few know the extent of American support for the transformations now taking place. – James A. Joseph, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, 1997 These words spoken in 1997 apply to Americans as well as South Africans. Ambassador Joseph’s statement was made at the time that President Mandela expressed his appreciation to the American First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for the support of the American people during the liberation struggle, and then to build a nonracial democracy. The United States Agency for International Development Mission in South Africa (USAID/ S.A.) took a leap in 1986 and was the first foreign donor to establish a presence in the country. Before 1994, the European Union provided the most development aid assistance through a South African intermediary implementing organization, Kagiso Trust, USAID ranked second in total support, with funding mainly for education (Aurora Associates International & Creative Associates International, 1995, p. 49). USAID has remained the largest development aid donor to South African education, amounting to $400 million as of 2009. Of the total $400 million funding to South Africa $153 million was direct bilateral support to the South African Department of Education (DOE). An additional $11 million in unilateral USAID funding has flowed to South Africa through regional programs bringing the total contributions to the education sector to $411 million. Box 1: Robert McNamara on Apartheid Education “I have seen very few countries in the world that have such inadequate educational conditions. I was shocked at what I saw in some of the rural areas and homelands. Education is of fundamental importance. There is no social, political, or economic problem you can solve without adequate education.” Robert McNamara, past president of the World Bank, on a visit to South Africa, 1982. (Christie, 1985, p.13) American Support 1986–2009 23 It is important to note that South African corporate and private foundation donations were at least equal in scale to foreign government contributions, and that South African individuals and organizations contributed significantly to the NGO sector; as of 1996 their contributions were estimated at almost ten times all foreign donor assistance combined. From the beginning of its operations in South Africa following the passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, USAID made strategic decisions to focus its limited resources on the education sector and human rights, as well as building democratic institutions, health, and humanitarian assistance. USAID’s ongoing strategic planning processes with the post-1994 South African Government kept education as a focus. By 2009, the U.S. remained one of the few international partners in education with the SAG, having made the largest contributions of a single donor to both basic and tertiary education in the new democracy. The year 2009 marks 15 years of bilateral partnership between the United States and South Africa to transform South Africa’s education sector from an apartheid system to a democratic one appropriate to the most developed economy in Africa. Before democratic elections in 1994, the USG had provided unilateral funding mainly for tertiary-level scholarships and later supporting the work of education NGOs preparing for the transition to democracy. Today the USAID budget focuses on supporting the education sector in combating HIV and AIDS. This report documents this unusual period in U.S. developmental aid history, as a record for ongoing dialogue and cooperation. South Africa’s inheritance Leading up to the watershed 2009 elections in South Africa, the “crisis” in education was on nearly every contesting party’s platform. Similarly, nearly every international report2 on the potential or risk to South Africa’s progress cites an underperforming education sector. The challenge to South Africans is bridging the gap between aspects of high-level development and underdevelopment in the same country. The head of the University of the Western Cape, Prof. Brian O’Connell, describes it as the “inheritance” that the new South Africa received from the apartheid regime in 1994: the most technologically and commercially developed country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The formidable challenge for the first democratic government was how to claim that inheritance for the majority of South Africans rather than the few – a target that in some ways is still in the distance. This challenge is illustrated in the Global Competitiveness Report 2008–2009 of the World Economic Forum (WEF). South Africa was ranked 45th overall out of 134 countries, in the company of Puerto Rico (four ratings ahead), and four and five rankings ahead, respectively, 2 World Economic Forum. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 24 of Italy and India. It is consistently the highest ranked country in Sub-Saharan Africa (in Africa only Tunisia had a higher WEF business competitiveness score in 2009). Yet, the report cited an “inadequately educated workforce” as the number one most problematic factor for doing business in South Africa. The country’s anomalous economic competitiveness ratings in the WEF report illustrate the difficult human resource development obstacles – including education – which South Africa faces. At odds with good marks in financial market sophistication (24th), intellectual property protection (23rd), and market size (23rd), a major concern was the health of the workforce, ranked 129th out of 134 countries, due to high rates of communicable diseases and poor health indicators generally. Box 2: South Africa firsts Oil from coal The world’s first and largest petroleum from coal refineries provide 40 percent of South Africa’s petrol. The company, Sasol, now competes globally in the energy industry. Heart transplant Dr. Chris Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant in Cape Town on 3 December 1967. Now, more than 50,000 have been performed worldwide. The CAT scan A South African physicist, Allan Cormack, and Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI Laboratories developed the computed axial tomography scan at Tufts University in the U.K. Military South Africa manufactures the G5 long-range artillery piece and armored personnel carriers that are in demand and exported to several parts of the world. Dolosse Large, unusually shaped concrete blocks weighing up to 20 tons are designed to break up wave action and protect harbor walls and coastal installations. Designed by Eric Merrifield and first installed at the East London Harbor, they are now used worldwide. From information supplied by the International Marketing Council of South Africa, 28 April 2005. American Support 1986–2009 25 Also, while rating well on research and development spending, accompanied by strong collaboration between universities and the business sector in innovation (both ranked 28th), the report cautioned that the country’s innovative potential could be at risk with a university enrollment rate of only 15 percent, or 93rd overall. Anticipation of the challenges that a democratic South Africa would face – managing the most developed economy in Africa while redressing decades of inequality – has shaped American support of a democratic South Africa, even when the signs of change were only hopeful glimmerings. Preparing more Black South Africans to lead: the Comprehensive Anti￾Apartheid Act of 1986 (CAAA) It was in recognizing that a nation is built on its people, its skills, and its education system, that the U.S. Congress enacted the CAAA. This act was an expression of the will of the American people and their demand for the United States to end its ties to the apartheid government, causing congress to override the veto of the President. This led to the establishment of USAID/S.A., which was different from most other USAID programs because it worked unilaterally with NGOs, rather than bilaterally with a host government; the CAAA precluded USAID from funding any government entity. This marked the beginning of a new era in U.S. relations with South Africa – from the compromise and accommodation of a policy of “constructive engagement” with apartheid to an overtly political purpose: “the empowerment of the ‘disadvantaged’ population.” Figure 1: RSA world competitiveness ranking – most problematic for doing business (score) Source: WEF 2009. 0 5 10 15 20 25 Poor work ethic Restrictive Corruption labour regulations Inefcient government bureaucracy Inadequate infrastructure Crime and theft Inadequately educated workforce PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 26 Box 3: The Legac y of Apartheid Education In the early 1950s, Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of the racist laws and segregation practice known as “Grand Apartheid,” was Minister of Native Affairs in charge of African education. In that capacity, he made his infamous statement regarding the limitation of the black academic curriculum to basic literacy and numeracy because Africans were meant to be only “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” The 1953 Bantu Education Act led to a huge reduction of government aid to learning institutions for black Africans that had already been under-funded for decades. The ruling National Party reduced already low black teachers’ salaries; this resulted in a dramatic drop in trainee teacher numbers. The objective of the Bantu education policy was to direct black or nonwhite youth to the unskilled labor market to preserve good jobs, prosperity, and control for whites. Independent institutions serving Africans including church schools were forced under the direct control of the state. Black political organizations like the African National Congress and thousands of parents reacted with anger at the new law, protesting against their children being subjected to Bantu Education. By 1956, the majority of black youth was forced into Bantu Education. With the 1959 Extension of University Act, blacks could no longer freely attend white universities; separate “tribal colleges” were set up. The Colored Person’s Education Act of 1963 put education for “coloreds” under the Department of Colored Affairs. Similarly, the Department of Indian Affairs took control over Indian education in 1965. In 1967, the National Education Act set out the principles of Christian National Education for white schools. School was compulsory for all groups except African blacks. It is this legacy of apartheid education – codified and internalized for decades – that the African National Congress had to undo when it came into power in 1994. The former position of the U.S. government resulted in suspicion from many black South Africans that CAAA was a ploy to undermine the sanctions movement promoted by anti￾apartheid activists in the United States. Therefore, in 1986 the USAID/S.A. staff had to work hard at nurturing relationships with national spokesmen and grassroots leaders within the African community in order to launch the program. Normally USAID had minimal direct contact with the local community groups which it funds. American Support 1986–2009 27 USAID’s entry into S.A. in 1986 came at a time when state repression and mass resistance was intense. But a few of the many newsworthy events that year include: • 17 people were killed in Langa, a township just outside Port Elizabeth, during a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre • 136 known officials of the United Democratic Front (UDF) were detained • two white medical doctors were found guilty of misconduct by the Medical Council in the 1977 death of Steve Biko • a state of emergency was imposed on certain parts of the country following nearly 500 deaths in township violence since September 1984. Responses included the formation of the National Education Crisis Committee and the creation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest, mainly African labor federation (http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/chronology/special-chrono/ governance/udf.htm). USAID in South Africa thus conducted its work in a difficult political and social environment that sometimes affected its staff and the organizations it funded. For example, in 1988 an estimated 3 million black workers participated in a three day nationwide strike to protest anti-labor legislation and government’s prohibition on organizations from engaging in political activities. Also in that year, leading anti-apartheid activists Murphy Morobe, Valli Moosa and Vusi Khanyile escaped from prison and took refuge at the U.S. Consulate in Kine Centre, Johannesburg, staging a 37-day sit-in. Also in 1988, Dulcie September, the African National Congress (ANC) representative in Paris was assassinated and exiled ANC member Albie Sachs was critically injured in a bomb explosion in Maputo, attributed to the apartheid regime. Sachs became a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, appointed by President Nelson Mandela in 1994. On the question of overcoming skepticism toward U.S. support, USAID’s 1988 South Africa Program Strategy reported that “the fact that most active anti-Apartheid organizations in the Western and Eastern Cape have associated themselves with the UDF has…required that our programming in these areas evolve slowly in parallel with slowly softening attitudes toward U.S. funds.” One of the seven political objectives of the 1988 Strategy was “Build Black Individual, Institutional, Professional and Leadership Capabilities.” The education program objective was: “Expand the cadre of educated black leaders and create and test alternative education models.” In that period, only 2 percent of the funds supporting education in South Africa were outside of government control, mainly provided by faith-based schools. Since CAAA was explicit that USG funds could not be provided to institutions or groups which received SAG support, USAID/S.A. was restricted to funding NGOs who in turn funded scholarships and other projects. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 28 Scholarships to Build High Level Skills It is the scholarships and bursaries component that is perhaps most widely known for its continuing impact on South Africa in empowering blacks and enhancing their leadership skills. Through 1994, the education sector received the largest share of USAID funds in South Africa (Aurora Associates International & Creative Associates International, 1995, p. ix). By 1994 nearly 6,000 black South Africans had received USAID funded formal post￾secondary educations, and by 1993, more than 2,000 of these were working in middle- and senior-level positions in S.A. related to policies, programs, and budgets. Scholarships continued after 1994 and as recipients in the earlier programs completed their studies, more specialized training programs phased in, including the Mandela Economics Scholars Program and study programs to upgrade math and science teacher skills. Altogether, the United States has funded tertiary level studies for over 14,000 previously disadvantaged South Africans, probably more than any single donor. In addition, an evaluation of one USAID funding vehicle, the Education Support and Training Project (ESAT), gleaned from grantee reports that: “…tens of thousands of South Africans have received direct or indirect benefits as a result of educare providers trained, teachers whose skills have been upgraded, materials which have been developed to help students pass examinations, adults receiving literacy lessons from adult educators trained through literacy programs and so on.” Box 4: Case Stud y – Educationa l Opportunities Counci l By 1993, this South African NGO had administered more than 1,300 scholarships for disadvantaged South Africans to study overseas sponsored by USAID. Another 2,000 South Africans had studied at 19 local tertiary institutions. Of these, over 2,200 had completed tertiary-level studies; two-thirds were employed in middle- and senior-level decision-making positions. Civil servants – especially educators – have been the major beneficiaries of Educational Opportunities Council (EOC) programs. Thus, they were an important source of human capital when apartheid structures were removed. In addition to degrees, the EOC Career Development Fellowship Program and similar vehicles afforded historically disadvantaged individuals ways to develop leadership skills and deepen professional competencies. The EOC was guided by veteran South African activists including Fr. Buti Tlhagale and Dr. Nthato Motlana. After 1994, several hundred more USAID-sponsored scholarships were administered by the EOC. American Support 1986–2009 29 Box 5: American Scho larship Alumni – Howthe y gave back • Hon. Yvonne Mokgoro (LLM, U. of Pennsylvania), was sworn in by President Mandela as the first black women justice on S.A.’s new Constitutional Court, the country’s highest judicial body in 1994. • Prof. Adam Habib (Masters & PhD, City College of NY), Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Johannesburg. • S.S. Zikalala, BA Education, employed as a teacher by the Department of Education and Training. • A. J. Allie, Bachelor of Commerce. Employed by the Office of the Auditor General. • Dr. Renosi Mokate (Masters & PhD, University of Delaware), Ex. Dir., Human Sciences Research Council, CEO of the Central Energy Fund, Monetary Policy Committee Member of the Reserve Bank (currently Deputy Governor and only woman). • Professor John Volmink (PhD, Cornell University) is Chairperson of Umalusi, the body that sets and monitors standards for general and further education and training in South Africa. • Saki Macozoma, Deputy Chair, Standard Bank of South Africa. • Dr. Zodwa Dlamini, S.A. Commissioner to the Lesotho Highlands Water Authority. Between 1986 and 1994, social development, which was mainly education programming, was the largest commitment among USAID/S.A. obligations (Aurora Associates International & Creative Associates International, 1995, p. 30). The importance of funding South African education opportunities is illustrated by obligations in 1989 when education accounted for 62 percent of new USAID/S.A. budget obligations. Two major education programs were specified in the 1986 CAAA: 1) Scholarships for Victims of Apartheid, and 2) In-Service Teacher Training Programs. Therefore, a key priority of the pre-1994 USAID strategy was targeted training of significant numbers of South Africans exposed to long-term training programs in the United States. Also, there was short-term training – observation tours, workshops, and conferences – to enhance interim governing skills. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 30 Even before passage of CAAA in 1986, USAID had begun scholarships (called bursaries in South Africa) for South Africans in the U.S. in 19833 , contracted through U.S. organizations, the Institute of International Education, Aurora Associates, and Africare. The African￾American Institute (AAI) had been providing scholarships to South Africans to study in America funded by USAID and U.S. foundations. In South Africa, recruitment and selection of the bursary candidates were tasked to the Educational Opportunities Council (EOC), a black South African NGO founded by Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The in-country scholarships were administered by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), the Catholic Educational Aid Program (CEAP), the Desmond Tutu Educational Trust (DTET), the South African Council for Higher Education Development (SACHED) and the EOC. U.S. compassion for the educational plight of black South Africans was praiseworthy. Apart from USAID, the South African Education Program (SAEP) of the IIE in New York received generous support from universities that provided full scholarships or tuition waivers. Harvard University President Derek Bok was the first chair of the IIE-SAEP National Council, followed by Vartan Gregorian, President of Brown University. Many American corporations made contributions to demonstrate their support of the Sullivan Principles founded by Rev. Leon Sullivan, which called for U.S. corporations doing business in South Africa to improve education opportunities for black South Africans. From 1979 when the IIE-SAEP began to 1992 when undergraduate scholarships phased out in favor of graduate study only, more than 172 American colleges and universities offered South African students full scholarships or tuition waivers. In addition, there was support to the IIE-SAEP by eighty-five corporations and foundations. USAID began funding the IIE-SAEP program in 1983 and became the largest funder by the end in 2002. Ninety￾five percent of the nearly 1,700 IIE-SAEP fellows returned home by 2002. The criteria for USAID-funded scholarship recipients were that they were for disadvantaged South Africans and for studies in fields key to national development. By 1993, as previously advantaged South African universities began to expand admissions for blacks, it became more cost-effective to fund bachelor-level studies exclusively within South Africa. Masters￾and doctoral-level studies continued to be funded in the U.S., and were also funded in S.A. An illustrative example is the scholarship program administered by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). In the twelve years from 1994–2002 SAIRR provided bursaries to nearly 2700 USAID-sponsored undergraduate and graduate students. Approximately 70 percent of the awards were for science, commerce and law degrees, with the balance for various fields of study including the arts. When students failed, discontinued or found funding from other sources, they were replaced by other scholarship recipients. 3 The U.S. funded scholarships for black South Africans as early as the 1960s, through the Department of State’s Bureau of Communications. Also, between fiscal year (FY) 1980 and FY 1982, the University Preparation Program administered by USAID through the U.S. Information Agency sponsored over 1,000 students from South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to study in the U.S. and other African institutions; these were administered by the African-American Institute. American Support 1986–2009 31 Medical Education for South African Blacks (MESAB). When MESAB began in 1985, there were only 500 black doctors in all of South Africa, though there were about 32 million blacks in a total population of 40 million people. MESAB was formed in part, to provide financial aid and other support for the education, training, and development of black healthcare professionals. It was a collaborative partnership of South Africans and Americans, and became the largest single source of private funds for black students preparing for healthcare careers in South Africa. USAID provided funding up to 2004 to support deserving students. Many notable South Africans and Americans supported MESAB over the years and served as board members including: Dr. Nthato Motlana, Founder and First Chairperson, Phillip Tobias, Donald Kennedy, President of Stanford University, Herb and Joy Kaiser, and Dr. Louis W. Sullivan. Academic Support Programs in Tertiary Education Post-1994 Elections. Evaluations of earlier bursary programs and recommendations from South African NGOs like the Desmond Tutu Educational Trust (DTET) led to program innovations in the period after the 1994 elections. In a program managed by the DTET that funded historically disadvantaged persons (HDPs) to attend the five tertiary institutions in the Western Cape, there were Work Study, Writing Center, Research Skills and other Academic Development Support Programs offered at Cape Technikon, Peninsula Technikon, the University of the Western Cape, University of Stellenbosch, and the University of Cape Town. Between 1992 and 2002, over 2,800 students, mainly HDPs, participated in these programs. They came from all over South Africa, (the majority were from Western and Eastern Cape), and were representative of all the areas of studies at the institutions. Apart from the evidence of the effectiveness of these programs in supporting better academic performance of participants, there was ongoing institutional impact: most of the programs were incorporated into the participating institutions beyond USAID funding, drawing on the universities’ own resources. Box 6: Degree Programs Sponsored for Previous ly Disad vantaged Indi vidua ls at South African Universities (Partia l) Diplomas, Honors, Bachelors, Masters and Doctorates in Accounting, Agriculture, Agricultural Administration, Analytical Chemistry, Banking Management, Business Administration, Chemical Engineering, Commerce, Construction, Computer Science, Education, Environmental Health, Extraction Metals, Financial Information Systems, Electrical Engineering, Food Technology, Home Economics, Information Technology, Internal Auditing, Journalism, Jurisprudence, Land Surveying, Law, Mechanical Engineering, Medical Technology, Metallurgical Engineering, Marketing, Medicine, Mining, Engineering, Optometry, Pedagogy, Personnel Management, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Production Management, Public Administration, Quantity Surveying, Social Work, Surgery. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 32 Improving Economics Skills Shortages in Government. The U.S.–S.A. Binational Commission was created in 1994 as a joint initiative between South African President Nelson Mandela and American President Bill Clinton. It established high-level relationships between the two countries, where operational commissions were formed in target areas linking the respective departments from each country. The inaugural U.S. delegation to South Africa included U.S. Attorney-General Janet Reno, Commerce Secretary William Daley, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. A testimony to the power of political commitment at the highest levels, that meeting kicked off numerous training projects and sharing of expertise between the U.S. and S.A. that continue to this day in areas including criminal justice, health, education, trade and agriculture. One of the most notable successes emanated from a discussion about the need to boost the capacity of government departments, universities, and policy research groups – or think tanks – to generate information and analysis to advance South Africa’s macroeconomic agenda. This gave birth to the Mandela Economics Scholars Program (MESP) funded by USAID. Altogether, 117 Mandela Scholars were awarded bursaries between 1996 and 2003 to study in economics programs in the U.S. and South Africa to earn masters and PhD degrees. The testimony of one alumnus represents the experience of the majority: “I am employed as a Mandela Economics Scholars Program (MESP) awardees meet with their icon before they depart for their studies in the United States. Scholars are required to return to South Africa and work within the Public Service. (Photo: Reverie Zurba) American Support 1986–2009 33 Principal Agricultural Economist because of my expertise in research and also that I have a masters degree, which I could not have achieved if it was not through the assistance of this scholarship. Now I am able to make a sound and supportive developmental contribution that brings value in the agricultural sector of South Africa.” Another economics skills-building program focused on the University of the Western Cape Center for Economics Research and Training (CERT). A total of 55 students were awarded bursaries at the masters and honors levels to study economics between 1999 and 2003. In another program, fifty participants earned masters degrees in macroeconomics in an intensive one-year program at Williams College in the U.S. In coordination with the SAG, USAID used different models to solve skills shortages that were impeding educational advancement. One such area was the shortage of education economists. In response, USAID provided senior education economist Dr. Luis Crouch to work with the University of the Witwatersrand to design and implement an Applied Education Economics Planning (AEEP) Course completed by 44 rising mid-level South African professionals who were able to upgrade their skills without leaving their posts. This was an important consideration since 1999–2001 was a period of intense policy formulation and implementation when staff could not be easily spared. Today most are in key positions in education administration and research. A program of bursaries for parliamentarians to do masters level studies in economics was arranged at the University of Stellenbosch in 2001–3. For education officials of the government, postgraduate education bursaries were provided to the national Department of Education and some provincial departments. A program for government employees made available 39 bursaries in 2002 in a two-year masters-level program at the University of the Witwatersrand. The success rate was not optimal in these programs, attributed to the pressure of work because all participants continued in full-time employment. Other USG-Sponsored Scholarship Programs. Currently, the U.S. Embassy administers other programs for South Africans to pursue university degrees in the U.S. One program provides for full-time study for qualified candidates at U.S. masters-degree programs in the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Candidates are required to teach English and are committed to work at a South African institution after completing their degree. This program carries on from a program that ran from 1986 to 2007, the Summer English Teaching Institute (SETI), that sponsored many South Africans for a six￾week intensive course at participating U.S. universities. Since 1953, more than 1,500 South Africans and Americans have participated in the J. William Fulbright Program, which gives grants for research, teaching, curriculum development, and masters and doctoral studies in a wide variety of fields. It enables grantees to meet and work not only with people of the host countries, South Africa and the United States, but also with nationals from around the world in classrooms, libraries, and social environments. The main goal of the Fulbright Program in South Africa, in accordance with the worldwide Fulbright mandate, is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of South Africa, through educational, cultural, and professional PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 34 exchanges. With similar aims, the Hubert H. Humphrey Program is a mid-career program where South Africans study and gain professional experience in the U.S. Short-Term Skills Building Programs Upgrading Skills in Teaching and Other Critical Fields. Based on feedback from South African participants, beginning in 1990 USAID began offering more short-term training and internships. South Africans in the U.S. who had completed their long-term degree training could do internships to enhance their employability and effectiveness upon returning home; these were managed by the U.S. NGO Africare. Another short-term program targeted working leaders and professionals. One of the participants in this program was Mr. Mbhazima Shilowa, one of several South African union officials on a leadership enhancement program when he was appointed secretary general of COSATU. He later became Premier of Gauteng Province. One of the larger early grants was to the Teacher Opportunity Programs to support 19 teacher training centers in Orange Free State and QwaQwa. Skills upgrading for primary and secondary English teachers in KwaZulu-Natal by the English Language Educational Trust received support as well. Others receiving support included teacher training programs of the Independent Teachers’ Resource Center, Project Matriculation (PROMAT), English Language Materials and Programs (ELMAP) in the Orange Free State, and In-Service Education and Training (INSET) serving farm schools in rural Eastern Cape. Several South African NGOs were funded to provide career counseling to blacks students, an area in which blacks were under-served by apartheid education policies. A partial list of grantees included the Career Information Center in Durban, the South African Vocational Guidance Education Association, the Education Information Center in Johannesburg, the Soweto Career Center, and the Tembisa Career Center serving major black townships adjoining Johannesburg. USAID also supported associations that provided support to black education and built their own capacity and the members they served, including the Bursary Council of South Africa, the Union of Democratic University Staff Associations, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the National Professional Teachers’ Organization of South Africa, the Cape Teachers’ Professional Association, and the Union of Democratic University Staff. These organizations provided short-term professional development programs. Apart from the unions, as the SAG transformed and focused on teacher training, early childhood development and skills development most of the organizations listed above ceased to exist. Primary Health Care Training Models. A U.S. firm, Medical Sciences for Health (MSH), was the contractor that worked alongside South African counterparts on the EQUITY Project, an integrated primary health care strategy in the Eastern Cape Province from 1997–2000. EQUITY focused on two large urban centers, the former homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, and rural areas where malnutrition, tuberculosis, parasites, and high maternal and child mortality prevailed. Standardized training in 650 clinics was aimed at cost savings and better American Support 1986–2009 35 quality of care to chronically under-serviced beneficiaries. Training also targeted community structures, including volunteer health workers and mobile outreach in essential areas such as immunization, family planning, tuberculosis, and control of sexually transmitted diseases. This is an example of training funded by other USAID/S.A. budgets; in this case, improved healthcare was the target. EQUITY coordinated with MESAB to provide the training. Equal Opportunities for Women in Skills Training. Because gender equity is a goal of all USAID programming, scholarship and short-term training administrators were required to seek out women candidates. However, it was not possible to reach parity due to the highly disadvantageous and marginalized status of women that existed in South African society, especially for black women. A 1994 evaluation by the EOC reported that women comprised 33 percent of EOC bursars, “less than some donors’ goals but on par with black women’s representation nationally in tertiary education at the time. Gender parity in higher level education has been elusive.” (Cook, et al., 1994, p. 25) The SAIRR reported a 40 percent female uptake of scholarships. By 2006 women were enrolled in equal or greater numbers than men in higher education, though not on par in technical fields. USAID and the National DOE would find out in subsequent programs in support of HDIs at the tertiary level that gender parity would be a challenge continuing into the new millennium and up to today. Chapter Four describes the Women in Higher Education Executive Leadership (WHEEL) Program, instituted in 2006 to redress the persistently low numbers of women in executive positions in higher education. Helping NGOs Fill the Gaps During the Education Transition Leading up to 1994, USAID/S.A. funded education NGOs whose work involved a range of activities in anticipation of a new democratic dispensation, including: formulating education policy options; developing alternative formal and informal education models; provision of ABET; early childhood development; and curriculum development. By 1986 the South African NGO sector had grown to about 50,000 organizations that were a critical component of the struggle against apartheid. A number of the NGOs were large, national organizations with established administrative and operational infrastructures, usually supported by a combination of national and international donor agencies. Prominent among the international donors was the American-based Ford Foundation. In addition, there was a large number of grassroots, activist anti-apartheid CBOs that usually struggled for financial backing. Many of the CBOs and NGOs supported before 1994 served underprivileged communities with alternative education services that were otherwise unavailable, including: Child Academy Programs, Community Child Development Center, EduSupport Services Trust, the Educare Development Unit, and Handspring Trust for Puppetry. As Chapter Two will describe, NGOs later remained in partnerships with USAID and the DOE to implement a variety of projects in curriculum reform, teacher training, adult literacy, and areas that supplemented government services. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 36 Support to Early Childhood Development (ECD). Approximately 40 percent of young children in South Africa grow up in conditions of abject poverty and neglect, and are most at risk of infant death, low birth weight, stunted growth, poor adjustment to school, increased grade repetition and school dropouts. Aware of these statistics, in 2001, Education Minister Professor Kader Asmal launched an education white paper on ECD, advancing a previous interim policy paper and noting that ECD was another critical education subsector for the government. (DOE, 2001) USAID was one of the largest donors to ECD programs in impoverished communities before 1994. Because of the inability to pay for private ECD services, only about 10 percent of black children had access to preschool education, compared to 30 percent of white children. USAID supported the Association for Training and Resources in Early Education (TREE) during a period that allowed it to consolidate and grow. Between 1989 and 1994, USAID grants to TREE totaled about 25 percent of its budget. TREE was founded by South Africans in 1985 as an independent, nonprofit, nonracial NGO providing training to build capacity of educare (another term for ECD) staff, committees, and parents’ groups. It also aimed to mobilize resources to support quality ECD for disadvantaged children who had been victimized by the apartheid system, through holistic development, support, health, and welfare. Today it is recognized as the largest Early Childhood Development Resource & Training Agency in KwaZulu-Natal, serving Durban, Port Shepstone, Pietermaritzburg, and Ladysmith. The organization has played a major role in creating an awareness of ECD amongst disadvantaged communities as well as lobbying for the provision of greater ECD resources from the state and private sector. Another example of USAID’s support is for the Early Learning Resource Unit (ELRU) in Cape Town. Over a four-year period, USAID provided close to 20 percent of its budget, for developing alternative models of educare, materials, and staff development, and training in rural areas serving low-income, historically disadvantaged communities. Like TREE, ELRU has contributed to the development of policies for ECD. Along with another USAID-funded NGO called Grassroots, these NGOS explored alternative cost structures providing for “basic,” “adequate,” and “high-quality” levels of educare. Also in the year preceding the 1994 elections, USAID supported the National Education Policy Investigation exercise, in which leading South African anti-apartheid educationists developed policy recommendations based on analyses, for the transformation of all post-apartheid education and training. ECD was one of the education areas covered. Support to NGOs decreased over time as USAID entered into a bilateral relationship with the new SAG in 1994. It came as a shock for many NGOs since their growth had been encouraged by USAID support, though most of them had existed before USAID support. USAID sponsored income-generating skills training for many of the NGOs it had funded. As a result, the TREE Shop began selling educational toys to help support the organization; it still exists today. American Support 1986–2009 37 The ability of South African ECD organizations was thus enhanced as they later contributed to debate and formulation of the governments’ policies and pilots for the reception year program (pre-kindergarten in the U.S.). These policies and implementation modalities have evolved over the years. As of 2009, the national goal is that by 2010 all children entering Grade 1 will have participated in an accredited reception year program, making use of grants-in-aid to primary schools and subsidies to selected community-based ECD sites (the types that USAID had funded). Nevertheless, the OECD 2008 review of South African education observed that ECD and adult literacy were education subsectors where South Africa lags behind. A major education innovation that has mitigated this gap has been the educational TV and radio shows Takalani Sesame Street; it is described in the next chapter. Research and Community Input to New Education Policies. Education research to prepare new government policies such as those described above for ECD received extensive USAID support via NGOs. The Education Foundation Trust, for example, was an independent body that before 1994 provided support for: policy modeling, dialogue, and conferences; information flows with university Education Policy Units; conducted original research; and developed an education database. After 1994, the work begun with the Education Foundation later would feed into the Education Management Information System of the DOE. Another grantee, the National Education Coordinating Committee through its National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI), brought together academics and practitioners for working groups in the areas of vocational training, teacher training, administration, and systems. Education Policy Units at universities and the Center for Higher Education Transformation were other organizations that received funding for policy research as well as briefings with stakeholders, including the new democratic government, and information dissemination. Success Factors: S.A. Staff and NGOs South African Staff Was Key to USAID Success. South African staff occupied a significant place in USAID/S.A., disproportionate to their numbers, ” …assisting the Mission in understanding and working effectively within the complicated and rapidly changing context of South African politics,” according to the evaluation of USAID/S.A. in 1994 (Aurora Associates International & Creative Associates International, 1995, p. 35). This would continue to be the case up to today for the education team. Senior officials interviewed in the National DOE cited the continuity of South African staff as a key factor in the success of the partnership with USAID. Over the years, most senior South African staff of USAID/ S.A. went on to work for the National DOE or in other senior positions in the education sector. There appears to have been a mutual benefit, both to the success of USAID programs because of the credibility and communication links they made possible, and the enhancement of individuals’ skills that were advantageous to South African institutions when they moved on to those positions. South African NGOs Both Enhanced USAID Programs and Improved Their Own Capabilities. A similar enhancement of capacity occurred in the NGO sector as with South African USAID staff described above. South African NGOs, as prime or subcontractors PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 38 or grantees administering USAID programs, brought their credibility and knowledge of South Africa. USAID support of NGOs program had three mandates: to fund activities that produced tangible services and benefits to apartheid’s victims; to help build black leadership and enhance the organizational capacity of often fledgling and embattled NGOs; and to ensure that grants and contracts were competently and efficiently administered, in accordance with the Mission’s responsibilities for stewardship of U.S. public funds. On the latter point, many South African organizations complained about the stringent reporting requirements of USAID funding; however, nearly every recipient said that they had improved their capacities and skills as a consequence of complying to those reporting and accountability measures. Exchange Rate Windfalls Boosted Scholarship Numbers. The volatility of the rand to dollar exchange rate worked in favor of the scholarship programs. For example, in 1991, the exchange rate was $1–ZAR2.88. In 1998, it was ZAR6.13, and by 2003, it was ZAR7.45. USAID allowed South African grantees to reprogram the excess funds resulting from grants that were originally denominated in dollars to fund additional students. The result was more students, and students who could be supported for more years. Later, as budgets were readjusted, followed by strengthening of the rand, there was a different problem – budget shortages. However, students who were in the pipeline were not affected due to the USAID forward funding guidelines when supporting long term training programs. The Impact of USAID’s Early Skills Building Programs U.S./South Africa policy has been a powerful force for contributing to South Africa’s progress. The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, followed by the South African Democratic Transition Support Act of 1993, were the foundations for first, visionary support to South Africans that would have long-term impact, and subsequently, the ongoing partnership with the new government of South Africa. It reversed what many Americans had seen as the wrong policy. The USAID system of long-term projects providing umbrella funding for a variety of activities with clearly defined goals and objectives enabled a continuity of support from 1986 until today in 2009, while also permitting flexibility when the environment required it. The successes in achieving the USAID objectives of “increasing the cadre of qualified black professionals and technicians for the post-apartheid society; where blacks will play a central role in managing the multifaceted economy of the country” was possible because of the rich array of South African educational institutions and NGOs that worked with USAID. While human resource development opportunities had been skewed against the African majority, there were many talented and committed South Africans of all racial groups in a vibrant civil society that were already in place with clear missions and objectives. USAID resources helped some of those organizations to do more. Most administrators of USAID scholarship funds for South Africans said in their reports that the demand always outstripped the supply. Long term study opportunities for South Africans have evolved to specialized programs in areas not available in South Africa. American Support 1986–2009 39 Americans can be proud of the many scholarship programs for South Africans to which USAID provided significant funding. They made a strategic contribution to improving the skills of previously disadvantaged South Africans to lead their nation. II. TRANSFORMING BASIC EDUCATION: BALANCING QUALITY AND QUANTITY USAID Responding to S.A. Education Priorities By 2008, the education situation in South Africa was assessed in Reviews of National Policies for Education: South Africa, conducted by a team of experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): It is clear that vision, idealism and high-minded concern for a greatly reformed education system were very much in evidence among legislators and policymakers in the early years. However, it is also clear that there was an underestimation of the time, resources and qualitative teaching force required to make operational the policy aspirations in the schoolrooms throughout the country. Much research has indicated how difficult and complex it is to achieve major educational change, even in countries where the circumstances are much more favorable than they were in South Africa. Legislation and regulation could not ensure the transformation of education that was required. Experience has shown that sustained, multifaceted resourcing and supportive action are also required and the timescale for transformation is much longer than was initially anticipated. (p. 127) The role of USAID as a partner to the SAG has been to help with the type of “sustained, multi-faceted resourcing and supportive action” called for in the OECD assessment of South African education. USAID/S.A. worked in partnership with the National Department of Education (DOE) from the 1994 elections to 2009 to jointly implement a series of projects in primary, further, higher and adult education. Bilateral projects were used to develop policies and systems, and to enhance capacity, in the areas of curriculum, governance, school-funding norms, quality assurance, and HIV and AIDS; also to construct schools to reduce the backlog. Unilateral activities were of the type described in the previous chapter, funding scholarships for HDPs through numerous local NGOs. Other USG unilateral funding support would supplement the bilateral programs by providing scholarships to orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), especially girls, piloting an innovative approach to producing supplementary reading materials in South Africa’s 11 home languages, and supporting the successful rollout of educational programs on radio and television to enhance classroom instruction and reach more students. Officials of the S.A. DOE say that this type of sustained resourcing provided by USAID was valuable to the DOE as it addressed all of the simultaneous challenges it faced. This was despite the fact that the SAG has expended 5.4 percent of GDP since 1994, comparable to other middle-income countries. However, the OECD report observed that “because PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 40 of the strategic importance of education for South Africa’s development, as well as the historic backlogs and inequalities” a target of 6 percent was recommended. (OECD, 2008, p. 140) The South African Democratic Transition Support Act of 1993 conveyed the commitment of the U.S. Congress that following support of the transition to democracy which was the objective of the CAAA of 1986, the United States should “support a consolidation of democracy” and continue “to provide assistance to support the transition to a nonracial democracy in South Africa.” The S.A. Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) was the policy of the African National Congress administration that came to power in 1994. It was an integrated socioeconomic policy framework to mobilize the country’s people and resources “toward the final eradication of apartheid and the building of a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist future.” Human resource development was one of the five major program areas. With the goal of putting South Africans at the center of “new job opportunities requiring new skills, and in managing and governing our society,” the plan made transformed education and training a crucial objective of the policy. It stated that it aimed to reform education “from primary to tertiary level, from child care to advanced scientific and technological training… it focused on young children, students and adults… with training in formal institutions and at the workplace... education and training should be available to all from cradle to grave.” Aligned with the priorities of the SAG was USAID’s second strategic objective (out of five) at the time: Transformed Education System Based on Equity, Access, and Quality. Improvements in the South African education system were deemed essential to advance the Mission’s goal aligned to the SAG objective: “Sustainable Transformation.” The USAID desired result contained four intermediary objectives: a) Policies of transformation of the Education System enacted and approved; b) Responsive, functional organizational systems; c) Adequate qualified human resources base; and d) Functional infrastructural capacity to deliver services in place. Accomplishing these intermediary objectives in concert with SAG efforts and other partners would contribute to improvements in access, quality, equity, and cost efficiency – the indicators of a transformed education system. Significantly, the Strategic Plan of USAID of 1996 was to cover the period from 1996 to the Mission’s planned exit from South Africa in 2003 to 2005. The Plan stated: This is a “graduation” or “completion” strategy. Its goal is support for sustainable transformation in South Africa. This support is intended to go further than short-term support but not as far as long-term sustainable development support. The latter is not targeted because South Africa has substantial resources to address its problems over the long term. Short-term transition support is not seen as sufficient because of the major problems South Africa faces in uplifting the majority population that suffered under apartheid. (USAID, 1996, p. 29) At that time neither USAID nor the SAG realized the intractability of the education transformation challenges that S.A. faced. Due to changes in the U.S. funding environment, American Support 1986–2009 41 and based on program developments in S.A., the strategy was adjusted in 2003. As USAID and the DOE worked together from 1994 on, it became apparent that efforts were more likely to achieve interim milestones than final results. USAID operated in South Africa using a series of “projects” that were administrative vehicles for funding numerous activities with an overarching purpose that was negotiated and signed off with the SAG (from 1994 onward). In 1994 the newly elected democratic government and USAID signed a Primary Education Bilateral Agreement to work together to improve the quality of education, formalizing a partnership for transformation and development of the education system. The agreement identified four of the poorest provinces to receive assistance: Northern Province (now Limpopo), KwaZulu-Natal, the Northern Cape, and the Eastern Cape. Restriction to specific provinces was initially contentious: South Africans wanted all provinces to be included for the purposes of equity. USAID was concerned about how to focus its available resources in order to achieve discernable results. Successive project-funding vehicles supported USAID’s partnerships with the SAG, specifying USAID project funding and SAG contributions. Four Bilateral Agreements were signed for each of the pre-existing project vehicles in 1995. The Education Support and Training (ESAT) Project focused on adult basic education and training. The Support to Tertiary Education Project (STEP) was for youth development, tertiary education, secondary education and further education and training. STEP, though with a tertiary-level objective was also used to help with the Dinaledi National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (NMSTE) activities and youth development activities through the National Youth Commission. South Africa Basic Education Reconstruction (SABER), focused on basic and primary education. The Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP) focused on higher education institutions. In 2000 USAID signed an additional Bilateral Agreement with the Department of Labor to focus on skills and workforce development issues. The four Bilateral Agreements with the Department of Education were modified with time to respond to emerging needs and available resources with the current focus on HIV and AIDS and skills development in 2000, and beginning in 2005, all four bilateral agreements with the DOE were combined into one. The USAID method of having a number of funding vehicles in place allowed project responsiveness in an environment that often changed quickly due to the years of intense policy formulation, implementation, and revision. By 2008, despite large investments in resources and carefully designed policies, education results and outcomes – “even taking account that the education terrain remains deeply scarred by Apartheid” – were unacceptable to South Africans. The DOE reports in its own background report to the OECD education review (p. 145): • “Learners” levels of achievement are very poor… Of the 12 African countries participating in the 1999 [UNESCO] Monitoring Learning Achievement project, South Africa scored the lowest average in numeracy, the fifth lowest in literacy, and the third lowest in life skills.” • “School infrastructural backlogs are huge…” PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 42 • The new National Curriculum “…was criticized as over-elaborate, unrealistic, and too resource dependent for a context of poor schools and poorly trained teachers.” • The shortage of teachers is growing, and “…many educators are ill prepared to teach the grades they are assigned to teach. Many come late to school, leave early, do not explain or provide feedback on homework, and spend too much time on administrative tasks.” • “School Governing Bodies (SGBs) in former disadvantaged schools often function poorly…. However, the reverse is true in the case of SGBs in more advantaged schools.” • “The cost of education for most households has dramatically increased since 1994.” USAID has undertaken a series of projects with the SAG to focus its resources on making progress on all of these issues. For the teaching and learning-related challenges above, USAID was assigned to help launch the Dinaledi project, and took primary project management responsibility for the DDSP and its successor, the IEP. There were numerous complementary projects supported bilaterally or unilaterally by USAID, including school construction. Also, USAID and the SAG undertook activities addressing an overarching common concern – the negative effects of HIV and AIDS on learning and teaching. Throughout, policy formulation cooperation was nurtured by the relationship that had started with the new democratic government and USAID’s familiarity with the issues and the stakeholders. Each of these three areas of cooperation is addressed in turn: improving teaching and learning, education policy cooperation, and HIV and AIDS and education. Improving Education Delivery at the School Level The DOE introduced the District Improvement Program (DIP) in all provinces in 1999. With this attention, the DOE was responding to a growing understanding of the importance of the district’s role as an intermediary between the central education office and the schools. There was ample evidence that the approach of individual, one-off initiatives directed at a particular aspect of the school’s work or a particular constituent grouping in the school with the intention of bringing about meaningful and sustainable innovation and change was not working. As in other parts of the world, the argument was for a holistic approach to schools – their structure, people, business processes, values, and culture – taking an organizational development approach to the system and many players who in the end brought about improvement of learner performance. Responding to international trends and SAG thinking, other external funders and NGOs started district development projects, including Imbewu in the Eastern Cape, funded by the British Department for International Development (DfID) and the Quality Learning Program (QLP) in all nine provinces funded by the National Business Trust of South Africa. The DOE and USAID started the DDSP with Provincial DOEs – the four provinces specified in the Bilateral Agreement in 1998 – managed by contractor RTI International. Principal subcontractors were the Joint Education Trust (now Joint Education Services), the Center for Education Policy Development, and Khulisa Management Services. In turn, implementation was by consortia of South African grantees in each of the four provinces. American Support 1986–2009 43 The lead agents and the projects were Media in Education Trust (MIET) in KwaZulu￾Natal (Mthonjeni Project); Link Community Development (LCD) in the Northern Cape (Kimberley Thusanang Project); Management of Schools Training Project (MSTP) in Limpopo (Fanang Diatla Project); and READ Educational Trust in Eastern Cape (Isithole Project). The DOE objective in the DIP was to implement the policy frameworks around governance and curriculum that had been put in place in the first years of the new government by defining the roles of district education offices in providing support to schools. Aligned to the DIP, the goal of DDSP was “improved quality of educational delivery for Grades 1–9 (basic education)” in DDSP target areas. The sub-goals were 1) improving curriculum practices; 2) improving district and school management; 3) enhancing school governance; and 4) developing theory and best practices for whole school and whole district development. The Whole District strategy was to facilitate the development of approaches, practices, and structures to model good district organization and effective school support. The heart of school reform in S.A. was the comprehensive curriculum change to a progressive model of education based on the principles of Outcomes-Based Education. In essence, this curriculum called for a form of learner-centered education which placed the teacher in the role of facilitator. Having been introduced in January 1998 at the advent of the DDSP, all education stakeholders were grappling with a total paradigm shift in teaching and learning as they had known it. The DDSP provided a large injection of resources to help make the necessary adjustments in participating schools and districts. The average improvement was 21 per cent in all learning areas except science in the Integrated Education Project that focused on upgrading teachers’ skills with ongoing monitoring and support by district staff. (Photo: Reverie Zurba) PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 44 The evaluation report of DDSP in April 2003 found that project progress varied widely among the four provinces for a variety of reasons. Their reasons included the NGO grantee￾based design and their different implementation approaches – some working more with schools, others more with districts; though oriented toward schools with disadvantaged populations, ‘disadvantage’ varied from isolated farm schools to relatively better resourced schools to large multi-grade classes; ongoing provincial and district reorganization causing changes in district teacher numbers, configuration, and staffing; numerous provincial and district staff vacancies; and lack of time for educators to practice what they learned in training. Nevertheless, there were many positive outcomes of DDSP. One was that the varying implementations reflected in the experimental project designs resulted in adaptations based on the lessons learned in each province. Some of the adaptations had “best practices” potential, such as: • educators consistently attended training, had support, and were implementing OBE • children were enjoying the small groups and undertaking their own projects • effective models of school support • successful models for training SGBs that equipped them to be awarded Section 21 status • increased focus on developing key human resources such as district managers and key teachers • using a cluster concept to take training and other school support to the schools • using Assessment Resource Banks and box libraries to increase materials available to schools. According to the evaluation, the areas of DDSP that required more consolidation included: • leadership development at provincial, district, and school levels, including parent and SGB training • instituting self-sustaining curricular and classroom changes through stronger district school support teams and systems, and reviewing assessment methods such as the Grade 3 test, to justify its validity as compared to alternatives including new national systemic tests pending for Grades 3, 6, and 9 • developing and introducing HIV and AIDS components into the program with schools serving as agents for assisting local governments and communities to help prevent HIV transmission and provide social support for those affected by the disease. South African implementing NGOs interviewed for this review indicated that DDSP was overly “diffuse” and ambitious, and that while the specified performance targets were valid, there was not enough consideration of the socioeconomic issues that impeded progress. They pointed to the importance of stakeholder involvement in project design, not just implementation. One commented, “When the midterm results showed that the results were worse than the beginning, it was not simply a matter of input-output. By focusing only on results rather than the underlying reasons, then you’ll have some NGOs thinking American Support 1986–2009 45 they have to train to the test.” Later, she felt there were appropriate design changes in the successor IEP, based on the realities found on the ground. Interim to the advent of the IEP, the SAG had published its NSMSTE in 2001 (see section that follows on Dinaledi). Consequently, the overarching goal of the redesigned primary education improvement program, consistent with SAG priorities, was “improved learner performance in numeracy, literacy, mathematics, and science.” IEP used lessons learned from the DDSP for a more focused approach, capitalizing on successful methods in the two major implementation tracks: • Teacher training focused on improving teacher content knowledge, the ability to develop and apply continuous assessment, and teaching according to the 2002 Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) that had streamlined and strengthened Curriculum 2005 (introduced in 1998) while continuing to be committed to OBE. To gain these skills and others in order to develop and use classroom materials for supporting learner-centered education, a 20-day master teacher program was launched, followed by cascade workshops at the cluster level. Other essential elements were regular school-based support, and monitoring and training of and by subject advisors. • School management and governance centered on regular training and on-site support of school principals and SMT members by project personnel; district officials conducted joint school support visits whenever possible. The major achievement of IEP was a 20 percent improvement in learner performance across all learning areas and provinces. During the 2004–2008 life of the main project, IEP reported that it reached 14 percent of all Grade 1–6 learners and 8 percent of all public ordinary schools in the four target provinces – an estimated 513,473 learners in 1,284 participating schools at an average cost of ZAR304 per learner ($45 at that time). Specifically, literacy improved by 17 percent, numeracy leaped 38 percent, mathematics improved by 24 percent, Science did not improve overall. As important were the good practices that were identified in order for the achievements to be sustained by the DOE. They can be grouped as follows: • Teacher skills, support, and classroom management – Strong teachers should teach in early grades. This helps to lessen the scholastic backlog at Grade 6. While this might seem obvious, often managers must make decisions about how to sequence upgrading programs and resources. – Content knowledge upgrading for teachers is essential. IEP demonstrated how the poor content skills of many teachers could be improved, but it required substantial inputs of training and follow-up support. – Time-on-task plans and pacesetters should be instituted for teachers, and supported and monitored by the DOE. Otherwise, too little time in most classrooms was being spent on reading and numeracy tasks. – Learner support material (practice workbooks, textbooks, science equipment) are key to improving learner performance. Most classrooms had virtually no teaching PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 46 materials and too often teachers did not use them when they were available. While there was a real-world focus on instructing teachers to produce their own teaching materials, it is notable that science – the subject with the largest need for educational resources – had the least improvement in teacher improvement in content knowledge and learner performance. – Cluster workshops and sharing promote good practices. The cluster approach was effective when there was consistent training and follow up. The approach was less appropriate for areas with distance and historical and language barriers. – Master teacher training should be targeted to SMT members and have strict selection criteria to identify stronger teachers. • School & District Management including SGBs – Clear guidelines are required for schools on how to develop and implement various assessments, planning tools, and policies. – A phased change-over of outgoing SGB members helps ensure continuity. – School-level support and monitoring by the district/province are essential for sustained progress. The key challenge for the IEP was “the low levels of participation by district officials in project activities throughout the life of the project, due to competing work commitments, lack of or unclear delegation of responsibility for IEP, and the large numbers of unfilled positions within the Department.” (RTI International, 2008, p. 13) This echoed challenges during the DDSP related to human resource and organizational issues at the school, district, and provincial levels. Although IEP engaged and worked effectively with unions in implementing projects, when IEP progress was impeded because of strikes or disputes over teacher compensation, they were systemic rather than project issues. The other major issue was the socioeconomic conditions of learners in the poorest and most rural communities that impacted negatively on learner performance and their ability to learn. IEP Monitoring and Evaluation Lessons Learned – The Integrated Education Project generated copious amounts of performance data. Like other USAID-funded programs, the rich data and methodical reports provide an excellent record for reviews of this type. Also, apart from the executive summaries, across all USAID projects there was usually detailed reporting from and about South African participants – teachers and officials – that gave valuable insights into the strengths and challenges of these programs at the individual level. IEP Pre-Service Education – In addition to the in-service training, through the Africa Education Initiative (AEI) of USAID/Washington, IEP had a pre-service dimension that funded 441 serving teachers to study for higher-level mathematics and science qualifications at IEP partner institutions. They included the University of Fort Hare (Eastern Cape), University of Zululand (KwaZulu-Natal), National Institute for Higher Education (Northern Cape), and the University of Limpopo and University of Venda (Limpopo). Recipients pursued the Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE), Bachelor of Education (Honors), and Bachelor of Education/Bachelor of Science degrees, with the aim of increasing the numbers of qualified math and science teachers in rural and disadvantaged areas. American Support 1986–2009 47 The model used by the IEP demonstrated that there can be dramatic improvement in learner performance, when strong school management drives a well-structured teaching program. The same applies to training to improve the effectiveness of SGBs. Improving Reading through Action Research Pilot Activities: SMRS and BTL. The DOE requested the IEP to pilot a technique that held promise for South African primary school student learning: the Systematic Method for Reading Success (SMRS). A leader in the method from the University of California at Berkeley teamed with the DOE and the Molteno Institute to conduct a pilot in 2009 to demonstrate the SMRS technique, which enables first grade students to acquire foundational reading and writing skills in their first year in their mother tongue. North West, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo Provinces participated. The pilot applied the systematic instructional method in the low-resource, large class size context of S.A., allowing for under-prepared teachers, creating inexpensive materials keyed to local culture and linguistics. From 2006–8, the Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy conducted a pilot on their Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL) technique which also uses a mother tongue-based approach to rapidly develop reading skills. Both pilots address SAG policy provisions for mother tongue instruction and international evidence that initial mother tongue instruction later promotes better learner performance in a second language. The DOE and Provincial DOEs have the results of both pilots – both documented acceleration in reading skills – as inputs to further implementation decisions. Dinaledi and the National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (NSMSTE) In conceptualizing how to tackle dismal national performance in mathematics and science, the Deputy Minister of Education at the time, Mosibudi Mangena (himself a mathematician), focused on the strengths of the African majority by thinking back to the school, teachers, and students in disadvantaged communities where he had grown up; “Even with limited materials and resources, there were good teachers and students in some of those schools, despite apartheid,” he said when interviewed for this report. That recollection of those who nevertheless found a way to shine – like “stars” (Dinaledi) – rendered the name for the strategy. The NSMSTE is the flagship strategy of the DOE to increase the number of mathematics and science graduates in response to the socioeconomic needs of the South African economy. Dinaledi was born out of intensive consultations with the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST), and responded directly to a call by President Thabo Mbeki in the State of the Nation address of 2001. With DACST as the overseer of South Africa’s many centers of excellence in science and technology, with the DOE, they were very mindful of the intellectual requirements to sustain those assets, and the necessity to nurture that talent in all sectors of the society for the purpose of social cohesion. They devised three major thrusts for the Dinaledi strategy: • Raise participation and performance of historically disadvantaged learners, especially girls, in Senior Certificate Mathematics and Physical Science PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 48 • Provide high-quality mathematics, science, and technology education for all learners taking the first GET Certificate and FET Certificate and • Increase and enhance human resource capacity to deliver quality mathematics, science, and technology education (recruitment, retention, pre- and in-service training). The DOE mobilized a public-private partnership (PPP) that included the national and provincial departments, the private sector, and international donors. The Council of Education Ministers (CEM) approved the selection of 102 dedicated high schools for mathematics and science with the criteria that they were 1) under-resourced, well￾performing schools and 2) had potential to improve participation and performance in mathematics and science. Participation was allocated among the provinces and selected by provincial officials for their potential to become “centers of excellence” and be accessible to neighboring schools, as the site for concentrated resources. The DOE requested USAID to assist with the start up of Dinaledi. The contractor for the STEP, U.S. firm Abt Associates, subcontracted local firms to prepare institutional profiles; conduct initial “clinics” on mathematics, science, and technology for educators, principals, and provincial staff; provide micro-science kits for biology, chemistry, and physics and related training; and provide math kits. Abt Associates coordinated a group of service providers that provided training and follow-up support that included the Center for the Advancement of Science and Mathematics Education; the Program for Technological Careers (PROTEC); the Schools Development Unit of the University of Cape Town; and the University of Pretoria (UP). The USAID-supported first phase of Dinaledi functioned as a pilot period, assisting with kicking off the strategy, helping conduct a baseline study in order to later assess performance, and identifying lessons learned as the strategy progressed, notwithstanding early indicators of the potential success for the strategy in the form of improved learner and teacher performance. Those lessons included the need to examine the curriculum delivery continuum issues; potential enrollment imbalances caused by “centers of excellence” attracting learners from nearby schools; tensions between producing high pass rates and increasing participation related to staff resource constraints; human resource capacity expansion issues related to accreditation for skills upgrading of teachers and principals; the BOX 7: GENESIS OF DINALEDI PROJECT “One of the reasons change has taken so long is the inferiority complex so many South Africans inherited from apartheid. But, there were still islands of excellence in townships and villages. Dinaledi was about increasing these islands by providing the necessary support. Helping teachers is key.” – Min. M. Mangena, 4 May 2009. American Support 1986–2009 49 need for advocacy and integration at school, district, and provincial levels, and with multiple stakeholders including professional associations, communities, and partners; and finally, the need to optimize the potential of the PPP at the school, district, and provincial levels. “Dinaledi, Creating Tomorrow’s Stars Today” became the motto for the initial 102 Dinaledi schools. The PPP was formalized with a Memorandum of Understanding. For the 102 schools participating in Dinaledi, Microsoft provided the software and training for school personnel. MultiChoice Africa Foundation supplied DStv (satellite) systems and access to edutainment channels such as Discovery, National Geographic, and the then-new Mindset education channel. MultiChoice Africa Foundation also provided multimedia instruction and learning materials to support teaching and learning, and developed content in collaboration with the DOE and provincial departments. The Telkom Foundation contributed laboratories with 20 computers per school and a connectivity cost subsidy. USAID provided 30 science￾learning kits to all the schools, as well as mathematics learning kits, graphic calculators, and training for teachers to utilize the equipment. USAID funded an overseas short-term study program for teachers to receive and upgrade skills in teaching, advanced curriculum development methods, educational management expertise, and materials development knowledge. USAID also supported in-service training for teachers and school managers under the MOU, and workshops and conferences for school and provincial support personnel. The DOE was the overall coordinator, working with provincial departments to put in place the infrastructure and human resources at schools, including space and security for the equipment, insurance, and assigning teachers for Dinaledi USAID supplied science and math kits and trained teachers to support South Africa’s Department of Education national strategy to improve math, science and technology education. (Photo: Reverie Zurba) PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 50 Science & Technology Leadership Training at Prince George’s Community College (PGCC) in the U.S. This program was a way to fast-track content knowledge skills for science and technology teachers and provincial education department officials in science and technology through an intense 12-week program in the U.S. Between 2003 and 2005, groups of 35–50 educators (185 total) were selected from areas where Dinaledi operated and went through the program. There was a combination of ICT and chemistry training workshops and real-world participation in classrooms in school districts adjacent to PGCC in the U.S. state of Maryland. Participants observed teachers working with students of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. They also explored management, policy and pedagogical topics. Participants highly rated the overall learning experience, and most of them received high marks on their performance in the workshops. The number of Dinaledi schools grew from the initial 102 in 2002 to 500 in 2008. Each year, schools that do not meet performance standards are removed; 77 of the original 102 schools went on to become part of the 400 schools in the next phase. Thus, a growing critical mass of schools that are producing results are being upgraded in equipment, teaching skills, and other support. Now in 2009, Dinaledi has succeeded in its objective of increasing the pool of learners taking mathematics and physical science and promoting performance in these subjects From Pilots to Sustainability: S.A. DOE Initiatives “Many aspects of the District Development Support Project migrated to the DOE’s Foundations of Learning Campaign,” was the observation of a senior DOE manager commenting on the lessons learned from DDSP and IEP. Many aspects of the two pilots reverberate in major quality improvement measures taken by the DOE in 2008–2009. For one, the whole school approach is commonly accepted. The DOE Foundations of Learning Campaign spanning 2008–2011 focuses on primary school as the foundation to establish skills to ultimately improve literacy/language and numeracy/mathematics performance in learners’ academic careers. The campaign set a goal to improve learner performance between 15–20 percent and commits the government to provide the necessary resources. Assessment is a key feature of the campaign, with a plan that tests will be in place for a national evaluation of the literacy and numeracy levels of Grade 3 and 6 learners to determine the impact of the campaign by the end of 2011. The national tests were to be preceded by annual tests of learners. Teachers were allocated specific time-on-tasks weekly for learners to devote to literacy/language (including pleasurable reading and writing), and numeracy/mathematics, with minimum contact teaching hours for each of the foundation (Grades R–3) and intermediate (Grades 4–6) levels of primary school. The Education Minister Naledi Pandor declared at the launch, “We want to be sure that every teacher, every principal, every manager in the education system knows exactly what must be done to provide and track quality education.” (http:// www.info.gov.za/speeches/2008/08100715451001.htm) American Support 1986–2009 51 The DOE Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign was launched in April 2009 in conjunction with the Education Labor Relations Council, indicating their buy-in for the strategy. This Campaign took a system wide approach of collective accountability and community support. Making the point that quality education depends on the actions of all stakeholders – department officials, school principals, teachers, learners, parents, and community members – each was called upon to make a commitment to a “Code for Quality Education,” which describes the responsibilities and discipline required of them (i.e., teachers promised to be on time, well prepared for lessons, teach for at least seven hours every day and improve their own skills and knowledge). Campaign coordinating structures were set up at national, provincial, and regional levels. Another DOE intervention with DDSP and IEP influences is the Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Program (QIDS-UP) launched in 2007. QIDS-UP is a five-year special intervention that prioritizes 15 000 primary schools serving the poorest communities. The focus of the program is to boost learning outcomes by improving school infrastructure, curriculum resources and teacher and school management support to address the impact of poverty in these schools. In 2008/09, 1 000 schools were improved (renovations, water and fencing) at a cost of ZAR76.5 million (approximately $10 million) in seven provinces. School management assessment was also a component through a school self-evaluation and improvement manual to support school managers. During 2008, 11 000 schools received reading books, including reading books in indigenous languages for 2 200 schools. Some of these indigenous language books were developed by the USAID Teaching and Learning Materials Program described further on. With about 370,000 educators (DOE, 2009, p. 5), of which a large number are underqualified, the DOE uses a variety of solutions to improve teaching and learning performance. In addition to retraining existing teachers, the DOE launched a strategy aimed at improving the quality of entrants to the profession with the Funza Lushaka bursary scheme launched in 2007. Its aim was to increase the number of university students studying education. As a result, some institutions reported a doubling of student intake in 2009. (Blaine, May 2009) The teeth to the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign followed in 2009 with the launch of the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU), following extensive research and consultation with unions, NGOs, educators, and other stakeholders. It places the quantity and quality of learning as the purpose of a proposed monitoring and evaluation structure for 26,000 government schools, which will include teachers, principals, district and provincial personnel, and SGBs. The essential nature of accountability by all education roleplayers was a strong learning from the DDSP and IEP activities that the DOE and USAID implemented together with numerous partners. President Jacob Zuma showed the high-level priority that the SAG places on developing a culture of accountability when he addressed school principals from around the country in Durban in August 2009. “Going forward, we must today then agree to strengthen the partnership for the renewal of our education system. It must be a partnership in which we all agree to finally move towards burying the impact of apartheid in education.” He said, “Government as a key partner must continue to spend money on improving infrastructure PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 52 and resources. We want all our schools to be underpinned by a culture of achievement, professionalism and positive results. As said, we must do things differently. This includes promoting a culture of accountability.” Education Technology Innovations Takalani Sesame Street. Among South Africa’s strengths is a highly developed broadcasting system with nearly universal television and radio signal coverage. Capitalizing on this asset is Takalani Sesame Street, one of the most successful education innovations in South Africa, following on its success in America. The award-winning educational program for children had proven effective in promoting literacy, numeracy, and positive social concepts among children in the U.S. and other countries where it was adapted. Sesame Workshop devised a flexible coproduction business model to adapt the program to the educational, economic and broadcast needs of individual countries. For South Africa, the lack of preschool education was the catalyst for a public-private partnership to create a multimedia educational initiative for young children. Following a successful internship program in 1993 supported by the Ford and Kellogg Foundations that trained six black South Africans at the Sesame Workshop in New York, a bilateral agreement between the DOE and USAID funded the development of Takalani Sesame Street – a thoroughly South African version – in African languages. The pioneer initiative included television, radio, and an extensive outreach program to children most in need. Sanlam Life provided the largest sponsorship package in its history. South Africa Airways, the South African Broadcasting Company (SABC), Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation provided additional funding. Takalani Sesame Street premiered in August 2000 and has since become a fixture in South African media. In 2002, a five-year-old Muppet named Kami became South Africa’s most popular AIDS orphan, when the program, funded by USAID, joined the global fight against HIV and AIDS by developing the first HIV and AIDS curriculum for preschool children. Kami is joined by both celebrity and ordinary friends urging the country’s grownups to talk to children about HIV and AIDS. Independent assessments have documented gains in literacy and numeracy skills for children under the age of five. Children from three to six years improved life skills such as positive self-esteem and self-image. Research also found that older children and caregivers increased their knowledge about HIV and AIDS. Other countries in Africa and elsewhere regularly approach USAID and the DOE to learn about the process of initiating the program. DOE and USAID personnel interviewed for this review concur that along with the funding, a major contribution of USAID was to project manage the long process from the idea of a collaboration with Sesame Workshop, through alignment with South African education priorities and curriculum guidelines, to structuring the PPP, to the final product. Mindset Cabanga. USAID also provided the development funds for Mindset Cabanga, a dedicated primary education and teacher training system targeting primary school learners American Support 1986–2009 53 and their teachers (Grades R–7). In 2002, Mindset Cabanga started delivering high-quality content in numeracy, literacy, early mathematics, science, and technology and was installed in 50 schools in South Africa. The content enriches and reinforces the existing South African national primary school curriculum, supplementing class instruction, thus serving as a support to learners and teachers. Mindset goes where learners and teachers often cannot go – such as labs and factories – bringing resources into the classroom via satellite￾broadcast television, print, and computer-based multimedia. Mindset content production has a strong commitment to gender equity. The aim of the Mindset Cabanga Primary School Channel is to improve learners’ (especially girls’) participation in mathematics, science, and technology, and encourages critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It also supports teachers who modify their teaching methodologies from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach, as required by the RNCS. The content developed for the Primary School Channel is stored in a knowledge management system allowing continuous retrieval through the Mindset website. USAID’s Global Development Alliance supported a public-private partnership to fund Mindset Cabanga. School Infrastructure A third of South African schools were in poor or very poor condition according to a 2006 update of the Schools Register of Needs Survey (OECD, 2008, p. 108). Access to acceptable modern infrastructure (school in good repair with water, electricity, and toilet facilities) is worst in rural areas. The majority of South African schools are without key modern education inputs such as libraries, laboratories, and computers. Despite increases in education infrastructure spending because of the huge need, large backlogs persist. In 2006, even after inputs of the SAG, other donors, and USAID, 3,265 or 12 percent of schools Kami is the world’s first HIV-positive Sesame Street Muppet. She is a perky, fun-loving five-year-old with lots of information to share with her inquisitive friends. Kami – from a Tswana tribal word for “acceptance” – is happy although an orphan due to AIDS and promotes talking about issues like social ostracism and grief. (Photo: Takalani Sesame Street) PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 54 were still without water on or near the site. Apart from poor planning, the gaps were exacerbated by natural disasters and unpredictable internal migration patterns. Despite the pressing needs, there were instances of capital budget underspending in education departments (OECD, 2007, p. 106). In 2000, the Limpopo Province was hit by natural disaster, with extensive floods washing away homes, roads, sewers, and schools in areas that were sometimes prone to drought. In response, USAID provided funding for reconstruction of 30 schools damaged by floods in 2001–2. This is an example of the willingness of USAID to respond to a partnership request by the DOE in an emergency situations. In 2002, USAID provided the budget for surveys, testing and construction for bore-holes for 63 schools in Nkandla and Ubombo Districts of KZN Province, and a similar number in Eastern Cape Province. The Bore-Hole Project also provided for funds to be used to install playpumps after the basic installation. Playpumps are an innovative merry-go-round apparatus whereby the force of children pushing and riding on the wheel pumps the water, thereby replacing electricity. The few communities with insufficient water to justify a bore￾hole received hand pumps if there was no potable water source nearby. In many instances the bore-hole was the main water supply for the entire community, not only the school. The USAID Networking Project with provincial DOEs allowed the installation of email and internet connectivity between schools and district and provincial education offices in Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and Limpopo Provinces. The purpose was to improve the efficiency of communication to facilitate activities that supported teaching and learning. The focus was on hard to reach schools and districts in rural areas. Recognizing the infrastructure procurement and management overload at national and provincial levels, the funding by USAID for school infrastructure projects came with assistance to manage service providers. These management tasks supported by USAID were coordinated as needed with provincial departments of Education, Public Works, Water and Forestry, and the South African State Information Technology Agency (SITA). Education Policy and Systems Reform Support: Restructuring & Enabling Access & Quality Improvement There have been three broad policy cycle phases since South Africa’s first democratic elections. Initially there was an intensive focus on policy formation including immediate practical changes. Later there was an implementation phase, constituting the testing of policy. Policy requires reformulation, or revision based on feedback. Implementation has lagged policy in all phases. If implementation capacity faces very tough limitations, policy needs to be reformulated so as to be more easily implementable; therefore monitoring policy implementation is a crucial part of the cycle. The background paper prepared for the 2008 OECD review of South African education by the DOE and the University of the Witwatersrand Education Policy Unit lists six policy American Support 1986–2009 55 levers (OECD, 2008, p. 75) that have been used to transform the South African education system: • the overarching National Qualifications Framework • the overhaul of the curriculum • better education utilization, supply, and training • the institution of school governance procedures • diverse measures aimed at improving the quality of education • equitable education financing mechanisms. With the advent of the new democratic government in 1994, USAID made short-term technical assistance available to national and provincial governments through the SABER Project. This policy assistance continued through to 2009, using successive funding vehicles. Initially this assistance was valuable for the interim period as provinces geared up for the first time to access short-term skills in legal drafting, launching consultative workshops, reviewing systems, and a range of related tasks. USAID assistance funded local and international consultants on a task-order basis as requested by provincial and national governments. Later, under the DDSP and IEP, technical assistance to the national and provincial departments of education was a specific key performance area. As the contractor for DDSP and IEP, RTI International managed the provision of technical assistance. There was the benefit of having a senior advisor throughout – Dr. Luis Crouch, an education economist – as well as numerous other advisors appropriate to each assignment. Another education economist, Mr. Martin Gustafsson also served as a long-term technical assistant to the Department. They brought additional high-level comparative policy analysis and systems development skills to the DOE management team. The main areas of technical assistance included: • Analysis to Inform Planning and Policymaking This included assistance with producing the 2005 Education Investment Review of the impact of pre-tertiary spending in South Africa. A 2005 analysis of “Post Provisioning” examined the linkages between class size, teaching time, and the allocation of publicly funded teaching posts in schools. In 2007, an analysis entitled “Educator Pay In South Africa” was used to guide the department’s design of a radically new teacher pay dispensation. Also in 2007 analysis provided assistance to the DOE in the formulation of provincial targeting for nationally-provided bursaries for the Further Education and Training colleges sector. Technical assistance sometimes consisted of preparation of notes for the DOE on topics including how to leverage central power to control education quality; international best practices to provide quality education to poor children through charter schools or vouchers versus everyday management of issues; and exemptions and funding norms for poor families. Capacity-building was an ongoing feature through frequent discussion groups, workshops, and one-on-one assistance to DOE staff members. Formal capacity-building was also provided to provincial officials via a collaborative program with the Johannesburg-based University of the Witswatersrand, PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 56 the Applied Education Economics and Planning (AEEP) course, which was offered two years in a row for 44 professionals in all. • Policy Formulation There was assistance with research, analysis, or drafting: a program for the transformation of the FET band and later a new funding system for FET colleges; redesign of school funding norms; a system of monetary awards for well-performing schools on the basis of a study of best practices in other countries; and revision of the 2002 teacher allocation policy. Advisors worked closely with colleagues to develop the MOE National Education Information Policy promulgated in 2004. • Systems Development IEP provided substantial support to implementation of the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS) in 2008. LURITS is a web based system that allows all provinces to store data of individual learners and educators and to track learners as they move. From 2005–2007, IEP assisted with the upgrading of the School Administration and Management System (SA-SAMS) that gathers data from schools and informs decision making from circuit to national levels. Advice was also provided for the DOE’s investment in an electronic data capture (EDC) system used by provinces to record survey data. A senior information systems analyst supported the Financial Planning Chief Directorate in the implementation of the National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) at the national and provincial levels. • Specific Tasks – Research and analysis was provided on how HIV and AIDS was impacting the education sector. – Expert feedback was provided to the Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate on overall plans, monitoring indicator lists, special studies (particularly on absenteeism and home schooling), and on the 19 indicators required by the Public Finance Management Act. – In 2009, extensive analysis of household survey and Education Management Information System (EMIS) data was used to produce a report on the cost and options for free education. – Media reports beginning in 2005 claiming that dropout rates and education quality were worse than in the apartheid era were assessed on their objective merit; this analysis was coauthored with DOE personnel. – In 2009, a scientific panel supervised a report on macro-indicators, produced in conjunction with the DOE. In 2003, through USAID technical support, the DOE published its first e-education policy, White Paper on e-Education: Transforming Learning and Teaching through Information and Communication Technologies. The policy addressed issues of the digital divide, seeking to enlist ICT to improve the quality of education and training. It drew on other good practices American Support 1986–2009 57 worldwide to help develop a policy foundation for expanding ICT use in the education and training sector, while seeking to increase the effectiveness of existing investments in education and lowering the costs of delivering education and training services. Another South African strength is the most advanced ICT infrastructure in Africa, though access and use is skewed according to economic class. The question of inequality is starkly illustrated in the policy paper. In 2002, the average percentage nationally of schools with computers for teaching and learning was 39.2 percent. However, it ranged from 88.5 percent and 82.4 percent for schools in Gauteng and the Western Cape respectively (considered to be the best educationally resourced provinces in the country) to lows of 8.8 percent and 13.3 percent in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces. Nevertheless, South Africa had a foundation of ICT experience to build on. However, even the “better off” provinces did not reflect that most teachers are not trained to use computers to enhance their teaching capabilities. The policy marked the beginning of a phased program to support ICT integration in teaching and learning, to build teachers’ and managers’ confidence in the use of ICTs, and to build a framework for competencies for teacher development in the integration of ICTs into the curriculum. Mitigating the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Education “Helping South Africans cope positively with HIV and AIDS is one of the United States Government’s top priorities,” says USAID/S.A. Mission Director, Dr. Carleene Dei. In 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush established the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), committing $15 billion to combat HIV and AIDS in 15 countries in the world, including South Africa. These resources are being used for prevention, treatment, care, and support activities throughout the country working through a network of partners including the SAG. In the education sector strategic plan, addressing HIV and AIDS is among the DOE’s main objectives. HIV and AIDS information and prevention is a cross-cutting theme in all USAID education activities, included in curriculum design, teacher training, materials production, and mentoring for scholarship recipients. USAID supported publication of the report of the 2002 Conference on HIV and AIDS and the Education Sector, recognizing the importance of the topic, and the leadership provided by the DOE and a broad coalition of participants. USAID also funded production and distribution of a key element in any education sector HIV and AIDS strategy: clear policies for schools. The HIV and AIDS Emergency: Guidelines for Educators was published by the DOE in 2000. In 2009 USAID continues to support the education sector in South Africa through a specific focus on HIV Prevention. USAID is supporting the DOE to review options for the provision of continued technical assistance support to strengthen, harmonize and align HIV and AIDS programs in education. This is aimed at improving coverage of funding gaps and introducing joint funding mechanisms for peer education and life-skills programs within the education sector. Technical assistance targets curriculum design, teacher training and PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 58 support for extra-curricular activities with specific focus on HIV and AIDS prevention and strengthening of monitoring and evaluation systems in this area. USAID is assisting the DOE to develop peer education guidelines to be used as a model for implementing peer education activities in schools and to strengthen the implementation of existing HIV and AIDS components of life skills and health education activities. Ongoing Challenges of Basic Education Transformation DOE senior personnel say that a major value of USAID, beyond funding, has been USAID’s willingness to manage pilot projects, modeling the importance of reliable before-and-after data and analysis, and helping to distill lessons learned that the DOE can then utilize as it sees fit. It also provides “intellectual” inputs, as one DOE official put it, “bringing energy to government.” Dinaledi, the National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (NSMSTE) and other campaigns are evidence of how South Africans are devising thoughtful ways to channel resources and support to work within prevailing conditions and how partners like USAID can work with them. A major advantage of education partnerships with the DOE is the ability of the SAG to institutionalize successful interventions through its own resources. American Support 1986–2009 59 III. S.A.’S FUTURE – YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, SKILLS, AND JOBS The Youth, Education, and Unemployment Context When apartheid ended and the Government of Nation Unity (GNU) came to power in 1994, they were keenly aware of the youthfulness of the population: about 40 percent was 19 years of age or younger. There is a direct correlation between the undereducation of youth and national social cohesion and economic performance. An analysis by a working group of Harvard University and South African economists advising the SAG put this relationship in perspective. At present there are about 13 million South Africans working. This represents only about 42 percent of the working age population. In countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe and East Asia at similar levels of development, the proportion is about 50 percent higher. Those currently not working in South Africa are predominantly young, black, women, and are poorly educated. While over 85 percent of those with a university degree are working, fewer than 35 percent of those without a matriculation certificate [high school diploma] have jobs. While employment among men is about 50 percent, it is only 34 percent among women. While 60 percent of those between the ages of 35 and 50 are working, fewer than 25 percent of those between 20 and 25 are. While the unemployment rate of whites is less than 6 percent, it is above 30 percent for Africans. (Hausmann, 2008. p. 3) Despite some progress since the 1994 elections, the unemployment rate is still one of the highest in the world, about 23 percent. In the Education Roadmap, the culmination of a process commissioned by the African National Congress in 2008 to inform ongoing education policy, the connection between education results and the national skills shortage was clear (Development Bank of Southern Africa, Education Roadmap, 2008): • approximately 1/40 of the children that started school in 1995 passed mathematics with a higher grade in the matriculation year (last year of high school) • 93 percent of mathematics passes came from 21 percent of (disproportionately advantaged) schools • poor mathematics results affect key economic skills, e.g. engineering • South Africa has approximately 30 engineers per 100,000 people compared to 255 in the US/ 340 in Australia • skills shortage is a binding constraint on growth and employment creation. A major challenge to tackling the youth education and employment problem has been the overlapping policies and implementation modalities related to multiple sectors, including youth, education (basic, adult, vocational and tertiary levels), labor, as well as trade and industry. Over the period from 1997 to 2009, USAID has made available research, technical assistance, and project implementation services as the SAG has made progress in tackling the daunting challenges of youth and employment, further exacerbated by the current PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 60 economic climate. These partnerships have involved policy support and projects in the youth sector, FET, and ABET, and have been also with the Department of Labor (DOL). Youth Development: Building a Foundation USAID support to the youth sector began in 1997, assisting with helping with logistics through the Support for Tertiary Education Project (STEP) for the vetting and ratification of the National Youth Policy at the National Youth Summit. This set in motion national and provincial involvement facilitating strategic planning that led to the National Youth Service Green and White Papers. These activities were complementary to and often liaised with new structures (that USAID did not fund directly), including the National Youth Service Policy (draft policy funded by USAID) by Umsobomvu Youth Fund, the Interdepartmental Committee on Youth, the South African Youth Council, Young Positive Living Ambassadors (project funded by USAID), the Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Clearinghouse (project funded by USAID taken over by Umsobomvu), and provincial youth development commissions. STEP implemented Youth Activities of the Human Resources Development and Education subcommittee of the U.S.–South Africa Binational Commission (BNC) that had been established in 1995. These activities included providing a programming consultant to build the capacity of NGO Streetwise Children South Africa, supported by the BNC with USAID funding. Further Education and Training was elevated to a branch in the DOE with a Deputy Director General (DDG) for FET after the second democratic elections in 1999. The DOE then requested STEP to assist with the FET/Presidential Urban Renewal Program (FET/ PURP) and later, the Dinaledi Project. These DOE activities represented two different, but overlapping, strategies to tackle improvements in mathematics, literacy, and science using whole school development efforts. The previous chapter describes Dinaledi in greater detail. The Presidential Urban Renewal Program and FET. PURP was launched in 1999 as part of the poverty alleviation program of the SAG and represented the implementation of the new FET policies of the time. PURP was a national initiative focusing resources on selected urban communities in each of the nine provinces. The DDG for FET assigned USAID to two PURP sites, in Thabong in the Free State Province and Galeshewe in the Northern Cape Province, to implement FET teaching and learning mandates. Following needs assessments and preparation of individual school development plans, the contractor Abt Associates and a team of South African service providers – Somerset Educational Company, Phambili Education Projects, PROTEC, Khulisa Management Services, and Aurora Associates – worked with district, provincial and national education officers, to implement comprehensive programs. The strategy included training relevant school and district-level individuals in school management and governance, curriculum delivery, learner performance and learner support services, and engagement of district officers in planning, implementation, and monitoring project activities, designed to increase their project management capacity. The National Institute for Community Education Trust (NICET) produced a baseline study that was used to measure improvements in learning and Grade American Support 1986–2009 61 12 pass rates as a result of improved curriculum delivery and other learner supports. This work was undertaken in schools, with the intention of using the results later in the FET colleges which were being rationalized at the time. By the time that the DOE and USAID cooperated to refine the Dinaledi school model and operational framework leading to the pilot 102 Dinaledi Project schools, many techniques from PURP were transferable to Dinaledi, and Dinaledi inputs were also made available to PURP schools. These inputs included voluntary supplemental classes – termed Spring and Winter Schools – during vacation periods, later changed to Saturdays based on feedback in stakeholder focus groups and discussions; math kits and equipment, identifying which items were most useful; general training and follow-up support in OBE and continuous assessment as well as training related to the new curriculum statements in the key subjects of mathematics, biology, physical science, English, and accounting. The USAID PURP projects achieved most of their main objectives in a short implementation period of three years, but left many of the tasks that were identified in the needs assessment and comprehensive design to be done by the stakeholders involved. The initial year comprised stakeholder consultation, needs assessment, and activity design, followed by less than two years of implementation. In demonstrating the effects of focusing resources on the comprehensive development of FET institutions with full involvement of national, provincial, and district DOEs, apart from the direct benefits to the FET institutions and students involved, the Free State and Northern Cape PURP projects added to the growing body of knowledge and experience about how to improve the FET model. Youth Development Leaders Confront HIV and AIDS. USAID supported concerns of the National Youth Commission at its first joint national and provincial strategic planning Box 8: Who are Youth in S.A.? The National Youth Policy defines youth as any persons between the ages of 14 and 35 years. This is a very broad definition of youth. It is a definition that embraces varied categories of the youth, which have been exposed to different sociopolitical and historical experiences. A 35-year-old youth lived during a period of heightened political conflicts, when he or she was a learner in school, while a 14-year-old youth is growing up [in 2002] in an environment when many of the new reforms and achievements of the struggles are being realized. The concept of youth remains controversial; it is on the whole a social construction, portraying different meanings to different segments of the population. For some people it portrays a violent undisciplined criminal element in society; for others, it connotes an excluded marginalized segment of the population. (http://www.sarpn.org.za/CountryPovertyPapers/SouthAfrica/june2002/mkandawire/page3.php) PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 62 processes that identified HIV and AIDS as a second critical area (after unemployment) for youth services to address by funding a Study Tour to Uganda for Young Positive Living Ambassadors. There South African youth leaders observed and discussed program interventions with their Ugandan peers who had experienced successful results. Another USAID-supported HIV and AIDS intervention was the Rutanang Series: Standards of Practice, Implementation Guides and a Self-Improvement Process for Peer Education Programs in South Africa, published in 2002. This work was one of several activities emanating from the U.S.–S.A Binational Commission (BNC), also called the Vice-Presidential BNC because it was headed by Vice Presidents Al Gore and Thabo Mbeki. Rutananag was a collaborative project funded by USAID and led by the U.S. Center for Disease Control in collaboration with: the Harvard School of Public Health; South African National and Provincial Departments of Heath, Education, and Social Development; the South African Vice Chancellors Associations; and local NGOs. All parties contributed to the development of coordinated resources to facilitate effective peer education programs in S.A. Further Education and Training: Early Phase USAID Involvement Formal education in South Africa is organized in three levels – GET, FET, and Higher Education. The GET band consists of the Reception Year (Grade R) and learners up to and including Grade 9, as well as an equivalent ABET qualification. FET encompasses post￾compulsory schooling (Grades 10-12) – prior to higher education – and the provision of vocational education and training through FET colleges; it aligns with levels 2 to 4 of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). FET training is offered by both public colleges and a larger number of private colleges, all regulated by the DOE. The FET band is critical in that its target is the 16 to 24 age group and is expected to provide the intermediary skills necessary for creating jobs and growth of the economy. With an overall policy and legislative framework in place by 1997 for the transformed education system, USAID made available technical assistance as requested by the DOE in the form of local and international consultants. They undertook tasks to bring coherence to the FET band through contributions to the policy, legislation, and strategies necessary to engage a complex system of public and private institutions involved in preparing youth and other adults for work and tertiary education. At the same time, it was important to be responsive to national skills and community needs, mindful of providing opportunities for lifelong learning. Between 1999 and 2004, STEP provided a number of consultants, mainly South Africans, to assist with policy development in areas that included • support to the consultation processes and development of the Green and White Papers leading to the FET Act of 1998 • audit of the FET/EMIS • investment strategies for FET • editing draft national strategy for FET American Support 1986–2009 63 • orientation, planning and launch of the National Board for FET (NBFET) • curriculum framework, review and modernization, and design in selected areas • managing the transition to OBE in the FET sector • integration of senior secondary schools into the FET. The policy process required navigating the range of target groups and the variety of institutions providing FET; issues of curriculum, funding, and governance; fundamental challenges of integrating the philosophies and approaches of the OBE, program-based funding, and governance structures for schools (governed by the South Africa Schools Act) and colleges; and responding to the needs, objectives, and requirements of the National Skills Development Strategy, the National Youth Policy, and issues of access and workforce development. As a partner with the DOE in implementing the FET band, USAID contributed to policy formulation, then implementation, and helped to identify gaps and unresolved issues in a complex and relatively uncharted education subsector. This phase identified discrete areas that required further attention: • clarifying governance structures, powers, and responsibilities at institutional and provincial levels • strengthening coordination between the DOE and DOL regarding human resource development service delivery and • engaging civil society via strengthening the role of the NBFET, provincial advisory bodies, and institutional councils. The SAG then undertook a period of research, implementation and assessment both in the DOE and the DOL in the period between the FET Act of 1998 and the new FET Act of 2006. During this period, USAID was called upon to undertake discrete assigned tasks through another funding vehicle, the Workforce Development Project. Chapter Two also details assignments conducting policy and funding analyses for the FET band. Department of Labor, SETAs, Other Programs The main component in the South African Skills Development Strategy is the Sector Education Training Authority (SETA) system. The SETAs were established in 2000 to replace and extend the work of the old industry training boards, and are responsible for the disbursement of training levies payable by all employers in the country through providing practical training called learnerships. Part of the objective of the SETAs is to ensure that the skills requirements of the various sectors are identified, and that adequate and appropriate skills are readily available: the DOE works on supply-side and the DOL on demand-side strategies. SETAs represent an enormous South African resource, responsible for about ZAR2.5 billion (about $313 million) annually channeled from employers. Through the Workforce Development Project of the Education Division of USAID, the DOL accessed consulting services during the evolution of the SETAs including those of PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 64 Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., an international leader in workforce planning, training, strategic planning, and business process reengineering support. Another assignment to the USAID Workforce Project in 2002 was a Placement Verification Study of the unemployed upon completion of skills development programs sponsored under the Social Development Funding Window of the National Skills Fund. The Department of Labor launched the National Skills Development Strategy to address unemployment and poverty in the long term through a variety of mechanisms and structures. The National Skills Fund is one of the mechanisms of the National Skills Development Strategy, featuring a Social Development Funding Window under which skills development of the unemployed prepared them for the labor market. USAID funded Development Associates Inc. and subcontractor Khulisa Management Services, who made available expert macro-management skills to conceptualize and manage the Placement Verification and Sustainability Study and share their expert research knowledge with the officials of the DOL, labor projects, beneficiaries, and project managers. Production of the Social Development Funding Window Implementation Report was a collaborative effort of the contractor consortium, the DOL, the Employment and Skills Development Services Branch, and Provincial Offices and Labor Centers of the Labor Market Information Systems and Planning Unit. These provincial offices were facilitated to do objective field research. The study also engaged with training providers and the unemployed who were the beneficiaries. At a presentation on vocational education in South Africa, prominent academic Linda Chisholm of the Human Sciences Research Council cited researchers observing “What makes [the South African Skills development case] unusual is that there was genuine national leadership of the process throughout. In the broadest terms, the relationship with donors was positive. South Africans led the process; South Africans were facilitated to learn from other experiences rather than being presented a particular version by agencies or consultants; and South Africans entered into a considerable period of detailed negotiations.” (Quoted in Chisholm, 2009, p. 2) Major support to vocational education, supporting research, and the establishment of the system had come from the Australian Government’s overseas aid program (AusAID), the German development technical assistance agency Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). South Africa Opportunities Industrialization Center (SAOIC). USAID had supported earlier workforce development programs including one from the BNC cooperation period, a skills-training center established in 1996 in Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province, established by Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, Inc. (OICI). OICI was a venerable institution founded to establish sustainable institutions that provided skill training appropriate to the needs of the local community; they operated centers across the U.S., Eastern Europe, Asia, Central America, and other parts of Africa. The KZN center offered unemployed adults training in auto mechanics and other vocational/technical skills. Because of the BNC, the center began with the support of the Minister of Labor and American Support 1986–2009 65 involved the creation of a local board of directors and an advisory group composed of representatives from the industrial sector, service organizations, and training institutions. However, the center was not able to attract funding to continue operating beyond the project-funding period. Amy Biehl Foundation. The foundation was established in 1997, honoring the life of a young American student who had come to Cape Town to work with disadvantaged youth to improve their life prospects and communities. Amy Biehl’s life was tragically cut short in August 1993 in an act of political mob violence in the Gugulethu Township outside of Cape Town. When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established, the four young men who were convicted and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for her murder applied for and received amnesty. Amy’s parents supported their application, witnessing Amy’s love of South Africa and her belief in the truth and reconciliation process. Two of the youth later worked in the foundation. USAID provided support to the foundation’s youth development and HIV and AIDS Peer Education projects. Towards Universal Functional Adult Literacy The Ikhwelo Project (1999-2003) was a pioneering endeavor where the DOE joined forces with local communities, other government departments, South African NGO Project Literacy, and an international donor, USAID, to implement a large-scale adult basic education and training (ABET) program. Ikhwelo was a demonstration of one of the most critical challenges in adult literacy to combat poverty alleviation in rural areas: how adults can attain functional literacy and numeracy skills at the same time as income-generating and small, medium, and micro-enterprise (SMME) skills. The project was intended to strengthen the capacity of the DOE to implement ABET projects throughout the country. Ikhwelo was a comprehensive undertaking. It initially operated in 52 centers in two of the poorest provinces with the highest adult illiteracy rates: Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. It designed and implemented learning programs for adults incorporating literacy Box 9: Ikhwelo accomp lishments • More than 3,000 learners enrolled in agriculture and SMME programs • More than 300 ABET practitioners completed educator training • 80 management staff in Limpopo and Eastern Cape completed training courses • All of the 52 Provincial Adult Learning Centers received equipment and teaching aids • Interested learners gained accreditation for NQF Level 1, with credits towards obtaining the General Education and Training (GET) Certificate. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 66 and numeracy as well as skills in agriculture and SMMEs, with after training support and launching pilot SMME projects. It was necessary to train the teachers as well as provide management training for running the centers. All of the associated learner- and teacher￾support materials were developed by the project. It was an ambitious endeavor, with success stories and multiple levels of lessons learned in two broad areas. One was that rural development had an entire range of challenging issues spanning marketing problems, lack of basic infrastructure in rural areas, and the lack of access to capital for SMMEs. On the ABET side, the project drove home the urgent need to strengthen the national ABET system, requiring a methodical, step-by-step strategy. Currently the SAG is implementing the Kha Ri Gude (“let us learn”) mass literacy campaign, officially launched in February 2008. South Africa is spending ZAR6.1 billion (about $762.5 million) over five years to enable 4.7 million more South Africans to achieve literacy by 2010, to improve on the 2006 literacy rate of 74 percent. South African capacity in the field of adult literacy is high. There are strong NGOs and the number is reported to be growing dramatically with an increasing number of emerging organizations being accredited by both Umalusi (the quality assurer in the General and Further Education and Training bands), and the Education, Training, and Development Practices (ETDP) SETA. FET Sector and Youth Development Progress and Challenges With a new system of technical and vocational education and training in place following the new 2006 FET Act, there is now an integrated education and training system through a National Qualifications Framework intended to enable portability of skills and qualifications across different pathways informed by an outcomes and competency-based system. A new approach through the proposed Human Resources Development Strategy (II) intends to coordinate across all SAG departments. As part of this transformation process, 50 FET colleges have been created through rationalizing the smaller and weaker among the 152 which existed formerly to produce stronger multi-campus institutions capable of offering high skills training. The SAG has committed a recapitalizations grant of ZAR1.9 billion (about USD237.5 million) for upgrading workshops and classrooms and staff training (OECD, 2008, p. 243) and has set aside ZAR600 million (about USD 75 million) over three years for scholarships for disadvantaged students (http://www.info.gov.za/aboutsa/education.htm). New U.S.–South Africa Partnership for FET Colleges. In line with the new FET thrust, in April 2009, USAID and the DOE announced a new cooperative effort aimed at strengthening curriculum and expanding workforce development programs at a dozen FET colleges in South Africa. This is a three-year, $6.7 million program funded by USAID/S.A. American Support 1986–2009 67 The partnership builds on past U.S. and SAG cooperative efforts to strengthen the FET college sector, going all the way back to the support of Funda Center in Soweto at the time of the first democratic elections, and other numerous community education projects. The earlier FET Act was followed in 2001 by the New Institutional Landscape for the Public Further Education and Training Colleges document (DOE 2001), setting out a vision that would enable changes in size and structure, access, delivery, governance, financing, recapitalization, curriculum and assessment, and articulation with higher education and the labor market. All this having been put in place, the SAG and the USG are moving forward. The new project will help South Africa to tap into lessons learned from the experience of American community colleges in expanding learning opportunities for disadvantaged youth. The U.S. managers, the American College on Education (ACE), and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) represent 1,600 colleges and 1,200 colleges, respectively, including related organizations. U.S. partners include the Bronx Community College in New York City, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System, the National Center on Education and the Economy, Springfield Technical Community College in Massachusetts, and YouthBuild International. The newly formed National Youth Development Agency and Right to Care (HIV and AIDS service experts), are the implementing partners in South Africa. The partnership will offer a series of small grants to participating FET colleges to assess and strengthen their institutional operations and services. This is a model that has been used successfully before in South Africa with the historically disadvantaged higher education institutions, as described in the next chapter. Notwithstanding major progress in the vocational education sector, Dr. Linda Chisholm points to numerous challenges ahead. They include a merger process that is incomplete; the absence of a strong FET/EMIS system to help improve labor market linkages; poor work placement processes; and lack of capacity in new finance and governance arrangements, among others. As in the GET band, the goal is quality training (Chisholm, 2009, p. 8). The launch of the National Youth Development Agency in June 2009 formed out of the merger of the National Youth Commission and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, ushered in the further evolution of youth development policy and implementation. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 68 IV. BEYOND A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD: TRANSFORMING HIGHER EDUCATION In the beginning, as the appalling apparatus of apartheid is dismantled, the sector’s full attention should undoubtedly be focused on reconstruction, that is, on structural and organizational changes at the national level. It should also be centered on various forms of institution-building, that is, on the reform of racially based, male-dominated administrations, faculties, student bodies, curricula, and research activities. Individual institutions must implement radical procedures to provide educational opportunities for all students, particularly blacks who have (and continue to be) disadvantaged, discriminated against, and demoralized. Universities, colleges, and technical institutions will need to deal forthrightly with such issues as student recruitment, access, equality, compensatory education, faculty hiring, and democratization. Priorities will change in the future, and new, more appropriate teaching and research programs will be instituted, but they will succeed only to the extent that the universities, technikons4 , and teacher training institutions have laid a proper nonracial, nonsexist institutional base for their development. Under the new dispensation, the first five years may well be the most critical for higher education. (Academy for Educational Development, 1992, p. 1-1) Higher Education: the Transformation Imperative The prediction above – which proved true – is from the report of a team of South African and international higher education experts commissioned by USAID in 1991 to describe and analyze the challenges facing higher education institutions in the new South Africa and to lay the groundwork for technical and budgetary assistance by USAID and other donors. While basic education is the foundation, higher education is the engine for innovative, competitive societies. With the biggest economy in Africa, low participation rates in higher education and other poor education indicators pull down South Africa’s ratings in the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Report. According to the OECD Education Review of 2008, “South Africa’s 17 percent gross participation rate is below the rate of fast-developing and developed nations.” And even with the benefit of 15 years of intensive transformation efforts (see box), higher education participation rates are still highly skewed by race: nearly 12 percent for Africans, 13 percent for coloreds, 51 percent for Indians, and 60 percent for whites (Council on Higher Education, 2007, p 10). And, the composition of the student body in 2009 is far more equitable when compared to university staff and their gender. Another caveat is that while the change in the composition of the student body is notable, statistics document that limited access persists for black students in high-status and high-skill areas such as the sciences, engineering, and postgraduate programs. 4 Technikons in South Africa have been renamed Universities of Technology. As institutions of technological higher education, their tertiary educational programs cover a variety of specialised occupations and careers in the applied engineering; biological, chemical and physical sciences; and applied commercial sciences; humanities, arts and teacher education. Formerly a technikon was a non￾university higher education institution focusing on vocational education. American Support 1986–2009 69 To date, USAID has been the largest international donor to tertiary education in South Africa, on the basis that the quality and equitability of the tertiary education system would be key to South Africa’s development. U.S. development strategy recognized the considerable capacity of South Africa to meet its own higher education development needs. The U.S. strategy also noted the requirement for further capacity in higher education among the disadvantaged majority which had been largely excluded historically from the higher levels of government, business, and the professions. Increasingly, South Africa is a higher education resource for the rest of the continent. Recognizing the ongoing negative ramifications of structural inequality on HDIs, USAID development planning leading up to the 1994 elections focused its resources in higher education on the HDIs. Higher education is the purview of national government, whereas all other levels are governed by concurrent national and provincial competencies. The SAG acknowledged that HDIs had to contribute more effectively to the nation’s economic and social growth; they had to produce graduates with the relevant skills and knowledge to both maintain the economy with the most advanced financial, technological, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors in Africa, as well as assist in the development of an increasingly technology-driven economy. Higher Education Transformation Statistics 1991/94 2006/7 Public Higher Education Institutions 36 24 Universities/Comprehensives 21 17 Universities of Technology (ex “Technikons”) 15 5 National Institutes 2 Enrollment Percentage Black African students 40 61 White students 47 25 Indian students 7 7 Colored students 5 7 Female students 48 55 Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2008 PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 70 Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP): Leveling the Playing Field The purpose of TELP was twofold: 1) to increase the institutional capacity of South Africa’s 17 historically disadvantaged universities and Technikons (12 HDIs after restructuring of higher education); and 2) to assist the Government of South Africa to implement its national higher education policy. TELP was part of a ten-year bilateral agreement between USAID and the SAG. Early support included a 1995 contract to DevTech, an American firm, to provide support to the HDIs to strengthen their financial management capacity and provide logistical support for meetings and conferences. Later, a small grant went to the African Institute for Policy Analysis and Economic Integration (AIPA) in 1996 to conduct policy research on issues and options identified by the HDIs in support of transformation of tertiary education. The main contractor for TELP was the United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corporation (UNCFSP). The UNCFSP emanated from the United Negro College Fund in the U.S. It is an international NGO that organizes and delivers educational support services such as capacity building, technical assistance, and workforce development programs to minority serving institutions (MSIs) in the U.S. and internationally in program areas representative of MSI fields of expertise in the U.S. including: education and research infrastructure; public and community health; international affairs and development; civic engagement and community service; policy analysis; and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics competency. Over an eight-year period from 1998 to 2006, the TELP, in consultation with the DOE and an advisory panel of the HDIs, implemented a series of activities that collectively helped to strengthen the institutions. TELP’s last phase included assisting with merger activities that resulted in a complete restructuring of higher education in South Africa, following the 2001 release of the National Plan for Higher Education and subsequently, the June 2002 Transformation and Restructuring: A New Institutional Landscape for Higher Education, where most of the HDIs were merged and/or incorporated into historically advantaged institutions (HAIs) or other HDIs. TELP allowed HDIs to be better prepared as they entered those historic mergers. The TELP design had three major components: • policy analysis and planning • institutional capacity building • University-Technikon linkages with American institutions. American Support 1986–2009 71 Box 10: S.A. Historica lly Disad vantaged Institutions in TELP 1. Border Technikon 2. Eastern Cape Technikon 3. M.L. Sultan Technikon 4. Mangosuthu Technikon 5. Peninsula Technikon 6. Technikon Northern Gauteng 7. Technikon North-West 8. Medical University of S.A. (MEDUNSA) 9. University of Durban Westville 10. University of Fort Hare 11. North West University 12. University of the North 13. University of Transkei 14. University of Venda 15. University of the Western Cape 16. University of Zululand 17. Vista University Policy Implementation and Systems Development The apartheid legislation of the 1950s that had officially stratified South Africa’s tertiary education system by race and legislated separate institutions and different curricula and resources for whites, colored, Asians (Indians), and least of all Africans, had thwarted the development of HDIs. Not surprisingly, the new SAG prioritized tackling the serious structural inequalities and constraints resulting from the imbalances and distortions of the past. Between 1994 and 1998, USAID supported higher education policy through a grant to the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE), appointed by President Nelson Mandela to review the provision of higher education and project a plan in line with the transformation of South Africa and the country’s Constitution. This NCHE Report: A Framework for Transformation (1996) provided major input for the Government’s Green and White Papers on Higher Education and the subsequent Higher Education Act of 1997. Later came the 2001 National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE), following extensive consultations among higher education stakeholders. The NPHE provided the implementation framework for achieving the White Paper’s vision of a single national coordinated higher-education system that would be affordable, sustainable, and responsive, contributing to the human resource and research needs of South Africa. The NPHE mandated the reduction of higher education institutions from 36 to 21 (eventually 24); most of the HDIs were merged and/or incorporated into HAIs PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 72 or other HDIs. After the mergers were completed in 2004–5, there were 12 institutions involved in TELP II: 1. Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2. Durban University of Technology 3. Mangosuthu Technikon 4. North-West University 5. Tshwane University of Technology 6. University of Fort Hare 7. University of KwaZulu-Natal 8. University of Limpopo 9. University of Venda 10.University of the Western Cape 11.University of Zululand 12. Walter Sisulu University There were indicative targets for the size and shape of the system, overall growth, participation rates, and institutional and program mixes, focusing on establishing new programs; discouraging obsolete programs; building new capacities; reshaping the institutional landscape; and promoting individual and institutional redress and equity. TELP’s role was to assist the DOE to develop the necessary plans and implement the new policy. There were many stakeholder interest groups making it critical for the DOE to work closely with them. TELP assisted the DOE by supporting stakeholder empowerment programs, investigative studies, and facilitating the HDIs to develop three-year rolling plans. To this end, TELP arranged five summits: • Cooperation in Higher Education • Mergers and Rationalization • Three-Year Rolling Plans • Teacher Education • Policy Development for the New Academic Policy (later the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF). There were five investigative workshops on incorporation of programs into higher education: • Public Distance Teacher Education • The National Plan for Teacher Education • Colleges of Education • South African College for Teacher Education • The South African College of Open Learning. TELP facilitated 18 research studies, including • The New Funding Formula • Management Information Systems American Support 1986–2009 73 • Incorporation of Nursing Colleges and Agricultural Colleges • Private and Public Higher Education • A Regulatory Framework for Private Higher Education • The National Student Financial Aid Scheme • Approaches to Cost Modeling for the Higher Education Sector. These extensive inputs of financial, logistical and intellectual resources culminated in the publication and distribution of Higher Education Restructuring and Transformation: Guidelines for Mergers and Incorporations that the Ministry of Education released in April 2003. It described the nature, purpose, and structure of the restructuring processes. It also specified guidelines regarding the policy, planning, and legislative environment within which mergers and incorporations took place. TELP II then turned to assisting with the mergers and incorporations process and related activities during the period 2003 to 2006. TELP II funding and technical assistance was called on by the DOE to support the coordination of the consultative and planning processes and management services for establishing the National Institutes for Higher Education in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape. Similar services were called on to establish the National Higher Education Information and Applications Service. There were studies to assist with the restructuring of distance education and enrollment planning; also a review of the Classification of Educational Study Matter categories. Over 300 role players from industry, academia, learned societies, and government attended a national conference convened by the South African Institute of Civil Engineering with TELP funding. Their purpose was to facilitate a new curriculum for the National Diploma and Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering. Paying attention to one important stakeholder group – students – TELP supported a national summit convened by the South African Union of Student Representatives Councils and the South African Technikon Students Union. It was aimed at constituting a single national student representative organization for the postsecondary sector. From a distance, there is little sense of the complexities and charged atmosphere that accompanied many of these policy discussions, described as “…the forces of change – the complexities that arise from tradition and history, external and internal pressures, competing constituencies, and loose connections among stakeholders. All these forces promote aversive attitudes towards change.” During that period of profound shifts in higher education, TELP managers, who were predominantly South Africans, used approaches “that allowed people time to understand and incorporate change into their thinking and their actions.” (UNCF, 2006, p. 97) In addition to the national policies, HDIs also developed and implemented policy plans relevant to their institutions. As an external party, the TELP team was a valuable resource during the period of the most major policy changes in higher education in South Africa’s history, only comparable to the period when apartheid policies had been instituted in the 1950s. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 74 Capacity Building at Historically Disadvantaged Institutions There were five focus areas for HDI capacity building: Curriculum and Program Development; Student Academic Development; Management and Administrative Development; Staff Development; and Research. Curriculum and Program Development – This area assisted HDIs to adapt to the outcomes￾based learning program requirements of the NQF, requiring: changes in teaching and learning practices; preparation of outcomes-based learning materials to support students; development of outcomes-based assessment practices; and relevant quality promotion and assurance processes for the ongoing review and evaluation of the learning programs. In the second phase, HDIs developed Quality Assurance systems in accordance with the Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) framework and the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC). TELP was a resource for some HDIs during the mergers and incorporations process, assisting with the integration of departments and programs, alignment of curricula to new niche areas, preparations for institutional audits, and application of SAQA and NQF requirements. Assessment is an integral aspect of the OBE system and fundamental to validating teaching and learning. TELP facilitated assessment workshops for HDIs and supported them to develop assessment policies, guidelines, and procedures to guide departments and faculties to formulate their own assessment plans and procedures. Student Academic Development – All of the HDIs were facilitated to assess all first￾year students at 17 HDIs and provide appropriate compensatory (bridging) programs for at least 75 percent of those students who required help in the key learning areas of mathematics, English, science, and study skills. Most of the programs became permanent features in the institutions. Student academic support continues to be a critical intervention because of the fundamental goal of higher education transformation to achieve equity. The corollary of equity was redress: the NCHE advocated a change from an “elite higher education system” to a “mass higher education system,” setting a goal to increase the participation of the relevant age group (20–24-year-olds) from 20 percent (an overestimation) in 1996 to 30 percent in 2005, the greater bulk of which would “need to come from the black community.” That has since been revised to 20 percent by 2010-15. To broaden participation has “forced universities to accept underprepared students, the vast majority of whom are from severely disadvantaged backgrounds.” (OECD, 2008, p. 340) The Student Academic Development objective of TELP addressed this reality, as well as the forward-looking objective of providing competitive education at HDIs. The DOE set aside funds to support HEIs to develop foundation programs to improve student output and employable graduates. TELP was a support to HDIs in developing the programs, including training staff in innovative teaching methods and materials development. American Support 1986–2009 75 Management and Administrative Development – HDIs developed financial management information systems to effectively manage their institution’s finances and help generate and implement three-year rolling plan projections. This process strengthened leadership capacity to effectively manage the institutions. In the case of the University of Zululand, TELP funding made possible a complete assessment, reorganization, and training program for the finance division, resulting in major improvements according to the current Vice Rector, Dr. Rachel Gumbi. Still in practice to this day is a performance management system (PMS) initiated with TELP support. Development of processes and tools in the system, including the Balanced Scorecard and the Integrated PMS Handbook, were funded by TELP. Projects to Fulfill University Objectives – Twenty-nine projects were awarded to implement a university-based project. Criteria included sustainability, submission of well￾developed proposals, and effective financial management of grant funds from TELP. These were also capacity-building exercises. Linkages with U.S. Universities – South African institutions implemented 18 linkage partnerships with U.S. universities. Examples include: • Durban University of Technology and Savannah State University to add Membrane Technology studies to the Department of Chemical Engineering, including staff development and a new curriculum. • Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the University of Michigan to increase CPUT’s capacity in Science and Engineering, specifically smart materials and cleaner production. • University of Venda (UNIVEN) and Georgia State University (GSU) partnered together to expand UNIVEN’s School of Business, Economics and Administrative Sciences, by Box 11: Speech-Language Patho logy Program – Examp le of a Sustained New Curricu lum In 2003, there were only 19 black speech and audiology therapists, who spoke the mother tongue of the majority of South Africans, out of about 1,200 registered therapists in the country. A collaboration sponsored by TELP brought together the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA), now merged with the University of Limpopo, with the Communication Disorders Department at the University of Massachusetts. A series of faculty exchanges resulted in the design of a curriculum in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology that was accredited by the professional board of Speech-Language practitioners in South Africa. From the first 19 students in 2001, the enrollment has grown steadily to 66 now and is expected to double in the upcoming years. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 76 developing Business Information Systems curricula, improving infrastructure, technology, and skills development for faculty. The staff and research capacity building objectives of TELP were achieved through these latter two categories: university based and overseas linkages projects. Gender Balance in Higher Education – Partial Progress Improving gender equity was a cross-cutting TELP objective. HDIs were facilitated to incorporate gender equity into all TELP activities: their strategic plans, mentoring and training for women, monitoring project activities for gender balance, and ensuring female participation in planning workshops. A major contribution of TELP was to increase awareness and sensitivity to gender issues; this was also responsive to a requirement of the SAG that all universities prepare and implement plans to redress past gender and racial inequities at all staff levels. Female enrollments in all higher education institutions have increased considerably. However, female students remain underrepresented in the fields of science, engineering and technology. Women are being appointed to academic positions in public HEIs and women are reaching parity in permanent staff. Nevertheless, white males still dominate senior positions in public HEIs (OECD, 2008, p. 341). At HDIs, in a sample of eight HDIs looking at trends between 2003-6, there had been little change even though most had gender plans in place: representation of women barely increased from 43 percent to 46 percent, but women generally occupied fewer strategic and management positions or high￾level academic positions (TELP, 2006, p. 40). Box 12: Case Stud y – Walter Sisu lu Universit y WSU came out of the merger of Border Technikon, Eastern Cape Technikon, and the University of the Transkei. It was assessed in 2000 by the Matriculation Board as the best in the country, accredited by SAQA. The proof was success rates exceeding 80 percent. After the Student Foundation Year Program (SFYP) students were able to qualify for entry into first-year science programs at any South African university. SFYP developed psychometric, achievement, and placement tests and approached learning through small-group teaching. When DOE funding for foundation year programs ended, as was intended, the SFYP curriculum was integrated into the three-year Bachelor of Science (BSc.) degree to form a four-year extended BSc. An average 15 percent of the BSc. graduates on the Mthatha campus go through the SFYP. American Support 1986–2009 77 Apart from the workshops and studies focusing on gender, 35 out of 84 – or 41 percent of TELP-sponsored scholarships – went to women. These were provided to HDIs to upgrade the skills of academics. In addition, several HDIs used TELP funds for projects to upgrade research skills of women academics. Technikon Northern Gauteng (now merged into the Tshwane University of Technology), mounted a project to enhance research skills between 1990 and 2001; from six faculties, 90 percent of the 24 academics were women. One participant gave birth along the way and completed the program with the rest of the group. Women in Higher Education Executive Leadership (WHEEL) – The persistently low numbers of women in executive positions in higher education, even as they have achieved parity in some cases in lower levels, led TELP to form WHEEL in 2006, together with Higher Education South Africa (HESA). In the first WHEEL intake in 2006, 20 women in higher education competed to engage in a year-long skills development program. HESA (formed in 2005) represents a unified body of leadership that grew out of the restructuring of the higher education sector; it was the successor to two former bodies, the South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association (SAUVCA) and the Committee of Technikon Principals (CTP), making it an ideal place to position WHEEL. Higher Education Battling HIV and AIDS, Serving Communities, Building Skills The imperative for higher education institutions to serve their communities is particularly strong in South Africa. Supporting the efforts of South African Universities to counter the high HIV and AIDS rates in the country is cost effective and sustainable as USAID’s strategic investments leverage existing capabilities and interests. HIV and AIDS Prevention at Rural Schools in KZN. From 2009 to 2012 USAID is funding an HIV prevention program targeting students attending feeder schools close to the University of Zululand in rural KwaZulu Natal. Activities target 2500 participants with HIV prevention training and Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) sessions on campus. The activities are in collaboration with the University’s HIV and AIDS Unit and the provincial education department. KwaZulu-Natal is the province most affected by HIV and AIDS according to the Actuarial Society of South Africa, with the highest HIV prevalence rate (about 16 percent) and the highest percentage of maternally orphaned children (12 percent). http://www.doh.gov.za/docs/summary-f.html University Students Develop Relevant Health Messages. USAID under the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is continuing to assist local universities to fight the AIDS pandemic in their institutions and their adjacent local communities. USAID under PEPFAR supports local universities working in collaboration with international and local organizations to improve the health status of grassroots communities as part of their honors (a distinction added to a bachelor’s degree) projects and supports on-campus VCT and Prevention programs. Most of the activities are spearheaded by university faculties, campus health clinics and organizations such as Johns Hopkins University, Dance4Life and DramAidE. PEPFAR funded activities cover almost all university campuses nationwide. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 78 University of the Western Cape: HIV and AIDS Peer Prevention & Mitigation. Starting in 2009, the UWC through PEPFAR funds is targeting HIV and AIDS prevention in Western Cape schools and at the university itself. Funding over two years is being used to train 610 young people from UWC in varied HIV prevention methods to reach over 18,000 youth, teachers, principals, SGBs, and parents from 15 secondary schools in selected local and rural communities. UWC has extensive experience gained through its collaborative projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and at other universities. U.S.–S.A. University Linkages in Mathematics Teacher Education, Tourism, and Transport. USAID began funding in 2009 to the American Council on Education (ACE) for three U.S.–S.A. university linkages spanning three years. Proposals will be solicited from American universities to coordinate with three South African universities to institute specified programs. The first partnership aims to enhance secondary mathematics teacher education by developing a two-year pilot Bachelor of Science program for upgrading teacher qualifications to facilitate effective learning, using a flexible schedule to encourage teacher participation. A second partnership is with the Tshwane University of Technology to update curricula related to Airport and Aviation Management, Casino Management, Transportation Management, and Event Management; all are to have a strong practical component and promote awareness about sustainable and environmentally friendly ecotourism models. Transportation is the subject of the third partnership with the University of Johannesburg Department of Transportation and Supply Chain Management; the partnership envisages practical connections with domestic transportation issues. University of Louisville/Rand Afrikaans University Collaboration in Bapong. The Support for Tertiary Education Project (STEP) complemented other funding sources to fund a project in 1998 of this U.S. and South African university collaboration to conduct a comprehensive community needs assessment including household surveys, employment surveys, and employment related training needs and opportunities. This led to a plan of action for long-term economic development, engaging the local traditional authority and provincial and local government structures. In particular, for the Bapong region’s mining￾based economy, the objective was to provide education and training for non-mining economic activities including bird farming, ethanol production, and HIV and AIDS home￾based care. The Plan of Action unrolled through an agreement with Lonmin Trust, and the Bapong traditional leadership, preparing the way for longer-term projects. Higher Education Striving to Achieve Equity and Excellence As in Basic Education, there is a continuing challenge to South Africa to balance the need for equity with the need for quality if the country is to become a strong, united, democratic, and prosperous nation in the 21st Century. Higher education has been generating new curricula and utilizing new models of teaching and learning to accommodate a larger and more diverse student population. The sector must also produce sound research results, and highly trained people who can compete in a rapidly changing global marketplace. American Support 1986–2009 79 South African higher education polices are relatively new, and are still being monitored and refined. For example, one unanticipated outcome: the stronger HEIs have become “entrepreneurial universities” through curriculum diversification and new market-oriented courses, attracting staff and students from the weaker, historically black universities, weakening them further (OECD, 2008, p. 349). The report also points to fundamental curriculum reform assessment questions, asking if the many changes correctly address the types of knowledge, capacities, skills, and competencies needed by the South African society and economy. At the same time, South Africa forges ahead to preserve areas of strategic advantage and put its university research outputs on par with the best in the world. Since 2004, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) have established seven university centers of excellence to spearhead advancement in their respective disciplines. They include biomedical tuberculosis (TB) research (S.A. is a country with high TB rates) (http://my.simmons.edu/services/health/docs/WHO￾HighRiskTBCountries.pdf); birds and biodiversity; biological invasions; tree health biotechnology; catalysis in the chemical and manufacturing sectors; and epidemiological modeling and analysis. These centers monitor participation of black and female students; both approximate about 50 percent. The OECD 2008 review of South African education specified issues in higher education needing further attention, including funding, infrastructure, and alignment of norms and curriculum frameworks. The report cautions that the differentiated institutional landscape may be more unequal than before. Soon after coming in as the new Higher Education and Training Minister in May 2009, Dr. Blade Nzimande stated that he wanted to take the first steps towards ensuring free education for all through the undergraduate level while in office. Access of students to higher education is a function of preparedness and financial ability. The SAG has numerous programs underway to improve preparedness of disadvantaged students, as described in Chapter 2. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme of South Africa (NSFAS) assists academically deserving and financially needy students to get a university education, but does not satisfy the full demand for assistance. USAID contributed to the startup of the NSFAS. Discrimination, particularly racism and sexism, was “pervasive” despite HEIs having good policies to deal with discrimination, according to the report of a ministerial committee investigating racism released in May 2009. The committee recommended that steps be taken to identify and retain talent, especially black female staff, and to improve financial support for promising junior staff members, noting that salary packages should be “at least” competitive with the public sector. The report also noted the need for cross-cultural sensitization programs, to redress shortages of student residences, and to review the academic and financial support available to poor students. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 80 V. OTHER USAID FUNDED EDUCATION PROJECTS In addition to the aforementioned contributions to South African education through bilateral and unilateral funding, more than $11 million in other unilateral funding flowed directly to South African (including regional) projects from USAID/Washington as described below. Improving Girls’ Education Achievement. Via the Ambassadors’ Girls’ Scholarship Program (AGSP) there have been two phases of scholarships funded through two Presidential Initiatives. Under the Education for Democracy and Development Initiative, young women were supported to receive training in banking and financial services for employment in a sector where previously disadvantaged persons, especially females, were severely under￾represented. The successor scholarship program, geared toward primary school learners, began in 2005. It has awarded 9,616 scholarships in South Africa (7,909 to girls and 1,707 to boys). AGSP scholarships included payment of school fees, clothing, and supplies, to promote completion of basic education to help students – particularly girls – who are not in school or who are at risk of dropping out. Local NGOs implement the program, which has extensive community involvement in recipient selection and mentoring, with oversight management by Winrock International (WI), an American NGO. Communities praise the program, especially caregivers for double and single orphans and HIV-positive children; AGSP reduces their burden. Any reservations about the program relate to sustainability of assistance to beneficiaries after the AEI ends in 2010. Fortunately, some students will be in no-fee schools, giving them relief that they did not have when the AGSP began. Creating Learning Materials with Innovative Education Technology. This was also a Washington-funded and managed project of the AEI. The program objective was to fill an urgent need for teaching and learning materials through a partnership between U.S.-based Minority Serving Institutions and South Africans that built capacity on both sides. In 2004, the need in South Africa specified by the DOE was for supplemental reading materials in local languages. The Language-in-Education policy of 1997 mandated that children be taught in their native or home language (eleven in South Africa) through primary school. The gap was for reading materials for children in the nine languages other than English and Afrikaans. In an activity called the Ithuba Writing Project, the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) worked with local partners (University of Limpopo, University of Pretoria, READ Educational Trust, and Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy) and curriculum specialists at the DOE to produce and publish 140 original children’s titles and accompanying teachers’ guides in the full range of South African languages to distribute approximately 1.5 million supplementary readers. A major innovation that thrilled participating South African teachers was that they were taught how to write the books. The writing program for teachers became accredited and is ongoing at the University of Pretoria. The Ithuba Project also trained 6,000 teachers to use the materials. Not included in the project was an assessment on the utilization and impact of the materials, an important task left to the DOE. The Ithuba Writing Project could also be regarded as an action research project, building more knowledge about one of the crucial barriers to quality teaching and learning: an absence of TLMs in classrooms. As in other areas of South African education, the problem American Support 1986–2009 81 is not financial alone. With a flourishing publishing and printing sector, the main barriers are planning and communication at the national and provincial levels, exacerbated by a new curriculum that has been rolling out in phases, each with new TLM requirements. Distribution also is a problem, ensuring that each student has a book for each subject so that they and the teacher waste less time copying materials, with books locked up because there are not enough to go around or they are not available when and where they are needed. Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Gives Students a World Stage. SIFE is a program where university students work on a project that satisfies a business need in the community, such as training poor people in basic financial literacy so they can access the banking system, or helping a community cooperative to identify markets for their handicrafts or agricultural products. In the process, students hone their business, presentation, and teamwork skills. Student teams compete on a national basis and the country winner then goes to an international competition. Since it began four years ago in South Africa, historically disadvantaged students and teams increasingly have been at the forefront as winners. SIFE South Africa and the University of Johannesburg created the Soweto Bridge Program as their community-service vehicle, funded in part by the AEI (USAID/Washington). With an estimated 25 percent unemployment rate in South Africa, such efforts help to instill an entrepreneurial and community orientation in well educated youth. The Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team from the University of KwaZulu-Natal was ranked amongst the top 16 out of 41 teams in the world when they won the S.A. competition for imparting business acumen to communities and went on to the SIFE World Cup 2008 in Singapore. USAID was a SIFE contributor. (Photo: SIFE) PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 82 Nurturing Entrepreneurs throughout Southern Africa. The Ronald H. Brown Institute (RBI) for Sub-Saharan Africa was established in 2001 as a business training and skills development resource for the region. Named after the late U.S. Secretary of Commerce, it contributes to private-sector-led economic growth in Africa by strengthening the skills of people already in business and providing training to other individuals, especially students, aspiring to enter the business world. Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business and Andrew Young School of Policy Studies joined with principal South African partners, including the University of Pretoria (UP) and its faculty of economics and management sciences and the Center for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The institute is on the campus of UP, strategically situated in the business innovation hub created through a partnership between UP, the CSIR, and the Gauteng Provincial Government; these institutions implement projects with the RBI. The Africa Education Initiative in USAID/Washington provided the original grant including funds for an endowment for ongoing support of the Institute. Mobile Task Team (MTT): Regional Support to Education Systems. The MTT was a unique technical support network that operated Africa-wide. MTT helped to empower African ministries of education and their development partners to develop sector-wide HIV and AIDS policies and prioritize implementation plans to systemically manage and mitigate impact. Affiliated with the University of KwaZulu Natal/Health Economics and AIDS Research Division (HEARD), the MTT comprised a multidisciplinary team of over 20 professionals located across southern Africa with expertise and experience in HIV and AIDS, education, policy development, system management, research, statistics, management information systems, modeling, health, economics, program design, monitoring, and evaluation. It developed training modules in collaboration with other bodies and provided country-level support, regional networks, and advanced training. USAID supported its work regionally from 2002–5. During this time, 20 countries in East, West, and Southern Africa requested and received technical assistance or participated in workshops, seminars, and conferences facilitated by the MTT. The MTT began in South Africa and provided the same services at the national and provincial levels. MTT helped ministries of education in Africa to develop the capacity required to design and maintain a comprehensive response to the impact of HIV and AIDS on students and teachers, including how to develop and budget a sustainable implementation plan. USAID/S.A. continues to utilize this mechanism to support the education sector in South Africa to strengthen responses to HIV and AIDS at all levels. Enhancing Services for Rural Disadvantaged Students & Communities. In South Africa, Chicago State University (CSU), a U.S.-based institution mainly serving minorities, partnered with historically disadvantaged South African bodies, the University of Zululand and KwaZulu-Natal Coastal College, for exchanges that included capacity building, establishing and cultivating community partnerships, HIV and AIDS research, technology, education and prevention, and sustainable development. American Support 1986–2009 83 VI. EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIP – WHY SOUTH AFRICA? “We still have huge inequalities, based now on class rather than formerly on race. Because most of the upper class is still white, however, racial differences still pervade the education system. In 2003, just more than half of white learners got a matric[ulation] exemption, but only a tenth of Africans…. Not surprisingly, our universities are still about half white. And about three-quarters of management in the private sector is still white…. In the area of skills development, the main target post-1994 was to improve access to higher and further education for black workers, so that they could achieve qualifications, improve their levels of skills and their career prospects and reverse the discrimination of the past…. Unless we reverse the racist and discriminatory education policies of the apartheid era, we will never be able to reach all the other goals we have set ourselves…” Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU General Secretary (http://www.mg.co.za/ article/2009-07-01-vavi-apartheid-to-blame-for-education-system) To transform education in South Africa – to provide all citizens with the opportunity for quality education and job skills – has been harder than most people thought it was going to be. This is the consensus of international expert reviewers, and those doing the job at the DOE. USAID has cooperated side by side with every level of education in South Africa: early childhood development; primary and secondary schooling; FET and adult literacy; and higher education. USAID has worked alongside South African academics, NGOs, educational statutory bodies, community leaders, teachers and principals, student groups, unions, private providers and public educators, and officials at the school, district, provincial, and national levels. Why has it been so difficult? Education has and continues to be highly political in South Africa. Various parties including those affiliated with the governing ANC have tried to depict as failures the persistent unequal access to education and unacceptable education quality. The reality is that there has been slow progress, but progress nevertheless. “What South Africa has achieved in education in so short a time is amazing,” has been the assessment of Dr. Luis Crouch, international education economist who served as an advisor to the DOE for many years. Since 1994, a single deracialized national department has been created. Enormous energy and resources have been devoted to new norms and standards, new structures and curricula, drafting and aligning legislation. So even as people want more, matriculation rates (completion of high school) have improved, increasing numbers of black students enter higher education, and a new generation of confident black, especially African, youth are entering the workplace to shape the future of the nation. The challenges have to do with the social and educational complexities of dealing both with new tasks and deep-rooted backlogs. USAID has balanced its resources – though small compared to total South African spending, significant when applied to specific targets – between strategic technical assistance and key investment areas. PARTNERSHIP TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 84 USAID has learned a great deal in the course of participating in nearly all the critical areas for education and training transformation in S.A.: supplying scholarships to equip black South Africans with high-level skills; supporting NGOs preparing for a new dispensation; upgrading skills of educators, administrators and school governing bodies; curriculum reform; workforce development; school reconstruction and bore-holes; faculty and student support at tertiary institutions; and systems development, policy research, analysis and formulation at all levels of education. When the USG began its support of South Africa’s black majority in 1986, the possible extent of the impact of HIV and AIDS was unknown. Later it was to become a devastating drain on resources and human dignity, producing huge numbers of orphans and vulnerable children, reducing the already inadequate teaching corps, hence, further compromising effective teaching and learning. The history of partnership with USAID has shown that what has been highly valued by the DOE, beyond financial input, has been project management expertise for the types of policy implementation described in this report, because the DOE’s own capacities were stretched to the limit with core functions. USAID has helped the DOE to strengthen policy analysis, providing expertise so that the fullest array of policy options and their application to South Africa’s realities was available for DOE officials to make their decisions. USAID’s Policy Framework for Bilateral Foreign Aid (2006) specifies that ideally other countries should be at the center of their own development with American bilateral foreign aid in a supporting role. It also states the intention of supporting strategic states to help achieve major U.S. foreign policy goals in specific countries of especially high priority as key allies. South Africa’s conduct of its education sector and its relationship with America meet both criteria for a constructive international partnership. In 1997, when asked why the Clinton Administration placed so much importance on South Africa, Vice President Gore replied, First, we are on the same journey, trying to create a nonracial democracy with justice and economic opportunity for everyone regardless of gender, religion, or ethnic origin. If South Africa succeeds, it will have a global impact [by demonstrating a model of community that works for all its citizens], second, if South Africa succeeds economically, it will not only create a model for development, but it will be a beacon of hope for the whole continent. A strong South African economy could become the engine of growth which powers other countries, especially in Southern Africa… South Africa is small in economic stature, generating less than one percent of the global economic output, but South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy has imbued the country and its leaders with international and moral authority that go far beyond the size of the economy or population. We are pleased, therefore, to have South Africa as a partner that shares many of our values and interests. (Joseph, 1997) 85 APPENDIX A: SUMMARY OF USAID EXPENDITURES U.S. Bilateral Agreements with S.A. Department of Education Obligation ($) 1. Education Support and Training (ESAT) (1995) 8,000,000 2. Support to Tertiary Education Project (STEP) (1995) 11,974,906 3. S.A. Basic Education Reconstruction (SABER) (1995) 47,209,800 4. Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP) (1995) 42,444,279 5. Revised Education Bilateral (2003) 43,622,094 Total Education Bilateral Obligations 153,251,079 Unilateral Obligations to Education Sector 1986– date 244,287,039 Workforce/Skills Development with S.A. Department of Labor (2000) 2,550,000 Total U.S. Commitments to S.A. Education and Skills Training 400,088,118 86 APPENDIX B: PERSONS CONTACTED Name Organization Title Africa Hugh Vista University Former Vice-Chancellor Africa Louise America Africa Institute/S.A. Director Conley Jacquelyne MESP Former Training Coordinator/SA Crouch Luis RTI International Vice President Dei Carleene USAID/S.A. Mission Director Figaji Brian Cape Peninsula University of Technology Former Vice Chancellor Fine Patrick AED, Formerly USAID/SA Former Ed. SO Team Leader Gains Paula Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy Director, IEP & Home Language Project Gule Gugu University of Zululand TELP Manager Gumbi Rachel University of Zululand Rector and Vice-Chancellor Hodges Merle Cape Peninsula University of Technology TELP Manager Hugo Cynthia Read Educational Trust Director Makhene Motsume STEP Former COP Mahlobogwane Plaatje MESP Alumni Mangena Mosibudi Department of Science and Technology Minister Matthee Bertus Read Educational Trust Training Manager Miller Andrew Project Literacy Chief Executive Officer Ndlovu Khehla Tshwane University of Technology Former USAID Education Specialist Ngatane Dipolelo USAID/SA Former Education Specialist O’Connell Brian University of Western Cape Vice Chancellor Patel Firoz Y. Department of Education Deputy Director-General: System Planning & Monitoring Phahle Rosinnis Vista University TELP Manager Qhobela Molapo Department of Education Deputy Director-General: Higher Education Taylor Melinda RTI COP, IEP Tyobeka Palesa Department of Education Deputy Director General: General Education Zulu Puleng EOC Bursaries Manager 87 APPENDIX C: REFERENCES CONSULTED Books Butler, Erik Payne, et al. Promoting Relevant Education and Training for Employment: Youth Development and Employment in South Africa‘s Further Education and Training (FET) College Sector (2007). Christie, Pam. The Right to Learn. Johannesburg SACHED Trust/Ravan Press Publication, (1985). District Development Support Program. Improving the Quality of Primary Education: Good Practices and Emerging Models of District Development. Pretoria: Department of Education (2003). Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Reviews of National Policies for Education – South Africa. 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