4.5 Timeframe and roadmap

Prior to the significant democratic change in 1994, teacher education and development were fragmented along apartheid lines. In 1995, a teacher education audit was completed, which pointed out the effects of the separate provisions, the challenges which existed to improve them and options to address them. Teacher education was a provincially controlled competence, with 102 colleges of education of varying quality, generally low, in operation. The audit was followed by the adoption of the 1996 Norms and Standards for Teacher Education, which described competences for teacher qualifications and minimum competences for qualification types. In turn, this was followed in 2000 by the Norms and Standards for Educators in Schooling, through which teacher education became a nationally defined competence, incorporating the 120 colleges of education into higher education institutions. The new standards for teacher competences delineate seven roles for teachers and notions of applied and integrated competences. The document also describes the teacher education qualifications framework in line with the National Qualifications Framework. Importantly, these documents focused on competences and qualifications, without reference to the wider context of issues such as supply, demand and ongoing development in the teacher field.

The rationalisation and amalgamation of colleges occurred within the context of merging higher education institutions in the country. Although the aim of closing the colleges and moving teacher education to higher education institutions was to improve quality and standards, a number of unintended effects and difficulties occurred. One was the low subsidy allocation to education faculties, which resulted in reduced enrolments. This has led to growing concern, in recent years, regarding the decreased supply of new teachers for a system requiring more and better teachers, especially in scarce skills areas like maths, science, technology, the foundation phase and the new subjects introduced by the new curriculum.

There were also important structural developments: the Education Labour Relations Council was established to negotiate agreements between the teacher unions, which have high membership rates (88%), and the state. The Council has played a significant role in a variety of issues of teacher policy, such as salaries, working conditions and performance appraisal. In the arena of teacher professional development, however, progress has been slow.

The second important structure established is the national South African Council for Educators (SACE), which is responsible for the professional registration of educators and their professional code of ethics. SACE has also worked on instituting portfolios for professional development. It has recently been given the mandate to manage the Continuing Teacher Professional Development System, which will make teachers’ participation in professional development compulsory and recognised.

All of these developments were important and necessary, but there was a sense among key decision-makers in the field that a more comprehensive approach was needed to address the scale and pace of issues being faced. As a result, a Ministerial Committee on Teacher Education (MCTE) was set up in 2001. A comprehensive six-volume report was produced, which presented a view of the situation at the time, and laid out 42 wide- ranging recommendations for consideration. The report included extensive discussions and consultations with all key agencies and actors in the field. The MCTE report was adopted by the DoE and turned into a National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development (NPFTED) that was approved in April 2007. The process took twelve years from the time discussions began after 1994.

The NPFTED covers a range of areas in initial professional education of teachers (IPET) and continuing professional teacher development, and includes a section on support systems for teacher education and development. The naming of these two areas seeks to emphasise the intended professionalisation of teachers and strong continuity between initial preparation of teachers and their continuing development in practice. The process of developing the NPFTED also used a wide consultation approach, consisting of presentations to different levels of decision-makers in the MoE, national and provincial departments of education, unions and other key stakeholders.

The NPFTED covers a range of key areas that correspond to those generally identified in policy development, both in sub-Saharan Africa and internationally. These are:

• Approval and recognition of teacher education programmes for employment
• IPET routes to qualification
• Recruitment campaigns
• Quality management and assurance
• Teacher education support systems.