Prospects and pitfalls: A review of post‐apartheid education policy research and analysis in South...

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Prospects and pitfalls: A review ofpost‐apartheid education policyresearch and analysis in South AfricaCarol Anne Spreen a & Salim Vally ba Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, Charlottesvilleb Faculty of Education, Auckland Park, University ofJohannesburg, South Africa

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Comparative EducationVol. 46, No. 4, November 2010, 429–448

Prospects and pitfalls: A review of post-apartheid education policy research and analysis in South Africa

Carol Anne Spreen*a and Salim Vallyb

aCurry School of Education, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; bFaculty of Education, Auckland Park, University of Johannesburg, South AfricaTaylor and FrancisCCED_A_519478.sgm10.1080/03050068.2010.519478Comparative Education0305-0068 (print)/1360-0486 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis464000000November 2010Carol AnneSpreenspreen@virginia.edu

The 10-year anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa in 2004provoked much reflection and fuelled new policy debates on both the progress andfailures of educational reform. While a myriad of achievements have been toutedand are well-known to international audiences, a swelling critique from insideSouth Africa shows that much work remains to be done. By glancing backward asa way to understand how to move forward, we review several important recentlypublished books on post-apartheid education policy to learn how policies wereconceived, what went well and what went seriously wrong. In engaging thisextended analysis we provide a glimpse into the unique set of circumstances andchallenges faced by the South African government over the last 15 years (namelythe tensions between equity and redress and global competitiveness), whileoffering a sustained critique of the resulting policy outcomes through a socialjustice lens.

Introduction

There is a long tradition in international and comparative education research ofdiscourse and content analysis – describing trends and research paradigms withinacademic publications, tracking presentations of key constructs in policy documents,and evaluating a variety of standpoints and perspectives in national policy debates.This research follows in that tradition, albeit with a conscious shift or deviation, tofactor in policy analysis itself as a unique product of history, culture and politicaltiming. Importantly, this article builds on existing international policy analysisresearch and contributes to our understanding of the interplay of the pressures ofequity and redress and macro-economic strategies given South Africa’s particularapartheid legacy. Our analysis includes a social justice framework for examiningpolicy responses to globalisation in transitional states.

A recurrent theme throughout this paper is describing the common global contextthat shapes education policy, particularly the tensions between equity, redress andsocial transformation on the one hand and the increased emphasis on human resourcedevelopment, global skills, international standards and accountability on the other. Wealign our work with the international critical policy literature during this period whichbuilds from the premise that in the context of ‘hard economic times’ most westerncountries have been seeking to restructure public schooling to make it more respon-sive to the needs of the economy (Lingard, Knight and Porter 1993). Over the last two

*Corresponding author. Email: cas9wt@virginia.edu

430 C.A. Spreen and S. Vally

decades, the comparative influence of global economic circumstances and politicsupon local policy formulation and state management functions saw extensive changesto the administration and organisation of public schooling in countries such as the UK,US, Australia and New Zealand. Examining education in Canada in this same period,Sears (2003) relates education reforms to a broad ranging neoliberal strategy aimed atrecasting relations of citizenship and social transformation to economic restructuring.Similarly in South Africa, policy analysts have been concerned with the tensionbetween globalisation of education and state policy formulation. Framing these globalconcerns within a South African context we raise the following questions: How didthe post-apartheid state construct and resolve issues relating to equity and socialjustice in education, given its global macro-economic demands? Put another way, didthe strategy of increasing of ‘human capital’ serve the national interest and do enoughto improve the situation of those who have been historically disadvantaged? Did initi-atives such as school decentralisation make schools more effective and democraticthrough local decision-making and community participation or did it pass on theburden and costs of schooling to poor communities?

Expanding this line of enquiry, this article shows how many of the policy analystsin South Africa explored global influences over educational policy and planning; italso sets out to reposition the lens – instead of merely tracing the impact of neoliberalinfluences on policy outcomes, we wish to query the overall utility of measuring theimpact of global influences as an analytic tool. While agreeing with these analysts onthe deleterious impact of neoliberalism, we also want to point to the limitations ofmerely looking at the outcomes of economic influences, and instead wish to enrichand enhance our understanding of these debates by critiquing not just the outcomes,but the initial policy designs and assumptions about the purposes of education. Westart by mapping out the existing policy research and critiques and then conclude byasking how we can understand and measure what accounts for ‘good’ policy in thepost-apartheid, newly democratic state of South Africa – should policy outcomes bemeasured by the same tools as elsewhere?

We begin our analysis by tracing the dynamics of education policy through fivesignificant books, on policy formulation and implementation in post-apartheid SouthAfrica: Implementing Education Policies – The South African Experience, Sayed andJansen (2001); Education and Equity – The Impact of State Policies on South AfricanEducation, Motala and Pampallis (2002); South African Education Policy Review,Chisholm, Motala and Vally (2003); Changing Class: Education and Social Changein Post-Apartheid South Africa, Chisholm (2004); and Elusive Equity EducationReform in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Fiske and Ladd (2004).

These books are key compilations of locally conceived debates about educationaltransformation and post-apartheid policy development. They represent a high level ofscholarship and are not channelled through the constraints of the process of interna-tional peer-reviewed journals. The trade-off is that they seemingly offer a particularnarrative with limited international significance and utility. However, we wish toshow that looking at locally grounded debates and the indigenous construction ofpolicy discourse can be instructive in several ways. First, policy analysis must begrounded in historical, political and even cultural constructions about the purposesand projects of education and, fundamentally what can result is a more cogent critiqueof dominant global narratives in international policy-making that exists alongside thestruggles and dilemmas particular to transitional countries. Second, we suggest usingconventional tools for policy analysis does not take into account the particular context

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many countries in the global south need to confront in evaluating and measuring theireffectiveness. Of particular interest to us in this article is underscoring the need toexpand our theoretical and methodological approaches that explain policy formula-tion, implementation and evaluation in countries outside of North America andEurope. Importantly, by highlighting the central arguments and perspectives in thesevolumes we raise the problematic of framing and analysing policies through theconventional analytical policy tools and categories and development discourses(measures of quality and equity) in explaining decisions and processes that areuniquely South African.

This essay explores the intentions of policy objectives as constructed within theparameters of democratic transition and globalisation in South Africa and examinestheir outcomes by asking ‘what is good educational policy’ if it has not improved theoverall schooling conditions for the majority of South African students? In the follow-ing pages we set out to show that the over-reliance by local actors on global policyideals and analytic tools has been theoretically limited to a narrow set of critiques andunderstandings about potential policy options. This global frame for policy conceptu-alisation and implementation locks our pictures, stories and descriptions withinparticular understandings about the potential or purpose of education. It fails toengage with what we feel has been the most fundamental problem with educationaltransformation in South Africa – the meaningful attention to and inclusion of multiple(particularly the most marginalised) voices and diverse communities in the descriptionof the ‘problem’ and the creation of solutions for social transformation. Lastly, werevisit the ideals of the early origins of the struggle for liberation and possibility forsocial transformation today by going well beyond the alteration of the structural racialinequality of apartheid, and instead call for a resurgence of alternative, democraticspaces that will ‘create the conditions for each generation of youth to struggle anewto sustain the promise of a democracy that must be continuously expanded into aworld of new possibilities and opportunities for keeping justice and real hope alive’(Giroux 2009).

The state, globalisation and policy-making

While until recently a major weakness of policy work in South Africa was theneglected role of the state and bureaucracy, authors in these collections have startedto analyse the relationship between the state and society, placing their analysis withinthe broad backdrop of history and in the context of a changed political order. Commonto all the books are key chapters which explore the history, evolution and trajectoriesof policy theorising and research in South Africa – in one direction, looking at theemerging democratic state and its policy formulation and implementation; another inunderstanding the relation between education, society and wider social changes giventhe legacy of apartheid; and finally illustrating different policy responses to globalisa-tion and international economic imperatives for transitional states. They carefullydescribe how the country grappled with understanding and defining different policyoptions in the face of growing criticism and pressure to increase quality, improveaccess, equity and accountability amidst international competition and pressure fromother sectors over dwindling budgets.

According to some globalisation theorists, the very notion of national economiesand nation states under globalisation has become meaningless (Waters 1995; Ohmae1996). Green (2006) draws out the implications of this perspective on education,

arguing that the assumption is that nation states would lose control of their educationsystems. In contrast, several authors in these volumes grapple with the deeper, non-observable elements of global influences on educational change in Africa. While thereis no doubt that IMF/World Bank conditional ties impact on the sovereignty of manydeveloping nation states, to see all nation states as complete captives of globalisationand powerless is fundamentally misleading, since the international neoliberal ideologyitself takes place through the agency of the state (Vally and Spreen 2006). This doesnot mean that the imperatives of international competitiveness have not lessened theautonomous agency of individual states but instead suggests that the limits on statepolicy are to a significant extent, self-imposed. Taking up this issue in ChangingClass, Chisholm explains that new understandings of the state, bureaucracy andeducational change have been linked to critiques of globalisation emphasising theneoliberal character of the state operating in a global context where ‘the marketisationof education and the imperative towards fiscal austerity form part of the constrainingenvironment within which education policy reform occurs’ (2004, 14). Motala andPampallis (2002) also argue that given the range of forces which impact on the state,the pressures of globalisation have been significantly important and central to under-standing the South African state. They suggest that the macro-economic shift from amildly Keynesian model (Reconstruction and Development Programme) to a neolib-eral one (Growth Employment and Redistribution [GEAR] Strategy) in 1996 had aclear impact on education provision. And, as we have shown elsewhere the impact ofglobalisation in the form of GEAR’s macro-economic policy promoted the marketisa-tion of education, public–private partnerships, fiscal austerity, budgetary constraints,cost containment and cuts to education (Vally and Spreen 2006).

Increasingly, global economic imperatives define the limits of local and nationalpolitics as nation states become beholden to market forces. In South Africa, oneconsequence of being a transitional state in an emerging global system was theinfluence of external actors on policy formulation. ‘Instead of incorporating the viewsof civil society and social agents, the government seemed more receptive to advicefrom consultants who use theories and methods found with the world of human-capitalapproaches and rates of return analysis’ (Vally and Spreen 2003, 436). ImplementingEducation Policy also addresses the influence of private international consultants indiluting social justice issues and influencing policy formulation. It quotes one financespecialist who played a critical role in the adoption of the user fees school fundingmodel:

I did play a role in influencing the governance debate … by arguing that we needed tokeep whites and articulate blacks within the public sector as an arena for state influence.Hence, the soft option in financing alternatives that did not force the strong redistributivethrust of the Task Team. This I presented to …the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee.The Committee was sceptical at first but later realised that this matter affected not onlywhite children but children of civil servants working in government. The notion was thatthere was a need to keep the black middle class involved in and as advocates for thepublic schooling sector (quoted in Sayed and Jansen 2001, 276).

While we can agree that global imperatives certainly place limits on state policy,there is often no obligation to accept them. In terms of policy formulation and sectorprovisioning, as Dale (1999) points out, many states borrow plans and procedurevoluntarily and explicitly – they are ‘the product of conscious decision making’ andinitiated from within. Several chapters set out investigating the role of the state and

the bureaucracy – across a range of education institutions from early childhoodeducation to higher education integration – as agents of social change. This is thecentral issue with Education and Equity (2001), where Motala and Pampallis speak tothe irreconcilability of the state’s macro-economic policies and its social justiceintentions. The articles in their collection set out to explore the capabilities of andlimitations imposed on the post-apartheid state with regard to educational policy-making. The chapters suggest that it was the internally driven adoption of the macro-economic policy, namely growth, employment and redistribution (GEAR) in 1996 thatset crippling limits on what it might have been possible to achieve in education, andthat the years since have shown what has proved to be beyond the capacity of the stateand society to achieve (2001). A contribution by Oldfield (2001) shows how the prior-ities of redress and equity were unevenly sublimated to the rationale of the market, ledby restrictive fiscal and government policies. Similarly, Nicolaou (2001) shows thedeleterious effects of the macro-economic policy on issues related to school gover-nance, the quality of education, classroom conditions, teacher training as well as waysin which the wider issues of poverty eradication, social redress and greater equalitywere sidelined. Education and Equity also tackles how international trends, such asdecentralisation of school management and accountability, teacher rationalisation, andparental choice have introduced a quasi-market and privatisation of education in SouthAfrica.

While recognising the power of global influences Chisholm extends the analysisto explore how these ideas are recontextualised as they were introduced in SouthAfrica.

South Africa provides a case … [whereby ideas] continue to be indigenised by localsocial relations ….the way the new global rules and related ideas are played out on theSouth African stage depends on the way they are taken up by local social actors in thecontext of historically established social relations (2004, 5).

While indigenisation of programmes and policies did occur, many of these policyprinciples and priorities still emerged out of global contexts and internationaleconomic pressures. The problem lies in the lesson that the policy principles are basedon neoclassical and mainstream economics, which pay scant attention to the complex-ity of social and historical context and consequences of market processes (Chisholm2004, 4).

Globalisation and curriculum formulation

We now come to the crux of our argument and axiomatically explain the fault lines inthe South African education policy formulation process. Several authors have shownthat the resolute endeavour to compete in the global market place permeated mostsocio-economic initiatives undertaken by the South African state over the last decade.Curriculum policy documents also have not been immune from this desire and arereplete with exhortations to mould learners and educational institutions into thisinstrumental role. In analysing the values and purposes of the curriculum, a committeeappointed to review the national curriculum (Curriculum 2005), mentioned a dualchallenge confronting curriculum designers: the first was the ‘post-Apartheid’ chal-lenge which is to ensure the requisite knowledge, values, and skills base which will,in turn, ‘provide the conditions for greater social justice, equity and development’.

The second challenge was the need to align the curriculum to the ‘global competitive-ness’ explained as providing the ‘platform for developing knowledge, skills andcompetencies for innovation, social development and economic growth for the 21stcentury’ (Department of Education 1996).

Reviewing curriculum process allows us to reflect more broadly on the evolutionof policy process in South Africa. Many scholars throughout the world mention thedisjuncture or gap between policy and implementation (Young 1993; Ball 1994;Apple and Beane 1999; Dale 1999). This common-sense approach to policy analysisin South Africa could have been viewed as confirming state officials’ claims that theearly stages of policy implementation were of necessity years of setting in place‘sound’ policies, whereas the next period would be one of implementation. Yet, wesuggest this approach precluded subjecting existing policy to scrutiny and reducedproblems to ‘implementation issues’. This approach to policy analysis conformed toconventional perspectives which view the policy process in rational and linear stages.The main critique of this perspective is that policy should be understood by theiterative interplay between declaration and actions, as well as the mediations resultingfrom competing internal and external interests. The case of South Africa illustratesthat the policy process is inherently political and dynamic, involving contestation andcompromise. Our argument is that policies must be judged from the vantage point ofpractices on the ground, everyday life, rather than glossy political rhetoric, ideal-typestatements of intention, blueprints or ‘magic silver bullets’.

Linked to this critique of external referencing is the idea that much of the policytransfer or borrowing from other countries that inspired the new curriculum wasselective and from countries very different from South Africa. In their eagerness toparticipate in the international political and economic arena, policy planners adoptedcompetency or outcomes-based curricular reforms that emulated those in industria-lised countries, namely Australia, Canada, the UK and the US (Spreen 2001). Earlierofficial documents on Curriculum 2005 unashamedly touted the outcomes-basedcurriculum as a panacea for South Africa’s economic woes, repeatedly relatingoutcomes-based learning (OBE) to its international origins. The emphasis of OBE onskill-oriented mastery of pre-determined benchmarks did have wide appeal for thegoals of integrating education and training in South Africa and OBE itself originatedin global debates about skills and training that were conducted within the labourmovement and between labour, the government and industry. Yet largely ignoredwere countries such as Brazil or a state such as Kerala in India, where the socialdynamics and inequalities, as well as a history of resistance to educational inequali-ties, were similar to those of South Africa. For example, Brazilian educator PauloFreire’s work had much to offer and would have accommodated much of thecriticisms levelled at the new curriculum (see Vally and Spreen 2006). Unlike the top-down imposition of policy in South Africa, in Sao Paulo, teachers played a critical rolein curriculum reform. Brazilian educational reforms also involved the activeparticipation of the community at large and the contributions of social movements;they respected the dynamics in each school; they used the Freirean methodology ofaction–reflection in the curriculum; and they used a model of continuing teacher train-ing, with a critical analysis of the curriculum in practice. By contrast, in South Africa,the mass democratic movement was largely marginalised from the education policyand school reform process. As a result, in envisioning a new educational system,South Africa’s own rich traditions of alternative education, even under the apartheidperiod, were neglected (Kallaway 2002).

We suggest that the South African state could have and should have chosenanother route toward development – one that is fundamentally more inclusive andchallenges existing disparities through social action and local engagement. ‘If there ispolitical will to question social and power relations that introduce global and marketimperatives, then there are indeed alternatives’ (Vally and Spreen 2003, 434). Incommenting on these early developments in the Education Policy Review we titled ourchapter: ‘In the Shadow of GEAR: Between the Scylla of a blurred vision and theCharybdis of obstructed implementation’ (Vally and Spreen 2003). We argued that itwas no longer credible to blame the crisis on poor implementation alone andsuggested that the technically rational search for best practice innovations which were‘cost-effective’ or ‘efficient’ did no more than tinker with the fundamental educationaland social problems in question. Further, this form of censure ignored the mainspringsof a system and its policies that maintained, reproduced and often exacerbatedinequalities. This does not mean that there are no feasible and practical reforms whichmake a difference or meaningfully address issues of inequality – just that these wereignored or not considered ‘cost-efficient’. A useful international comparisondescribed in Implementing Education Policies, shows how with considerably lessresources and policy expertise, both neighbouring Mozambique and Namibia maderemarkable shifts in education practice that significantly improved education duringthe same ten-year period of democratic reforms (Sayed and Jansen 2001). Thisassertion underscores our point that even in the age of globalisation, standardisationand accountability, there are alternatives for states to pursue – and some countriesopted for them.

Indeed much of the policy theorising across all these volumes has centred on thedifficulties transitional governments are faced with in matching intention withoutcomes and rhetoric with practice – a problem faced the world over. However,policy research conducted in South Africa to date has primarily identified the financialconstraints as the biggest barrier to policy implementation and reform, without funda-mentally challenging or questioning the original policy assumptions. And while westrongly agree that had there been adequate state support in the form of training, moni-toring of curriculum implementation and financial commitment behind these reforms,a decade should have been adequate time to show significant improvements, wefurther argue that many of the policies themselves are based on flawed assumptionsabout the on-the-ground realities of schooling which has been a central part of theproblem.

In the following sections we concretely follow the literature and trace the evolu-tion of the post-apartheid policy terrain since 1994 and capture shifts in concern, firstfrom the creation and formulation of policy (largely to reflect global competitiveness),then to concrete problems of policy implementation (largely reacting to local fiscalconstraints). In the last section we evaluate whether or not these were in fact the rightpolicies given the particular social and historical context of South Africa. Severalchapters in each of the volumes described throughout this paper are devoted to lookingat how conflicting social and global economic imperatives informed and manipulatedpolicy decisions. They track a myriad of changes and traverse a range of contestedviews with respect to interpreting intentions, meanings and texts in the policy process.In exploring the twists and turns that have been described as policy ‘maturation’ orpolicy ‘slippages’ (Spreen 2001) in the early years of transformation, these policystudies contribute to our overall understanding of competing global educationalimperatives in transitional states. Comparatively they help us construct a broader

theorisation of the state and education policy-making in a globalised world, whilelocally they illustrate challenges and contradictions facing social transformation andchange under externally-induced fiscal constraint.

Framing the discourse: rhetoric over reality

While we do not think it possible or necessary to provide a complete historical over-view of the policy process, the selected edited volumes illustrate the significant ideasand debates that framed the last decade of policy-making in South Africa. We beginthis section by examining the political framework within which policies were negoti-ated. The historical chapters in each volume describe the evolution of policy-makingin South Africa as a terrain inhabited by a number of discourses which formedconflicting social and economic impulses – often displacing and sublimating eachother.

For many (mostly outside of South Africa), the peaceful transition to an open,democratic, non-racialised state marked a hopeful beginning for South Africa.Reflecting this democratic exuberance, many post-apartheid education policies wereformulated under the prevailing assumption that after the 1994 elections the newpolitical dispensation would automatically translate into a better educational systemfor all – bolstered by gleaming rhetoric that suggested all efforts would be focused onequity, redress and redistribution. The eloquent language reflected in South Africa’s‘new Rainbow Nation’ painted idealised versions of equitable classrooms, schools,and communities suggesting to the public that everyone would now have access to thesame (exemplary) educational provisioning and support as the formerly all-whiteschools. The public’s eagerness to overcome the legacy of apartheid, coupled withoverwhelming enthusiasm and support for the ruling party, shielded the policy processfrom the usual public scrutiny. Policy planning churned ahead without true delibera-tive processes and under the (false) assumption that there were no conflicting interests.Introductory chapters in all of the books describe the problematic of the ‘honeymoon’context in which key education policies were initially discussed, debated and eventu-ally determined in post-apartheid South Africa.

Sayed and Jansen’s Implementing Education Policy (2001) starts by laying out thediscursive influences that shaped many of the education discussions. Work drawingon the ‘discourse’ of policy and implementation has tended to emphasise the Consti-tution and the number of laws that were put into place to address the government’sstated goal of ‘equity, redress, democracy access and participation’ (CEPD 2000, 4).Part of this early deliberative process of policy formulation also meant that in order togain legitimacy the government had to signal to the public that change was happeningand that any change was for the better (Spreen 2001). To a large extent these goalswere thought to be realised through and transferred to the education sector through arights-based discourse. Much post-apartheid policy analysis explores education andhuman rights from various legislative angles but fails to move beyond viewing educa-tion as a conduit for human rights universals (Keet 2004, 2). Soudien and others showthat the policy rhetoric rested on social reconstruction discourse that offered ‘idealisedversions of teachers, students and parents as the state would like them to be’ (Soudien2003, 82) without requiring the state to meet its obligation to deliver the support thatwould enable change.

In striking contrast to the democratic ‘transitionists’, many other social commen-tators from within South Africa felt that the true structures of transformation reflected

a ‘negotiated compromise’ – a careful balancing act between contradictory politicalimperatives, chiefly social justice and economic development. Part of this compro-mise they argue included a tentative tripartite alliance between labour, government,and business and the retention of old bureaucratic structures and staffing through theearly policy-making period. Hence, policy deliberations were constructed throughcarefully designed ‘representative’ stakeholder groups engaging a wide range ofhighly contested and competing interests. While policy ideals were mainly aboutcreating a vision for social change through rights-based legal and equity-based educa-tional frameworks, they were not about doing what would be necessary to alter thestatus quo fundamentally by changing access to these institutions (Vally and Spreen2006). Elsewhere, Jansen (2002) supports this argument introducing the notion of‘policy as political symbolism’. In his attempt to explain why major transformationsof education have not occurred, he argues that education policy ‘is best described as astruggle for the achievement of a broad political symbolism that would mark the shiftfrom apartheid to post-apartheid society’ (201). In Implementing Education Policies,Sayed and Jansen argue, ‘for the dazzle of all the post-apartheid policies, there wasconsiderable distance between policy and practice’ (2001, 1). The idea that policieswere put into place for symbolic reasons and for their political currency without anyreal commitment to their implementation were an important shift in understanding andexamining the policy outcomes over the last decade and a half.

In Changing Class Harley and Wedekind (2004) have extended Jansen’s ‘policysymbolism’ critique by coining the phrase ‘policy meliorism’, that is, the belief orfaith that the mere vision of the policy is sufficient to ameliorate the actual conditions.In this interpretation they show that there was confusion between ‘what should be’ and‘what is’ and draw parallels from other authors, explaining that the good intentionsexpressed by education reforms have more influence on the policy agenda than schooland social realities themselves. They contend that in South Africa the rhetoric and themere fact that policy texts exist was adequate enough evidence for the government todemonstrate its commitment to social transformation (Harley and Wedekind 2004).Elsewhere we’ve also suggested that the policy-makers were simply engaged in‘glossy rhetoric’ and attempts at balancing competing demands were merely ‘window-dressing’ (Vally and Spreen 2006).

So, despite an array of rights-based education policies, constitutional rights andcourt judgments, equity remains elusive in South Africa. Employing a theoreticalframework influenced by John Rawls, in Elusive Equity Fiske and Ladd (2004)suggest that while progress has been made toward ‘equity defined as equal treatmentof all races…’ it has been elusive in promoting equity ‘defined as equal opportunityor as educational adequacy’. (Preface, x). It is pertinent to pose the question: Why,despite the legal rights to education and the products of tomes of policy texts, doesinequality persist in schools and society? As we have also argued, the achievement ofequity will not occur merely through policy statements, formal rules of justice orjuridical models resting on individual rights. Clearly, the Rawlsian principles ofindividualist liberty rest on particular assumptions about the relationship between thestate and the market, ignoring the unequal status or starting point of individuals dueto South Africa’s apartheid legacy. Equity in South African education, as in othersocial sectors, will remain not only elusive but also illusory, as long as the fairy talefaçade that all citizens in a class-based society have equal rights is promoted.

Hence, in framing policy formulation as ‘rhetoric over reality’ we speak to thediscrepancy between the exiting normative framework of South African society and

its on-the-ground reality in most people’s everyday lives. In this section we haveexamined policy intentions and outcomes through a discussion of the glossy rhetoricinformed by human rights legislation, social justice and a democratic citizenshipdiscourse and weighing it against the actual realisation of this promise for the majoritynow over a decade and a half later. We refer to the work of Apple and Beane whowrite ‘that the most powerful meaning of democratic citizenship is formed ‘not inglossy political rhetoric, but in the details of everyday lives’ (Apple and Beane 1999,120). For many South Africans today (2010) the democratic ideals of equity andaccess have not yet become a reality and are not likely to in the foreseeable future.

Examining policy actors: ‘race’, class and democratic structures

In the previous section we explained that policy symbolism and rhetoric were valuabletools for leveraging reforms that were seen as addressing all needs – for the sake ofpublic perception – without alienating the power elite. As the reviewed literaturepoints out many of the equity-based educational reforms in South Africa havefloundered because they have not always attended to issues in which the class contextof schooling helps determine redistributive patterns in society. In a similar vein toChanging Class and Elusive Equity we also suggest that social class has increasinglydisplaced ‘race’ as a determinant social factor ( e.g. in determining school admissionpractices), yet their intersectionality remains under-theorised in our understanding ofthe post-apartheid policy-making. Chapters woven throughout the volumes demon-strate that despite a strong public commitment to a more equitable and just educationalprovisioning, three areas in particular have clearly retained and/or exacerbatedinequities and many continue to privilege the minority white (and now new blackelite) population: decentralisation, access and public accountability.

In Changing Class, Chisholm maintains that South Africa’s education transitionwas ‘a pre-eminently political one: the economic consequences of apartheid are stillacutely present’ (2004, 4). Through the overarching narrative provided in ChangingClass we learn that not only is the state constructed in terms of global and macro-economic trends, the South African state must also be cast in the new politics of racialpower in competition with education’s presumed role in erasing social differentiationand the political project of de-racialisation. Hence, important in presenting andanalysing the international education policy terrain, this literature also underscoresand describes the ‘raced’, classed and gendered nature of education policy evolutionin South Africa which has often been overlooked in mainstream or conventionalpolicy discourse.

Interestingly, each book documents a profound shift away from the original egal-itarian premises established by the democratic movement in the early 1990s (namely‘peoples’ education’ aimed at equity and redress) toward an embrace of elitist poli-cies driven by neoliberal market ideology. Attempts at building consensus throughrepresentation without addressing the cleavages in society left an indelible imprint onthe evolution of policies (Chisholm 2004). One arena for leveraging new forms ofdemocratic power was school decentralisation and the formation of school-governingbodies (SGBs). The South African Schools Act provides for community governanceof schools as educators, learners and primarily parents working in partnership withthe state in deciding the policies and rules that govern their schools. Several authorsdescribe the policy context around the formation and responsibilities of SGBs,particularly their limited role in formulating policy and rather as policy enactors or

enforcers. A chapter by Grant-Lewis and Motala in Changing Class shows thatdespite tireless attention to ‘stakeholder composition’ the dissimilar realities of‘race’, class, gender and geographical location were influential in the democraticfunctioning of school governing bodies or the politics behind stakeholder decision-making (Chisholm 2004). Whereas the carefully devised system of open publicresponses was intended to give broad stakeholder input it instead served to modifyinterests, funding plans and policy objectives in favour of white interest groups andthe emerging black middle class. Several of the stories presented in Education andEquity carefully illustrate how both black and white middle-class groups, althoughrelatively numerically small, were better organised and quite vocal in their negotia-tions, while groups who sought more radical changes were less visible and tended torely on their representatives in government to champion their interests (Karlsson,McPherson and Pampallis 2002). A refreshingly frank chapter by Nzimande (2001)in Implementing Education Policies further criticises the miscalculations of represen-tation and democratic deliberation. Nzimande argues that the ‘demobilisation of themass democratic movement in policy change is not disconnected from the lack ofunderstanding and resources required to influence the formal processes of policyenactment’ (3).

Yet, the dissimilar realities produced by the apartheid legacy were not factoredinto the politics behind stakeholder composition and democratic representation(Motala and Pampallis 2002; Motala, Vally and Modiba 2003, 592; Chisholm2004). Several chapters describe the subtle and often complex ways exogenousfactors influenced participation in educational decision-making. All the literaturereviewed in this article speaks to the relevance of the international literature whichsuggests that decentralisation in fact perpetuates inequality; they show that in theSouth African context this is even starker. And, while school governing bodies areportrayed as organs for participation in local, democratic citizenship, the reality isthat the decentralising function of these statutory organs has become a burden forpoorer parents

In deepening our attention to the shifting relationships between ‘race’, social classand education, Changing Class is primarily devoted to understanding the changingpolitical economy and the role played by a broader array of social actors now enteringthe bureaucratic scene. These new actors Chisholm explains, ‘can exist inside andoutside the state and act as classed, raced and gendered beings who themselves havechanged in the context of broader social change’ (2004, 16). A striking examinationof the influence of new elite in Education and Equity makes the observation that theblack political elite desired the continuation of the former Model C schools in orderto be able to ‘silently permit their own class interests to be taken care of withoutconfronting their own, largely poor, constituencies’ (Karlsson, McPherson andPampallis 2001, 151). While the major conclusion in Chisholm’s book is that ‘educa-tional development and the emerging system have favoured an expanding, racially-mixed middle class’ (Chisholm 2004, 7), she also argues that this may not have beenthe conscious intent of policy. ‘Redress for the poor’ suggests quite the opposite inten-tion. Chisholm explains, ‘there is no doubt that the resulting social change is consid-erable in achievement and direction, but is characterized by the putative and loosecoupling of a democratic project of de-racialisation with neo-liberalism’ (Chisholm2004, 7). Several chapters in Changing Class and Education and Equity, as well assections in the Education Policy Review, show that since the overall economicstructures had not been fundamentally altered, the policy development process was

mediated by a small number of pressure groups, wherein the interests of an expandingblack middleclass and whites assumed precedence.

Understanding the intersections of poverty and policy implementation: getting at the ‘right’ problems and solutions

In a review of government initiatives from the mid-to late 1990s to the present, theDeputy Director General of Systems and Planning in the National Department ofEducation acknowledged that the country was ‘far from achieving our vision for educa-tion’ and that attempts at redress were ‘in danger of being side tracked’ (Vally andSpreen 2003, 434). Early in 2001, the former Deputy Director General of Educationin Gauteng (considered one of the most well-provisioned provinces) listed the mostegregious issues plaguing the school system: the absence of basic school resources,poor quality of learning outcomes, the lack of adequately trained staff, poor studentperformance, corruption and profligacy, and the ‘inadequacies and failure of bureau-crats in the system as a whole’ (ibid). In that year the National School Register of NeedsSurvey, which quantifies the provision and state of infrastructure and facilities, indi-cated that ‘while there had been “general progress in educational provision” since theprevious survey (conducted in 1996), adverse conditions remain and in some instanceshave increased’ (Department of Education 2001, 4). Also reflecting on the worseningconditions ‘measured in terms of net available onsite resources, the distance betweenblack and white schools has increased in this short period since the legal terminationof apartheid in the early 1990s’ (Jansen 1998, 2). In the late 1990s, while policiesdirected at teaching and learning (such as teacher qualifications, curriculum reform andlearner-centred practices) were being introduced into schools, unions such as the SouthAfrican Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) also came out denouncing the nationaland provincial departments for ‘not promoting the interests of working-class commu-nities by addressing inequalities in the education system’. They criticised the govern-ment for failing to prevent overcrowding, failing to prevent additional costs offinancing education being passed on to schools and consequently to parents, and failingto create a funding mechanism to address the disparities between the previously advan-taged and the previously disadvantaged (SADTU 1998).

Even today in 2009 children in South Africa face a plethora of social problems,including hunger, poverty, HIV/AIDS and violence – particularly those children wholive in rural areas and urban townships. Various studies highlight the facts: 14 millionchildren are considered poor while nearly 11 million live in dire poverty; by 2010 anestimated 16% of children will be orphans; 3000 children aged 15 or younger die eachyear from trauma/violence related causes.

Many talk about the lack of skills yet 79% of our schools do not have libraries; 60% ofschools do not have laboratories, 42% of our schools are overcrowded; there is a backlogof R153billion for buildings and capital expenditure and R30billion in school mainte-nance and only 7% of poorly educated adults have access to skills developmentprogrammes. Skills are important for our developmental needs and not for the ficklenessof the international market economy alone. This should be abundantly clear given thecurrent global economic and financial meltdown. In our headlong rush to become‘globally competitive’ we are forgetting the building blocks of our future and mortgag-ing our children’s lives for a mirage (Vally 2009, 15)

Numerous chapters across all five books describe a myriad of tensions aroundbalancing elements of social justice, the desire to be internationally competitive and

the need for fiscal discipline. With the advantage of hindsight many of the chaptersillustrate how competition and fiscal constraint has had the effect of limiting policyoptions and undermining social justice and equity. In Elusive Equity, Fiske and Ladd(2004) deal with financing schools and balancing public and private resources. Theyexamine administrative data and provide their own empirical research to analyse whatpolicies have meant for previously disadvantaged schools and students. They show thatwhile significant attempts to equalise funding and resource allocation through policyand legislation have been made, material inequalities between schools continue to bestark. Several issues of the Education Policy Review have also tracked the historicaltwists and turns of how early policies directed at redress increasingly were reformulatedand evolved within constraints imposed by the interim constitution and the rise ofneoliberal economic policies with its attendant emphasis on fiscal austerity (Chisholm,Motala and Vally 2003). Several authors take on the ill-advised teacher rationalisationpolicy (chapters in Motala and Pampallis 2002; Chisholm, Motala and Vally 2003; andFiske and Ladd 2004). In a chapter from Education and Equity, Motala and Pampallisargue that in shifting teachers from areas of oversupply to areas of undersupply theredistributive intentions of the state were compromised by its broader fiscal and moni-toring policies which strangled the possibilities for achieving equity and a significantredistribution of resources. The unintended result of the ill-designed policy was a largeexodus of experienced teachers from the system, massive teacher shortages, and lowmorale for those left behind in overcrowded and over-burdened failing schools.

The initial translation of national policies to the local level in the late 1990sconfounded many within state structures and provided a new theoretical terrain forpolicy analysts. With the focus of analysis centred firmly on policy implementationduring the new millennium, Elmore’s backward mapping approach came into voguein South Africa. In this approach,

backward reasoning from the individual and organizational choices that are the hub ofthe problem to which the policy is addressed, to the rules, procedures and structures thathave the closest proximity to those choices, to the policy instruments available to affectthose things, and hence to feasible policy objectives’. (Elmore 1980, 1)

The view that implementation needs to be built into policy formulation from its incep-tion rather than as an afterthought was well received by South African policy analyststhroughout the research literature, as was the notion first credited to Ball (1994) thatpolicy should not be seen solely as ‘text’.

The chapters in Education and Equity demonstrate how contestations by compet-ing factions, pressures and interests within the state lead to specific decisions aboutpolicies and their particular sets of structures and forms that privileged a minorityperspective. In their introduction Motala and Singh (2002) suggest that critiques ofgovernment delivery should be ‘directed at more than symptomatic issues such as theweaknesses, interruption or breakdown of services for which the state is responsible’(3). The major argument in their book builds on Elmore’s backward mappingapproach by questioning the earlier assumption that policies failed because bureau-crats and education planners accepted policies uncritically; instead these authorsinvoke factors such as an incompetent bureaucracy, the absence of systemic planningand the scarcity of resources as explanations for the failure of policies. They insist thatthe process of implementation must be examined in relation to the very policies fromwhich it is derived and this consanguinity between policies and their implementationmust be analysed simultaneously.

The volumes of policy research conducted in post-apartheid South Africa (citedhere and elsewhere) show that despite the progress made, there is ample evidence toassert that things aren’t working the way they were planned. Interestingly, the chiefpolicy problem identified in the literature has been that of implementation andcapacity building, and despite the local nuances and national particularities aroundthese debates, the key themes that emerge from these volumes has yet to escape thetraditional functionalist/rationalist explanations of policy failures. Similar to researchcarried out in other international contexts, post-apartheid policy analysis in SouthAfrica relies heavily on theoretical frameworks and explanations that fail to graspfully the political realities of the global south. The over-reliance on conventionalpolicy frameworks does not explain the local realities of poverty and inequalitygiven the legacy of apartheid. To illustrate, despite explicit attempts to the contrary,much of the analysis of ‘race’/class/gender/poverty is devoid of discussions of localknowledges, understandings and constructions of these categories. To build on thiscritique we refer to work by Motala and Vally (2010) who argue that ‘the categoryof ‘class’ is significant not only in itself but relationally in its connectedness to ques-tions about ‘race’ and gender, and that educational analysis in South Africa aboutthese categories is rarely connected with questions of class’ (92). Wherein, ‘race’ inSouth African policy remains constructed in relation to the achievement of greater‘race’ equity and the quantification of improvements in relation to it. More specifi-cally, they argue that when ‘race’ is used for analytical purposes, its use is explainedas historically necessary given the policies and practice of the apartheid state in theallocation of resources and the continuing existence of racially defined schoolcohorts. Its justification is therefore largely about questions of output and measure-ment, for evaluating the progress of reform and the achievement of the goals ofequity.

Throughout this article we set out to reframe these debates within a new concep-tual framework and argue for a different theoretical paradigm for viewing policyformulation and implementation in the global south. We argue that very little, if anyattention is paid to the social construction of identities (more especially in relation totheir differing social class locations), and their pervasive effects on the lives oflearners, on the curriculum, on the struggles of learners and their communities inregard to education and in relation to educational policy and practice. In a number ofhis recent writings, including Decolonization and Empire: Contesting the Rhetoricand Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond (2007), veteran Cana-dian solidarity actor John Saul explains that an adequate evocation of the term libera-tion throughout Africa should be multidimensional – it should speak in terms of ‘race’,class, gender, and just as importantly, democratic voice. Saul argues that the strugglefor liberation was also a struggle for democratic voice for the genuine empowermentof the population from the bottom up.

What is ‘good’ policy?

Thus far, using five edited books on policy research literature over the past decadewe’ve outlined the problems with technical, rational approaches to policy formulation,planning and implementation. Some of these authors have argued for the need todistinguish analytically between conceptual critique and implementation critique(Sayed and Jansen 2001), while others suggest the problem is of implementation –lack of capacity – as explanations of the failure focused on explanations of the

bureaucracy in setting ‘frameworks for change’ and management systems, ignoringimplementation issues (Motala and Pampallis 2002), and others still examined howeducation was a vehicle for change, particularly social change (Chisholm, Motala andVally 2003; Fiske and Ladd 2004). As we’ve indicated, one problem of policyformulation has been the inception of policy lodged within a set of distinct globaldiscourses and policy frameworks (particularly growth, skills and economic develop-ment) which shaped the subjective and analytical views of the nature and purpose ofeducation. This resurgent Human Capital Theory discourse was given new currencyin the putative post-Fordist, global knowledge economy by the influential writings ofRobert Reich (1991), where education is seen instrumentally towards fulfillingvocational and economic goals in order to produce skilled workers with the requisiteability to compete in a globalised economy.

A discourse that continues to dominate today under the new president, continuingas it does the sentiments expressed by the former President Thabo Mbeki in his stateof the nation address where he clearly asserted that education should be aligned ‘withthe needs of the labour market’ (Ministry of Education 2005).The dilemma thatremains, though, is how to situate social development initiatives within an exportoriented and market-dependent macro-economic framework – a framework that isinimical to the social justice policies propounded in formal policy texts. Thesediscourses and frameworks have been characterised most by their tremendous shiftsfrom the original policies (of equity and redress) favoured by the mass democraticmovement. For Motala, these shifts reflect

the disjuncture between active and formal democracy, between mass mobilization andformal representation and the containment of the ends of politics to the means ofadministration’ policy driven by pragmatism instead of reflection and theorizing…where managerial imperatives emphasizing the discourse of outcomes, the measure-ment of inputs, budgetary parameters, normative guidelines and user fees, hold swayover rights. (as quoted in Vally 2003, 2)

Most of these chapters concur that South Africa has an impressive compendium ofeducation policies recognised the world over. As we suggested, however, this ‘jewelbox of ideas and reforms’ failed to provide realistic solutions to the on-the-groundneeds and realities of the majority of South Africans (Vally and Spreen 2003).

We would like to expand our critique on a different set of assumptions thatsurround policy and posit that policy texts cannot be read separately from theirimplementation, nor can they be disconnected from political and financial commit-ments of governments to support them. We further contend that policy formulation(and/or finding policy solutions) cannot exclude those who are most affected bythem. In our view, scant attention has been paid to what we consider a central issuein understanding the past decade of education policy-making – the long-term andsustained effect of poverty and inequality due to the unique apartheid legacy on theimplementation and outcome of education reforms in post-apartheid South Africa.Although prolific in quantity and rich in their theoretical and analytical contribu-tions, these volumes leave a major gap in understanding policy in practice becausethey fail to understand and explore the multiple and deeper meanings around povertyand its impacts. For example, few research studies cited have examined life incommunities or in classrooms. Very few studies examine closely the changes inteaching and learning based on teacher morale, perceptions about the learners theyteach or their feelings about the school communities’ overall well-being, and none

have provided students’ perspectives on these important policy shifts. In order forpolicy aims to effect change, policy design and implementation has to reflect theneeds, understandings and social realities of its primary constituencies – not power-ful stakeholders, protected interests groups or articulate policy crafters – ‘goodpolicy’ should be measured by its relevance and applicability to those at whom it isaimed. Goals and aims need to be constructed from the grassroots up, embedded inthe ideas, dreams and visions that school communities and learners themselves areempowered to articulate.

Moreover, the focus of many of these policy reforms has been on individualdisadvantage abstracted from the broader social and historical context in South Africa.One can’t look at and understand policies without looking at the broader economicand political conditions that are the legacy of apartheid, particularly the impact ofpoverty and inequality. Economic and political conditions are the building-blocks ofsustainable school policy, yet the importance of community engagement, participationand social mobilisation should not be underestimated. In her article ‘What counts aseducation policy: Notes towards a new paradigm’ Anyon (2005) argues that as policy-makers and practitioners we need to recognise and act on the power of poverty todwarf most educational reforms. ‘Individual and neighbourhood poverty builds wallsaround schools and classrooms that education policy does not penetrate or scale’ (70).She insists, and we agree, as do many of the chapters in the various books that ‘theeffects of macro-economic policies continually trump the effects of education poli-cies’ (71). However, we further illustrate that policy analysis is not just describing themacro-economic framework or limitations of implementation due to fiscal constraints,but instead requires looking at the policies (and their embedded assumptions) them-selves. The point is all well and good and important. But there is a gap. Educationalaccountability and goals must be conceived as a public undertaking centrally involv-ing a wide range of communities.

In this article we have concentrated on an explanation of the analytical importanceof three key issues in global/local policy research in South Africa.

The impact of globalisation, neoliberalism and macro-economic policy on education

The best hopes of educationists to address these impediments through policy interven-tions are constrained by their very intractability and their effects on large parts ofsociety. Our view is that no amount of educational policy or practice can, by itself,overcome these deeply entrenched and fundamental attributes of capitalist societies,and that unless they are properly understood and analysed, policy interventions canbecome no more than the capricious hopes of politicians, bureaucrats and socialreformers. The latter, despite their good intentions, face, for instance, the dilemma that‘legally and politically sanctioned demands and guarantees remain unreconciled toexigencies and capacities of the budgetary, financial and labour market policy of thecapitalist economy’ (Offe 1994, 37).

The critical importance of the post-apartheid legacy

The critical importance of the post-apartheid legacy, particularly on class and on itsrelationship to ‘race’, has largely been left out of the analytical taxonomies in post-apartheid South Africa. In the post-apartheid analytic framework very little, if any

attention is paid to the current social construction of racial identities (more especiallyin relation to their differing social class locations), and their pervasive effects on thelives of learners, on the curriculum, on the struggles of learners and their communitiesin regard to education and in relation to educational policy and practice. Thesesocially relevant categories of analysis (class, ‘race’ and gender) must be used in anintegrative way to produce a more diverse and complex yet more illuminating pictureof the combination of forces that shape educational policies and practice. This isbecause their unique post-apartheid combination as social and historical factors hashad particularly devastating effects on working class communities. The clarificationof how the concept of class and its relation to ‘race’ today is understood in educa-tional policy will shed light, even if indirectly, on the question of social cohesion andin particular, on levels and forms of participation that extend beyond race-basedstakeholder groups.

The question of community voice and public participation in policy-making

Absent from all the books is the significance of the resurgent social movements whichchallenge and protest inequalities and have gone beyond the impasse of fiscal austeritywhile challenging the state to move towards achieving more equitable outcomes.Much of the policy research conducted in South Africa, to date, has primarily identi-fied the financial constraints as the biggest barrier to policy implementation andreform, without fundamentally challenging or questioning the original policy assump-tions. In this article, we placed our argument on a different set of assumptions thatsurround policy failures. In order for policy aims to effect change, policy design andimplementation has to reflect the needs, understandings and social realities of itsprimary constituencies – not powerful stakeholders, protected interests groups orarticulate policy crafters; ‘good policy’ should be measured by its relevance andapplicability. Goals and aims need to be constructed from the grassroots up, embeddedin the ideas, dreams and visions that communities themselves are empowered toarticulate.

Lastly, in order to advance human rights, address poverty and inequality, andprovide access to quality schools for all South Africans an entirely different set ofmechanisms and structures for ‘participation’ must be established. By ensuring avoice in policy related research policy-makers can take local challenges into accountand better deliver on what is needed. Echoing Giroux’s (2009) critique of PresidentObama’s new education policy approaches in the US we agree that

it is imperative that we develop a new language, especially for young people, one thatrecognizes how individual problems are related to social concerns. Living in a realdemocracy means finding collective ways of dealing with the most pressing problemsfacing future generations, including ecological destruction, poverty, economic inequal-ity, racism, and the necessity for a vibrant social state. We need to reclaim the meaningof democracy and give it some substance by recognizing … that democracy is not justabout the freedom to shop, participate in formal elections, or the two-party system: it isabout discovering the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim theirmoral and political agency. (Giroux 2009)

If we are to move beyond the limited education policy strategies of global standardsand competitiveness the larger education policy dialogue needs to focus on how weview, represent, and treat those marginalised by class, race, disability, and age.

It needs to be about how to imagine and struggle for a democratic future. The potentialfor a better future further increases when critical education and democratically inspiredmodes of literacy become central to any viable notion of politics. Education in thisinstance becomes both an ethical and a political referent: it furnishes an opportunity foradults to provide the conditions for themselves and young people to become criticallyengaged social agents who value democratic values over market values and who takeseriously the notion that when human beings recognize the causes of their suffering theyare in a better position to bring the misery caused by market fundamentalism and otheranti-democratic tendencies to a halt. (Giroux 2009)

We are encouraged by this vision of educational participation as keeping socialjustice and hope alive.

Notes on contributorsCarol Anne Spreen is a professor in the Leadership, Foundation and Policy Department ofthe Curry School of Education, University of Virginia and a visiting professor at the Facultyof Education, University of Johannesburg. Her research centres on political and socioculturalstudies of education change, particularly the influences of globalisation on teaching andlearning.

Salim Vally is a senior researcher at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation,Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg. He has an abiding interest in linkingacademic scholarship with societal concerns and community participation.

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