Education of good infrastructure occludes the attainment of quality education . According to a parliamentary school infrastructure mid-year report for 2019 / 20 , the expenditure of the Education Infrastructure Grant ( EIG ), which funds the government ’ s Provincial Schools Build Programme , was 41 % of the allocated budget , as some provinces were underspending . The mid-year spending for maintenance was 32 % of the total budget . This is hardly encouraging for a country that still has overcrowded classrooms , a deficit in science laboratories and library materials , and a lack of electricity for some schools .
To make matters worse , the onslaught of Covid-19 has put into sharper relief the need for using technology and non-physical modes of teaching . For learners and students who come from low-earning backgrounds , the off-site learning that the Covid-19 pandemic has forced education into has added to the existing challenges . While teachers and learners from traditionally more affluent backgrounds and institutions are more likely to access the internet and hence lessen the blow of non-contact instruction , the same has not been the case for those with limited or no internet access .
Clearly , South Africa ’ s post-apartheid dispensation deserves plaudits for some admirable efforts made to redress inherited inequalities . However , education remains a sore point despite increased spending . The long-suffering , low-income and rural communities of South Africa have yet to enjoy the full benefits of 21st-century education . Therefore , a substantial and radical transformation of the education sector is critical and urgent .
Dr Emmanuel Matambo is a Senior Researcher at the University of Johannesburg ’ s Centre for Africa-China Studies
Rwanda Education Sector Needs a National Dialogue
Lonzen Rugira
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Since the establishment of missionary education and its entrenchment under the colonial state , Africa ’ s education has never been organic . Education was in fact the last frontier in the emasculation of the African given the enormous opportunities that were made available to those who subscribed to it with enthusiasm . Western institutions have remained on the watch over the control of Africa ’ s education because it means the control of the mind of Africans , how they think and act : what values they espouse . Despite claims to advancing enlightenment in the colonial order and democracy and freedom in the post-colonial setting , western institutions have ensured that African education does not cultivate personhood , self-concept and self-reference , self-worth and dignify , self-assuredness , confidence . Africans are free but everywhere in the chains of the education system that is by design incapable of nurturing a free human being : a people whose mind is occupied territory can only reproduce and express an occupied conscience .
This education system has ensured that Africans do not know what they have achieved in human history , what they are capable of achieving as a result , and how to be self-confident and comfortable in their own skin , and how to be themselves as a result , in a Fanonian sense . It is no wonder that a crisis of confidence and a crisis of leadership emerged as an outcome of this tragedy of historical proportions . Before an assessment of colonial exploitation of material resources , the need to take stock of the distortion of the African reality is essential . However , the way a criminal would cover their trace , the African education system isn ’ t designed to take stock of this distortion .
An education system is an idea or a theory of society around which a curriculum to express that idea is crafted . This idea is debated and a consensus emerges about certain fundamental ideals of the present and anticipated future society . Consequently , every gen-
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