Learning to work? : changing discourses on education and training in South Africa, 1976-96

• Main Author: McGrath, Simon Andrew
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1996
• Subjects: 370.9
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.666225

Two years after the beginning of the Mandela Presidency and the end of minority rule in South Africa, the emergent model of education and training provision has still to take on a definite form. This thesis seeks to explore this emergent model. To do so, it considers the developments of the two years between the establishment of the Government of National Unity in May 1994 and the National Party's decision to quit this coalition in May 1996 within two crucial contexts. First, whilst the focus is squarely on South Africa, trends within that country are related to those in other countries. Of particular relevance in this regard is the move in other Old Commonwealth countries towards the integration of education and training, a parallel of South African policy debates. Second, the need to see present policy debates within their historical context is reaffirmed. As well as providing an overview of the education and training developments of the past century, there is a detailed focus on the twenty years since the Soweto Uprising of 1976. The focus of the thesis is on policy discourses, seen primarily through the exploration of major reports on education and training and, where possible, through the background documents that shaped them. Much of this data has not been subject to widespread analysis and debate in educational circles, yet is of great importance to an understanding of current debates. For the period since the 1994 elections this data has been supplemented by a series of interviews with stakeholders influential in the development of policy and practice in education and training. In order to get analytical purchase on these documents and interviews, and on the broader debates they represent, the focus throughout the thesis has been on the principal meta-narratives which can be discerned in such debates. Four such meta-narratives are shown as having become influential in the policy debates of the last twenty years: the pro-equity vision of People's Education; the New Right market-oriented approach; the trade-union driven New Times version of Post Fordism; and Lean Production, the pro-employer alternative to New Times.