Paravender no hay que esconderse, no hay que avergonzarse por vender “tal’, cosa u ofrecer tal programa, hay que decirlo claro pues, como ya se ha dicho antes,

The situation pertaining to Physical Education differed significantly even before Apartheid. In first system schools (with predominantly white children), Physical Education established itself as an indispensable part of education and was taught gender specific (Stroebel et al., 2016).

Schools pertaining to the second system, predominantly black children, were mostly missionary run and education was neither free nor compulsory. Sports equipment and sport facilities were available in first-system schools, partly funded by the government and partly by school fees.

However, very little equipment, if any, was supplied to schools located in lower socio-economic areas (Archer and Bouillon, 1982). The Bantu Education Act of 1953, a segregation law which legalised several aspects of the Apartheid system, issued that schools with mostly black African children, were removed from missionary bodies and placed under the Department of Native Affairs. Even though Physical Education was included in the school curriculum of these schools, there was a considerable shortage of teachers, classrooms and sports facilities (Christie and Collins, 1990). Whereas in more affluent schools, Physical Education was viewed as an instrument to further the ideological agenda of the Apartheid government and was compulsory with two periods allocated for grades 1 to 12 (Rajput and van Deventer, 2010, Stroebel et al., 2016). After the first democratic election in 1994 and the transition into a democracy, South Africa’s government launched several reconstruction, reconciliation and development programs. These programmes had the aim to restore justice and mobilise resources toward the final eradication of Apartheid and the building of a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist future. In the immediate aftermath of the election, the school syllabuses were thoroughly revised and the racially offensive and outdated content was removed (Jansen, 1999). However, Physical Education was starting to be perceived as a low-status subject due to the belief that participation in physical activity was taking time away from more important subjects such as Maths or English. Furthermore, Physical Education was seen as non-examinable and was therefore excluded as a stand-alone subject in 1994 (Du Toit et al., 2007). Prior to 1994 more than 120 national teacher training colleges offered courses in Physical Education training, but after losing its stand-alone status, teacher training colleges and higher education institutions, gradually stopped offering specialised Physical Education teacher training (Rajput and van

13 Deventer, 2010). As a result, at schools Physical Education was mostly taught by non-specialist teachers, who rotated the unpopular task regularly, which in turn had a detrimental effect on the status and practice of Physical Education. In 1997, the minister of education, Sibusiso Bengu, announced that from 1998 a new school curriculum will be implemented, namely the curriculum 2005 (C2005) (Jansen, 1999). C2005, which was regarded as the master plan to eradicate the inequalities of the Apartheid education system, comprised of a completely new philosophy which was based on outcomes based education (OBE). The new philosophy focused on pupil-centred education rather than teacher-led classroom engagement, competences rather than pass or fail, outcomes rather than aims and objectives and assessment criteria. With the new C2005, school subjects were replaced with learning areas, which led to the dawn of a new learning area called Life Orientation (Stroebel et al., 2016). This drastic shift marginalised the former stand-alone subject Physical Education to one of eight Learning Outcomes within the learning area Life Orientation. One period a week was allocated to Life Orientation, in which the eighth outcome, was Human Movement and Development (Van Deventer, 2009, Stroebel et al., 2019). C2005 and OBE was critiqued substantially, as teachers and schools were not prepared to take on the new demands C2005 posed. Teachers found the implementation of OBE difficult due to the large class sizes and because they regarded the assessment methods difficult and problematic. Therefore, a review process was commissioned by the Department of Education in 2000, which led to a revision of C2005, called Revised National Curriculum Statement (R-NCS) and was introduced in 2004 (Pudi, 2006). Further revisions of the curriculum followed in 2009, resulting in the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS).

CAPS was implemented in 2011 and is still in use today (South African Department of Basic Education, 2011a). The CAPS committee developed a new curriculum for each subject including the study areas known as Life Skills (taught in the Foundation Phase from grade 1-3, and in the Intermediate Phase from grade 4-6) and Life Orientation (taught in the senior phase, consisting of grade 7-12). The purpose of the subject Life Skills/Life Orientation is to equip learners with knowledge, skills and values that assist them to achieve their full physical, intellectual, personal, emotional and social potential. The subject Life Skills aims to develop learners through three different, but interrelated study areas, that is, Personal and Social Well-being, Physical Education and Creative Arts. The subject Life Orientation focuses on the development of self-in-society and contains the following five topics: i) development of the self in society, ii) health, social and environmental responsibility, iii) constitutional rights and responsibilities, iv) Physical

14 Education and v) world of work. At the school level, Physical Education specialists were largely no longer appointed, but instead, generalist teachers, who had neither knowledge nor understanding of Physical Education, were required to teach the subject Life Skills. A repercussion of the restructuring was that the Life Skills/Life Orientation teachers had to become masters of a multi-faceted subject almost overnight. The teachers had to demonstrate knowledge in Social and Natural Science (Beginning Knowledge), Psychology and Sociology (Personal and Social Wellbeing), the Fine Arts (Creative Arts), Human Movement Science (Physical Education), without proper training (Stroebel et al., 2019). According to a study by Prinsloo et al. (2007) being considered a qualified Life Orientation teacher can range from being a teacher in one of the former subjects such as Guidance, Religion Studies or Physical Education; attending a three-day Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) course; or attending a two-hour Life Orientation workshop. Knowledge around HIV and AIDS is a relevant topic for a Life Orientation teacher, especially since South Africa is the world’s worst-affected country. In fact, in 2017 approximately 7.9 million people, or in other words 13.9%, of all ages were living with HIV. Even more drastic are the numbers when looking at the age range 15 to 49 years, where the HIV prevalence was 20.6%, with 26.3% being women and 14.8% being men. Even though, the participation in a three-day HIV and AIDS course is highly relevant for a Life Orientation teacher, it will however not equip the teacher with skills relating to the other four topics such as for example Physical Education. Underlining this notion, Deventer (2012) and Stroebel et al.

(2017) found that 58% of the Life Orientation teachers in Western Cape Schools, and more than two thirds of in-service Foundation Phase Life Skills teachers at primary schools in the Free State Province, were not qualified to teach Physical Education. In summary, every second Life Skills and Life Orientation teacher is not properly trained to teach Physical Education. The curriculum reform has so far been unable to provide in service and pre-service teachers with the needed tools and skills to implement quality Physical Education (Stroebel et al., 2019). As a result, students are deprived of quality Physical Education which lays the foundation for health and wellbeing and for an active lifestyle later in life.

Even though, the status of Physical Education and problems pertaining to implementation in South Africa are comparable to other countries worldwide, there are unique challenges that need to be overcome. As previously mentioned, South Africa consists of both advantaged and

15 disadvantaged school communities, deriving from mainly two different social backgrounds.

The next paragraph will provide an overview of challenges within these disadvantaged settings.