Additional Topics
The Republic of South Africa is a constitutional parliamentary democracy of many years standing, which was dramatically transformed in 1994 when the previous Apartheid system of racist segregation was formally abolished. Situated at the southernmost end of the African continent, South Africa measures 1.2 million square kilometers. Bordered by Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe to the north and Mozamb…
South Africa is a parliamentary democracy with a strong presidency, established in its most recent form by the new constitution adopted by the South African parliament in May 1996, certified by the Constitutional Court on 4 December 1996, and signed by President Nelson Mandela six days later, coming into effect on 3 February 1997. South Africa has a legal system based on Roman-Dutch law and the Br…
In the year 2000 approximately more than 52 million children and youth (50.5 percent of them female) were enrolled in 29,386 primary and secondary schools in South Africa. In addition, 125,000 students (youth and adults) were enrolled in technical colleges, 300,000 students (54.6 percent female) were enrolled in universities, and 190,000 students (45.5 percent female) attended technikons (vocation…
Although some provinces provide preprimary education, the scale is limited and the field of early childhood development is dominated by the nongovernmental sector in South Africa. Preprimary schools must be registered with local authorities, and their operations fall under the control of provincial educational departments, who oversee both public and private preschool programs. In reality, insuffi…
A 1995 estimate of the gross enrollment ratio for South African secondary schools was 94 percent. About 54 percent of students enrolled at the secondary level were female that year. In December 2000 UNICEF reported secondary level gross enrollment ratios as 76 percent for males and 91 percent for females. Secondary education in South Africa, like primary education, is divided into junior and seni…
A discussion of higher education in South Africa must begin with a retrospective look at how the university system was constructed, considering the powerful impact of segregation and Apartheid on the educational opportunities of South Africans at the tertiary level. The establishment of the South African College at Cape Town in 1829 for people of European descent marked the beginning of tertiary e…
South Africa's Department of Education and the Ministry of Education are the primary government bodies that deal with education at the national level. The Constitution of 1996 has also vested substantial powers in each of the nine provincial legislatures and governments to run educational affairs, other than the universities and technikons, whose administration remains the responsibility of…
A policy and legislative framework for Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) is being developed via a White Paper for ABET and a new Bill of Law. During 1999 provincial education departments provided services to an estimated 300,000 adult learners. Between the 1995-1996 and 1998-1999 school years, expenditures on ABET increased from R160 million to R343 million. The need for upgrading adult ed…
Teacher training traditionally has been provided at Teacher-Training Colleges located in the provinces, but at the start of the twenty-first century South African educational reforms also included the relocation of teacher training to the National Department of Education and various Universities running three or four year diploma courses for those who wish to teach in primary schools. Certain univ…
South Africa faces a number of formidable challenges in the years ahead in the realm of education. Some of the newly proposed and developed educational reforms in South Africa, including OBE and Curriculum 2005, involve sophisticated educational concepts that require better-skilled teachers than were produced in South Africa under the Bantu education system as well as resources most schools cannot…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments
almost 4 years ago
i don't understand the last statement