Mr Speaker, I would like to start off by giving credit where credit is due. Minister, the DA would like to congratulate you on being bold enough to review the implementation of the National Curriculum Statement and on making critical changes with regard to it. [Applause.]
Thank you for being honest enough to acknowledge the necessity to move back to the more conventional approach to education of earlier times. More specifically, thank you for taking our education back to basics.
Minister, your announcement of necessary changes to streamline and simplify the administrational functions of teachers in the first place, and the provision of structured systemic support in the second place, should have been accompanied by proper planning by your department. Recommendations and corresponding implementation plans should have been announced simultaneously. This is clearly not the case.
You received an overwhelmingly positive reaction from Dr Mamphela Ramphele this week for addressing shortcomings in education. She called upon South Africans to support you in this regard. I now call upon you, Minister, to support our teachers by communicating the changes by means of user-friendly documents on the one hand, and by appointing expert teachers to assist the department in doing so on the other.
Many of the recommended changes will only be implemented in 2011. It would, therefore, be premature to fully evaluate these changes, as we are keenly aware of the fact that adaptations to certain recommendations might occur during the refinement thereof.
Comments on certain aspects of the structure of the curriculum resulted in some changes to it, for instance the number of subjects for the Intermediate Phase were reduced. This resulted in the incorrect perception that the entire curriculum has been rectified, which is not the case. Problems regarding the Further Education and Training phase were not addressed.
Adaptations and changes to the curriculum should be based on a proper analysis in accordance with scientific curriculum development requirements and procedures and not merely as a result of consultations with all the relevant stakeholders.
Minister, although your endeavours to address the many problems of our dysfunctional education system are widely appreciated, you ought to acknowledge that your intervention is merely crisis management and a repetition of similar attempts by your predecessors.
I therefore strongly suggest the establishment of a fully-fledged curriculum development unit by the national Department of Education. The current curriculum development unit at the department, staffed by learning area specialists for the General Education and Training phase and subject specialists for the Further Education and Training phase, is totally inadequate. A learning area specialist or a subject specialist is not a curriculum developer.
Curriculum development is a science in itself and, therefore, such a unit should be manned and served by trained, qualified and experienced curriculum researchers. [Applause.]