S. Census Bureau ‐  Estimado Anual de la Población Total Puerto Rico

Since South Africa‘s first national democratic elections in 1994, the Government of National Unity has issued several curriculum-related reforms intended to democratise education and eliminate inequalities in the post-apartheid education system (Jansen, 1998). The Ministry of Education has introduced three national curriculum reform initiatives focussed on schools. The first attempt was to purge the apartheid curriculum (school syllabuses) of ‗racially offensive and outdated content‘ (Jansen, 1998), while the second introduced continuous assessment into schools (Lucen & Ramsuran, 1997). The most comprehensive of these reforms has been labelled outcomes-based education (OBE), an approach to education which underpins the new Curriculum 2005. While the anticipated positive effects of the new curriculum have been widely heralded, there has been little criticism of these proposals given the social and educational context of South African schools.

As a way of reviewing literature, this study offers a critical assessment of the claims, assumptions and silences underpinning official policy on OBE. In the process, I intend to demonstrate how the current status of education in South Africa militates against

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sophisticated curriculum reforms such as OBE and recently CAPS. In concluding, I will argue that it is important to understand the origins and anticipated trajectory of OBE (and indeed other curriculum reforms) as primarily a political response to apartheid schooling, rather than one, which is concerned with the modalities of change at the classroom level. Leading up to this event, schools and their allies had been repeatedly warned by the National Department of Education that January 1998 was an ‗absolutely non-negotiable‘ date for the implementation of what has only recently become known as OBE. Within months, an explosion of curriculum activity thundered across South Africa as committees of departmental officials, curriculum developers, subject specialists, teachers, lecturers, trade union and business representatives and a good representation of foreign ‗observers‘ from Scotland to Australia attempted to translate OBE into workable units of information for teaching and learning which would be ready for first phase implementation in 1998 (Jansen, 1998).

At first glance, there appear to be sound reasons for a curriculum policy modelled on OBE. Outcomes would displace an emphasis on content coverage. Outcomes make explicit what aspects learners should pay attention. Outcomes direct assessment towards specified goals. Outcomes signal what is worth learning in a content-heavy curriculum (Jansen, 1998). These are universal claims associated with OBE in several first-world countries. Yet there are several problems documented regarding the OBE experience in these countries. Do outcomes in fact deliver what they claim? How do outcomes play out in a resource-poor context? OBE does not have any single historical legacy. Some trace its roots to behavioural psychology associated with B.F. Skinner; others to mastery learning as espoused by Benjamin Bloom; some associate OBE with the curriculum objectives of Ralph Tyler; yet another claim is that OBE derives from the competency education models associated with vocational education in the UK (Mahomed, 1996). In South Africa, the immediate origins of OBE are in the competency debates followed in Australia and New Zealand (Jansen, & Christie, (1999).

Curriculum 2005 is a form of outcomes-based education. Outcomes-based education has meant different things to different people in theory and in practice (Hargreaves & Moore, 2000; Harley et al, 2000). As the guiding philosophy of C2005 in 1997 it was, for its initiators, the pedagogical route out of apartheid education. In its emphasis on results and success, on outcomes and their possibility of achievement by all at different paces and times rather than on a subject-bound, content-laden curriculum, it constituted the decisive break

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with all that was limiting and stultifying in the content and pedagogy of education. OBE and C2005 provided a broad framework for the development of an alternative to apartheid education that was open, non-prescriptive and reliant on teachers creating their own learning programmes and learning support materials (DOE, 1997a, & b).

The Report of the Ministerial Committee established to review the curriculum in 2000 gave a wide-ranging critique of the curriculum. It argued that while there was overwhelming support for the principles of outcomes-based education and Curriculum 2005, which had generated a new focus on teaching and learning, implementation, has been confounded by: A skewed curriculum structure and design; Lack of alignment between curriculum and assessment policy; Inadequate orientation, training and development of teachers; Learning support materials that are variable in quality, often unavailable and not sufficiently used in classrooms; Policy overload and limited transfer of learning into classrooms; Shortages of personnel and resources to implement and support C2005; Inadequate recognition of curriculum as the core business of education departments. (DOE, 1997a, & b).

All these areas were seen as requiring attention. Their weaknesses were underpinned by and required adequate resourcing, manageable time-frames for implementation and regular monitoring and review. In order to address these issues the Review Committee proposed the introduction of a revised curriculum structure supported by changes in teacher orientation and training, learning support materials and the organisation, resourcing and staffing of curriculum structures and functions in national and provincial education departments. Specifically, it recommended a smaller number of learning areas, including the reintroduction of history, the development of a Revised National Curriculum Statement which would promote conceptual coherence, have a clear structure and be written in clear language, and design and promote ‗the values of a society striving towards social justice, equity and development through the development of creative, critical and problem-solving individuals‘ (Chisholm et al, 2000, viii). The Revised National Curriculum Statement was duly produced and became policy early in 2002.