1968

In 1968 I made my first visit to South Africa. On our way back to Australia from Europe we stopped at Durban for a day and were given a tour of the city and then taken to a “Zulu village”. The village consisted of two or three kraals and a few black people in tribal dress who wandered about, sat down and, when asked to do so, did a tribal dance. The guide – who was big, fat and white - told us not to be rude to the villagers as “they had feelings too”.

1992

I returned to South Africa for six weeks in August 1992 as part of a team put together by Don Swift to launch SAIDE.

We stayed at a hotel that was then called “the Braamfontein”. A young black security guard at the hotel approached me and asked how he could find out what studies would further his career. I obtained a telephone number of an advisory body for him and advised him to phone them. When I asked him about it some weeks later he said that he had not made the call because he needed to wait for payday and then get time off to make the call. It struck me that another, unstated reason was that the telephone was not a means of communication with which he felt comfortable. Eventually he walked to the nominated organisation to obtain his advice.

During this visit I met a senior bureaucrat in the Department of Education and Culture. He was in his early fifties, white, distinguished looking and very cultured. He told me that at the age of seventeen he had renounced apartheid and convinced the rest of his family to do likewise. I looked out the window and saw several pigs fly by.

In 1992 the country was grappling with the constitutional arrangements that would follow the first democratic elections. One of the issues was the respective powers of provincial and national governments. I told this bureaucrat that the Australian experience suggested that a federal system of government caused all sorts of problems for education and training, especially for vocational education. He was very enthusiastic that an international visitor supported his view that power should remain centralised and asked me to meet with officers of the Departments of Education and Training and Education and Culture to put this position to them, which I did. (I argued this case in other forums as well. It is interesting to see how much attention was paid to my powerful arguments against fragmenting the education system).

It was during this visit that I first met the magnificent Adrienne Bird (then of NUMSA) who was working with the brilliant Australian larrikin Chris Lloyd to develop policies and principles for a new approach to vocational education and training. They were grappling with the notion of a national framework that ensured recognised standards, portability of qualifications, mobility of learners and workers, and terms and conditions of employment that facilitated, recognised and rewarded the acquisition of capabilities – regardless of how they were acquired. As was the case with Australia, the push for reform in education and training came, not from the formal education sector, but from unions and employers.

I met a lot of taxi cab drivers on this visit. Most of them supported apartheid and were very worried about the civil war that would follow the elections.

Because our work was concerned with distance education we visited the three publicly funded national distance education providers – Unisa, Technikon SA and Technisa. Quite apart from anything else they gave me a deep appreciation of South African trends in architecture and landscape design – I still find the first sight of Unisa as one drives into Pretoria breathtakingly menacing, Technikon SA’s buildings reflect awesome affluence, and Technisa’s gardens could be entered in a competition. I also learned that:

there was a spectrum of reactions to new ideas (especially those from abroad):
- at one end of the continuum was the position that the ideas were not appropriate to the South African situation
- somewhere in the middle was agreement that the ideas were fine but asserting that they were already being practised – and being practised better than anywhere else –in institutions such as Unisa and Technikon SA
- at the other end was blind acceptance of anything that came from abroad;

it was fine for Unisa lecturers to go home at 14h30 (or was it 13h30?) because the telephone system would divert students’ calls to one number after another until they were answered, presumably by a guard or a cleaner (for some reason this made me think of the young security guard at “the Braamfontein”);
there was a requirement that Unisa senior managers be over seven foot tall;
security at the Unisa library was stricter than that at the Pentagon;
Technikon SA needed no advice on changes to its operations as it had already worked out what competency based learning was all about;
Technisa management and staff thought that I was an ANC spy. Indeed there was general concern amongst the major national providers of distance education that SAIDE was part of an ANC plot to do away with them.

Sam Isaacs was assigned to me as my South African counterpart for the SAIDE launching conference. He was then at Peninsular Technikon and already well on his way to sainthood. More than anyone else at the time this generous and compassionate man gave me an appreciation of what a tragic history South Africa had to overcome.

The SAIDE launching conference opened up South African distance education to the world and to the idea that an open and flexible approach to education and training was essential if South Africa was to meet the internal and external challenges of a post apartheid era. It was an international affair but it also brought together a lot of South African educational stakeholders who had not previously met or communicated with each other. This lack of contact was not just due to apartheid’s racial compartmentalisation, but also to the general tendency to put everything and everybody into boxes of one sort or another – there were nineteen departments of education at the time (now replaced by ten); educational “sectors” jealously guarded their boundaries; public and private providers of education and training kept their distance but this did not stop them from saying very nasty things about each other; and institutions were busy putting up walls around their respective empires.

At the conference:

John Gultig made a devastating attack on Unisa;
David Adler told the first of many jokes to be attributed to his long-suffering son;
Franklin Sonn displayed consummate political skills;
Don Swift showed just what a lovely, enthusiastic person he was;
the principal of Technikon SA made a very long speech about his understanding of competency based learning;
big men in grey suits and white shoes gathered in corners, spoke quietly amongst themselves, smiled and winked at each other;
Jenny Glennie attended the conference in her capacity as an officer of SACHED, smiled cheerily at everyone and wondered what the hell she was letting herself in for.

All in all, and with the exception of Technikon SA’s principal and the taxi cab drivers, there was general acknowledgment that education and training needed to change dramatically if it was going to meet, not just the challenges of an increasingly volatile and competitive international environment, but those of a country emerging from four hundred years of general oppression and forty years of very specific injustices against a majority of the population.

1993

In 1993 I came back for three weeks.

“The Braamfontein” was now called “the Parktonian”.

Attie Buitendacht was the new principal at Technikon SA and he had introduced planning and recruiting processes for the institution aimed at operating in the circumstances that would emerge after the first democratic elections to be held in May 1994. Technikon SA put forward a proposal to mount engineering programs to be provided at a distance with local support provided by other face to face technikons. The other technikons were very suspicious of Technikon SA’s motives and sceptical about whether it was possible to offer engineering at a distance.

Adrienne Bird was continuing to work on the principles of a national qualifications framework with people like Sam Isaacs.

1994 to 1998

The long distance commuter

From June 1994 to July 1998 I made about twenty visits to South Africa that added up to a total of two years in the country.

A paradise on earth

The elections had just taken place at the start of this series of visits and all was well with the world. There was only one taxi cab driver left who supported apartheid and he was thinking of leaving the country. Everyone supported democracy, redress, transparency, open learning and well functioning distance education (as opposed to badly functioning correspondence education). Fundamental pedagogy was a thing of the past. The Broederbond had never existed.

I’m from the government – I’m here to help you

There was much government activity during these four years. Government developed the altruistic RDP which was replaced by the hard-nosed GEAR.

Many new education and training policies, laws and regulations were developed, and most of these made reference to issues such as open learning, flexible delivery, distance education and technology enhanced learning. Amongst others, they included: the South African Government’s 1995 White Paper on Education and Training[1]; the South African Department of Education’s policies and resources to support quality assurance in distance education[2] and technology enhanced learning[3]: the South African Government’s third White Paper on Higher Education ; the National Committee on Further Education (NCFE) report in August 1997, the Department of Education’s Green Paper on Further Education & Training[4] in April 1998 and the Further Education Bill[5] that has recently been released for comment.

At the time of writing the South African Government is in the process of implementing its National Qualifications Framework (NQF) legislation and policies through its agent, the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) led by its Executive Officer, my original South African guide, Sam Isaacs.

The Department of Labour has developed a Green Paper[6] and Bill[7] on Skills Development, a process that is being guided by Adrienne Bird who had previously helped guide the conceptualisation of the NQF.

The National Department of Education is overseeing the development of Further Education policies and legislation that will provide broad frameworks for this sector. However, the provincial governments will govern and administer further education through their Members of Executive Council (MEC’s) responsible for education. It has also been mooted that there may be provincial boards of FET, but the present Bill is silent on this. The Gauteng Department of Education has developed a College Education and Training Bill[8].

How the works of the Department of Education, the Department of Labour, SAQA and provincial governments will complement or conflict with each other remains to be seen.

New horses for new courses

As demonstrated above, the South African Government is involved in dramatic changes in its expectations of providers of education and training. In recent policy statements on Higher and Further Education, it has indicated a shift towards triennial, zero based funding linked to performance criteria that emphasise government priorities. Providers will increasingly be expected to:

assume greater autonomy – and associated authority, responsibility and accountability – in developing and managing their programs;
achieve quite new results based on quite new approaches and strategies;
adopt, implement and demonstrate understanding of the principles and quality assurance processes of:
- the NQF
- open and flexible learning;
operate in an increasingly competitive environment in which they will need to prove themselves capable of meeting government objectives and generating additional income.

In order to meet these new demands providers will need to develop new understandings, skills and attitudes within their communities, structures and processes. So too will government and other stakeholders and role players. They will need to develop, acquire and/or have access to new categories and scales of resources, processes, systems and infrastructures.

What does this mean for distance education empires?

Distance education providers have often claimed leadership in adopting and developing the new approaches needed for meaningful open and flexible learning. This is less the case now than it may have been in the past as all providers experience pressures to merge distance education, face to face and other learning strategies within open and flexible learning approaches. This is typical of the blurring between the traditional distinctions between different “modes” of learning that has occurred all over the world as providers have developed and implemented whatever combinations of strategies and resources were appropriate to their circumstances and those of their learners and other clients. This means that both distance education and face to face providers will need to change their approaches so that they bring flexible and open learning into the mainstream of their programs. It also means that, in so doing, they will use a mix of strategies and resources that will blur – and, in the long term, possibly do away with – the traditional distinctions between “modes” of learning.

All of the new approaches listed in sections above have significant ramifications for the Technical College of South Africa (Technisa), the Technikon of Southern Africa (Technikon SA) and the University of South Africa (UNISA). This is particularly true of expectations of, and encouragement for, all education and training providers to use combinations of various flexible delivery strategies including those associated with distance education. The three institutions’ historical roles as the national technical college, technikon and university providers of distance education (both as developers of courses and courseware, and as enroller of learners) will now be subject to review and to the vagaries of the market.

All providers of education and training have, to varying degrees, attempted to anticipate and cope with the post 1994 context, expectations and demands. Each of the three distance education institutions set in train various processes to convince their stakeholders that they were concerned to transform from the old to the new.

The role of SAIDE

SAIDE has played a significant role in bringing an open learning and distance education flavour to the language and policies of governments and institutions. This began in 1992 when there was a strong impression that the government in waiting saw SAIDE as playing a major role in bringing open learning and distance education into the transformation of education and training. SAIDE had the added advantage of dealing with areas and language that many people felt uncertain about (distance education, open learning, technology enhanced learning, resource based learning and so on). Its reputation for access to expertise in these areas was reinforced through its strong international links with a network of distance education experts, a network that was facilitated by the highly regarded and well qualified Don Swift. In its early days SAIDE established a momentum that accelerated after the appointment of the tireless and highly motivated Jenny Glennie. Over the years it has drawn on and added to its overseas connections; and it has developed its own South African networks as well as building up a strong core of expertise within its own ranks.

SAIDE managed an international commission’s review of South African distance education in 1993/4 that had been commissioned by the ANC. It had a major influence on the references to distance education and open learning in the government’s papers and bills on higher and further education. It contributed significantly to audits of teacher training, in particular on those sections dealing with teacher training through distance education. The Technology Enhanced Learning Investigation (TELI) came as a result of active promotion by SAIDE, which then played a lead role in the investigation and in the development of strategies that followed on from TELI.

At different times SAIDE has facilitated the development of policies, strategies and action plans for the transformation of institutions from the traditional approaches of the past to new client oriented, flexible provision based on open learning principles and making optimum use of distance education and technology enhanced learning. This has taken the form of intensive work with Technisa and Technikon SA and included, amongst others, specific activities with the Gauteng Youth College, the Free State, the University of the North, Vista University and Natal University. There has been direct involvement in Unisa’s Transformation Forum and Council, and on the councils of the Johannesburg College of Education and the Gauteng Youth College. And SAIDE has provided a leadership and support role to NADEOSA.

In addition SAIDE has involved itself in projects aimed at developing and providing specific products and services. The most recent of these is the development of “the Study of Education”.

When it first started SAIDE was expected to have a close connection with government. It certainly has provided major inputs to government thinking on matters relating to open learning, distance education and technology enhanced learning. At one time it was generally believed that SAIDE would become a government agency, probably in the form of NOLA (National Open Learning Agency). This did not happen and SAIDE has had a more ad hoc relationship with government, mainly with the national Department of Education and to a lesser extent with certain provincial departments of education, especially in Gauteng. The warmth of the relationships has varied and depends on how grudgingly or generously departmental bureaucrats, who are subject to a whole host of internal and external pressures and power games, have acknowledged SAIDE’s obviously impressive track record.

Partly because NOLA did not eventuate and partly because the whole environment is moving towards being market driven, SAIDE’s role has changed and continues to change. Whilst it continues to make major contributions to policy development and to work on projects and with institutions as part of its general activities, there is an increasing involvement in specifically targeted work based on specific contracts with international funders and national clients. This requires SAIDE to consider the balance it will strike between general work and specific contracts. In particular it will need to address to what extent commercial imperatives might undermine the integrity of a mission that is stated very much in terms of the contributions of open learning and distance education to national objectives of democracy, equity, redress and economic success.

What about some real action?

Policies, Strategies and Change

As I wandered about two patterns became apparent. A lot of effort, emotion and talent was being expended on developing many very sophisticated policies and strategies at government and institutional levels. Useful action that actually provided improved education and training for more people was often not linked to these policies and strategies – other than reflecting their general sentiments – but was instead due to the efforts of particular individuals.

Why was this? Well, it has to do with a number of things.

The approach to change

The actual and apparent efforts to change education and training, at both systemic and organisational levels, have largely been based on a top down approach beginning with very grand public announcements that made heavy use of slogans. There has been extended and extensive use of committees, sub-committees, working parties and task forces. When committees and working parties were considered inappropriate, forums and commissions were set up instead. Whatever they were called, these bodies developed visions, missions, strategic plans and action plans. These resulted – usually after considerable periods of time - in substantial reports that contained decisions on:

definitions of “transformation”, “education”, “learning”, “open learning”, “democracy”, “transparency”, and so on;
a glossary of acronyms;
the respective authorities of various existing and newly created bodies;
the membership requirements, standing orders and agendas for these bodies;
structures and reporting lines for the transformed system or organisation.

There is no strong evidence to suggest that until now this has led to transformation of the products and services provided to learners and other clients of South African education and training.

There is an alternative approach. This is not to announce change at all, and not to get bogged down in transformation forums and the like. This does not mean that one loses sight of a grand vision. One simply does not get caught up in the never-ending game of announcing it, defending it, modifying it and giving up on it. Secondly, one does not start off by playing around with structures and reporting lines, a favourite game for those concerned with power, self protection and protection of the status quo. Instead, one supports key initiatives, performed by identified change agents and leaders in innovation, that will:

require its participants to address important principles, in particular those concerned with quality products and services and client satisfaction;
involve change to the ways in which things are done and people work with each other;
attract attention and encourage imitation;
lead on to other initiatives all of which chip away at the existing attitudes, systems and structures.

An example of this is the work done by the formidable Veronica McKay and her ABET team at Unisa. They have simply got on with doing the job in spite of Unisa’s repressive environment (indeed, taking advantage of it) and are providing a highly successful and popular program that displays many of the features associated with quality open learning. In this case it can hardly be said that Unisa has encouraged Veronica, the institution simply has not been able to keep up with her. Largely because of her unexpected success, it is now doing its best to bring her under control.

Then there is Mercurial Mercorio. Getti Mercorio’s work with the Metal Industry Engineering Trades Training Board has led to the development of a series of standards and associated training courses and materials. This is yet another example of industry getting on with the job, often as a result of impatience at government’s long drawn out processes.

Misunderstanding change

Another problem is that well intentioned people latch onto new ideas and set about implementing them without understanding what they actually mean. So they reject fundamental pedagogy and commit themselves to open learning, flexible learning, learner centredness, quality instructional design, project teams and matrix structures. Unfortunately when one looks at their educational offerings - and the systems, structures and processes that underpin them – they fall sadly short of the mark. Some examples come to mind.

The Gauteng Youth College was to provide new, flexible and exciting alternatives to young people wanting a second attempt at matriculation. In the event it has become a fairly traditional college with only some minor variations. The personnel at the college and in the provincial government bureaucracy simply did not come to grips with the complexities of offering the intended program and used basically the same approaches and methods as they had in the past.

Technikon SA committed itself to the use of project teams to develop its courseware. This led to a number of people from within and outside Technikon SA being formally involved in a number of courseware development projects. This was presented as effective use of teams. However, they usually involved people taking turns to contribute their bits and pieces to the development in sequence, and not operating as a team at all.

All over South Africa distance education providers have committed themselves to quality instructional design that involves dramatic departure from the dreadful learning materials of the past. Various references on instructional design talk about the use of icons and the use of user friendly language and illustrations. As a result we find far too many examples of printed materials full of gratuitous, confusing and unnecessary icons, and that bane of South African courseware, talking heads with balloons full of text emerging from their mouths and brains.

And finally there is the belief that making technically elegant use of technology equates to open learning. In fact many of the examples are really hi-tech versions of the rote learning and memory based assessment tasks that one associates with fundamental pedagogy.

Complicating change

Change can be complicated by involved processes to develop plans and strategies, especially if there is a strong requirement or inclination to consult through formal and representative structures such as commissions and transformation forums. It can also be a result of establishing cumbersome procedures and structures to deliver change.

The problem is that change is often about sophisticated and complex concepts and systemic change is about applying these in complicated circumstances.

Controlling change

So, when is complexity unnecessary? One answer is when it is a result of wanting to maintain central control of change with all sorts of safeguards against the masses who cannot be trusted. Meaningful change usually involves commitment by those closest to the action and this requires at least an apparent delegation of authority to them. Change may need to be co-ordinated, but even here those areas that require central involvement need to be carefully identified and one must avoid simply using “co-ordination” as a euphemism for “control”.

Over-simplifying change

There is a tension that causes problems for implementing change associated with open and flexible learning. On the one the hand open learning requires that its practitioners be engaged in a continuing process of making, and providing support for, intelligent decisions that take account of varying needs, demands and circumstances. On the other hand there is the very human need to have definitive answers to all problems based on sets of simple rules to be followed rigidly, a need that was encouraged under apartheid and its educational philosophies and practices.

When I have put forward my own point of view that open learning is not about definitive answers but about asking the right questions I have been greeted with blank stares. There was similar incomprehension when TELI resulted in a decision making framework rather than the decisions themselves.

Fear of change

Many people are afraid of change. This is not just due to the conservative nature of humans. It is also because change often throws one’s future in doubt and requires considerable adjustment. This is especially so when the change is announced from on high in slogan-riddled language that could mean many things and, from an early stage, linked to changes in structures, reporting lines and general balances of power.

The corruption of change

In order to examine this issue, it is necessary to consider what apartheid was about. When I first arrived from Australia I saw it as discrimination against many different groups of people. I gradually came to learn that it was in fact discrimination in favour of a select few. As Don Swift pointed out to me, apartheid was one of the most successful efforts at affirmative action. In turn this led to a culture of privilege that saw work in education and training as serving the interests, not of learners and other clients, but of particular people, their relatives and their friends – a manifestation of this is the salary and pension deals that senior managers stitched up between themselves and which remain to haunt the institutions and their budgets to this day. And this led to educational, moral and legal corruption.

So, when confronted with the prospect of changes that could threaten their perceived entitlements, those who practised such discrimination adopt various tactics to defend their positions.

Technikon SA committed itself to dramatic change in 1994. It was going to move from a highly centralised correspondence school to a democratic, transparent institution based on ILCDE (Integrated Learner Centred Distance Education). Many sophisticated and well presented statements of policy and intent were developed and moves to implement change commenced, in particular those relating to courseware development, decentralisation of learner support and financial planning and management. Technisa adopted similar policies and strategies and engaged in ongoing negotiations with government on the role it would be play in the new further education environment. Unisa took a lot longer to acknowledge that it needed to change and for some time concentrated on presenting what it was and had always been doing in a better light; but eventually it also set out about the motions of transformation. And most other providers of education and training developed their policies and approaches to transformation.

The response of those in all these organisations who did not want change ranged from the obvious to the more subtle.

The obvious responses included the suppression of critical comment such as the report by Mike Brogden, a criminology expert from Northern Ireland, which alleged gross corruption, mismanagement, academic inferiority and educational weakness in Technikon SA’s police studies program. There were death threats – usually by phone and usually anonymous - made to staff who were seen as promoting unpopular changes or challenging vested interests such as preferred supplier status. And there were the efforts to get rid of the trouble makers – in Technikon SA there was the unrelenting hounding out of the institution of the dynamic and charismatic Danie Kok who had become a focus for – almost a symbol of – the transformation of Technikon SA; in Unisa Sam van der Berg, who had blown the whistle on educationally inadequate offerings, was the target of similar attention.

The more subtle approach was to adopt the slogans of change and to set up long drawn out processes based on numerous committees, working parties, conferences and workshops that, over the years, essentially repeated the same commitments to the same principles (although sometimes using new slogans). There were grounds for suspecting that there were those in the institutions who were happy to keep these activities on the boil in lieu of any real action and to provide a cover for continuing established self-serving practices and privileges and/or establishing new privileges. Of course, at certain points decisions were made to implement some of the policies and principles. Then there would often be persons who regretfully advised that, although they would dearly love to carry out these decisions, they could not do so because the administrative processes, or the computer system, or the laws of the land, or the skills of staff, or the curvature of the earth and the pull of the moon, simply did not permit it.

and finally, in conclusion …

This article has spent a fair bit of space on the barriers to the changes that are needed. Whilst these cannot be ignored, they are certainly not insurmountable. A lot of very talented and dedicated people who care about the future have worked to identify the issues, develop the principles and prepare for action. There are some wonderful people in South Africa determined to make things work and I wish them well.

[1] Department of Education , White Paper on Education and Training (Republic of South Africa, Government Gazette Vol. 357, No. 16312 15 March, 1995)

[2] Department of Education, A Distance Education Quality Standards Framework for South Africa, (Distance Education, Media & Technological Services Directorate, September to December 1996)

[3] Ministerial Committee for Development Work on the Role of Technology that will support and enhance Learning, Technology Enhanced Learning Investigation in South Africa, (Department of Education, 31 July 1996).

[4] South African Department of Education, Green Paper on Further Education & Training: Preparing for the Twenty-First Century through Education, Training & Work, (Pretoria, April 1998)

[5] Republic of South Africa, Further Education & Training Bill, (as introduced in the National Assembly by the Minister of Education, 1998)

[6] South African Department of Labour, Green Paper on Skills Development Strategy for Economic & Employment Growth in South Africa, (Pretoria, March, 1997)

[7] South African Department of Labour, Skills Development Bill, 1997, (Notice 1296 of 1997, Vol. 386 No. 18244, Pretoria, 2 September 1997)

[8] Gauteng Provincial Legislature, College Education & Training Bill, 1998