A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRPERSON

Through the wide lens of a chairman, it is a distinctive pleasure to reflect on the achievements and challenges of the Historic Schools Restoration Project (HSRP). Today, almost everyone has an opinion about education and schooling. Some people think there have been vast improvements since 1994, while others believe that much of the system is worse than the Bantu education of apartheid. Rather than talk about opinions let us look at the facts.

In the years leading up to 1994, nowhere was the inequality in the education system more prevalent than in the racial differences in spending per child. The amount spent per learner in a white school was two and a half times larger than on black children in urban areas and five times larger than black children in the most impoverished rural areas. Looking at government expenditures on education, the postapartheid government has successfully managed to equalise government expenditures across provinces and has adopted a pro-poor public spending approach.

However, additional resources are mediated by provinces and schools, both of which vary widely in their capacity to manage financial and human resources. Not all provinces or schools are equally capable of converting additional resources into better outcomes, as some recent debacles have shown.

Last year I made reference to the need for South Africa to show success within education and I lamented the accepted mediocrity as the norm. Current research provides a composite measure of our educational system performance by combining measures of access to education and quality of education. The related data appears to be the catalyst in terms of the latest development of policies and critical interventions by the Department of Education. We welcome the Minister’s National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements and the National Education Collaboration Framework which we believe will influence and support the agenda for reform in education.

Also last year the Director General of Basic Education wrote that government looked to partnerships and champions in society to “take collective responsibility for education transformation, hence government supports this unique project and is committed to enabling the HSRP to meet the key objectives” – reigniting a culture of teaching and learning excellence, and improving the quality of basic education and infrastructure. In this regard the HSRP is committed to working in partnership with all stakeholders to effect positive change and mobilise school leaders to develop sustainable centres of educational and cultural excellence.

For a number of years the strategic vision of the organisation has been 1) to rekindle a culture of excellence in teaching and learning, and 2) to reclaim the memory, history and physical infrastructure of the historic schools. While the past years focussed on transforming, the next three years will be about implementing and refining our direction.

In pursuance of the establishment of a national presence, the HSRP has positively engaged a further four historically significant schools in two provinces – namely the Northern Cape and Free State, and will embrace representation in all nine provinces by the end of 2013. The Project is on the trajectory of facilitating meaningful change in the historically significant schools and their communities across South Africa.

Dedicated to the success of promising African students with the establishment of her Academy for Girls just south of Johannesburg, Oprah Winfrey said “Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom”. As South Africans, we have confronted the terrible legacy of Bantu Education and we understand the challenges and relevance of a modern learning culture.

Due to the stratified nature of our society, parents who are in the top end of the labour market will send their children to good schools, while those in the bottom end of the labour market will send their children to the dysfunctional part of the education system; the very system that they came through decades earlier. This cycle of inequality perpetuates the current patterns of poverty and privilege. The ZK Matthews Educational Trust was established under the umbrella of the HSRP to provide opportunities for poor children with an aptitude for learning. In just three years the Trust has enabled thirty nine children to receive the quality education they deserve.

But there are many more children in the academic pipeline. In order to increase access to decent education among the poorest of the poor it requires partnerships with people and institutions who want to be involved in pulling our nation out of the poverty trap and educate all of our children at a much higher level. The HSRP continues to invest in education and plough-back into the schools that need support. With this report the HSRP gives us the confidence that the doors are being shut on mediocrity.

Justice Thembile Skweyiya
Chair: HSRP Board