THE INTELLECTUAL LEGACY OF THE CONCEPT ‘ACCESS TO EDUCATION’

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The legal and policy context of “access to education”

I indicated in the opening paragraph that the concept of access to education has remained elusive and intractable, despite some of the most progressive policies underpinned by the values of human rights, equity and redress (DoE, 2000). The complex nature of the meaning of “access to education” lies in how people think and talk about education as a human right and how the representation or nonrepresentation of different voices in education policies, including the Constitution, advance or hinder the realisation of open access to education as a basic human right. The key policy documents for this purpose are: the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa; the South African Schools Act, Act number 84 of 1996; the National Education Policy Act, Act number 27 of 1996; the White Paper on Education and Training (1995); the Language-in-Education Policy (1997); and Education White Paper 3 for Higher Education (1997).
The relevance of the policy context in this study is twofold. In the first instance, the policy environment reflects the distance we, as the people of South Africa, have travelled since the Kliptown Congress in 1955. Secondly, the policy and the legal framework presented reflect the government’s understanding of the concept of ‘access’ to education, not forgetting that the current polices are the result of compromises that were made in various negotiations during the policy making processes. The analysis will focus on the meanings of access in these policies and whether such meanings represent conceptions of access of the anti-apartheid movement before 1994. For example, the call for compulsory education was made by African parents, teachers and liberals in the early 1940s (Kallaway, 1984), yet, this call was made outside the human rights framework in that liberals had realised that the exclusion of Africans from mass-based education would create shortages in the supply of skilled labour.
Similarly, Africans also called for free and compulsory education, not because they understood it to be a basic human right, but because the education of their children was pegged on their taxes, and not treated in the same way as education for Whites.
Equal and open access to education is provided for in two sections of the Constitutions. Section 9 of the Constitution is about the protection and advancement of the principle of ‘equality’ before the law. As such it provides for the equal treatment of every person in all spheres of social life, including language and education (Sachs, 2004). Sections 29 (1) and 29 (b) therefore seek to buttress equality by declaring education to be a basic right and allowing individuals to be taught in the language of their choice, subject to “reasonableness” and “practicability”. Making provision for individuals to choose the language of teaching and learning is meant to ensure equal access to education.
Access to education is not only guaranteed in the South African Constitution, but the Constitution borrows from international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); the World Declaration of Education for All (1990) and the Dakar Declaration on Education for All. All these international instruments have one common goal, that is the promotion and advancement of education as a basic human right through expanding access to education. The Republic of South Africa, in the 2000 EFA Report, indicated that it had made considerable progress towards the achievement of the EFA target of universalising basic education by 2015.

CHAPTER  THE BIOGRAPHY OF « ACCESS » AS AN EXPRESSION OF HUMANRIGHTS IN SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION POLICIES
1.1 Introduction to the study
1.2 The rationale for the study
1.3 The legal and policy context of “access to education”
1.4 The literature context ofthe concept
1.5 The conceptual context
1.6 Research design
1.7 Ensuring validity
1.8 Limitation of study
CHAPTER 2 THE LEGAL AND POLICY CONTEXT OF THE CONCEPT OF ‘ACCESS TO EDUCATION’
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The policy making context in the first five years of democracy
2.2.1 The White Paper on Education and Training
2.2.2 The Final Constitution
2.2.3 The South African Schools Act
2.2.4 The National Education Policy Act
2.2.5 The Language-in-Education Policy
2.2.6 The higher education policy framework
2.3 Reflections on current policies
CHAPTER 3 TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ON THE CONCEPT OF
« ACCESS » TO EDUCATION
3.0 Towards a conceptual Framework on the concept of “Access to Education”
CHAPTER 4 THE RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Research methodology
4.3 Instrumentation
4.4 Data gathering
4.5 Data analysis and writing up of the research
4.6 Interpretation of data
4.7 Transcriptions and data coding
4.8 Ensuring validity
CHAPTER 5 THE INTELLECTUAL LEGACY OF THE CONCEPT ‘ACCESS TO EDUCATION’
The Intellectual Legacy of the Concept “Access to Education
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Conceptions of access reflected in selected international Instruments
5.3 The meaning of access since the time of the Kliptown Congress and the adoption of the Freedom Charter
5.4 The People’s Education Movement (1984 –1989)
5.5 Reflections on this period
5.6 The meaning of access during the period of negotiations (1990-1994)
5.7 Ready to Govern
5.8 The National Education Policy Investigation
5.9 The Interim Constitution of the Republic of South Africa
5.10 Conclusion
CHAPETR 6 CONCEPTIONS OF ACCESS AT GAUTENG HIGH SCHOOL
CHAPTER 7 CONCEPTIONS OF ACCESS AT SOWETO HIGH SCHOOL
CHAPTER 8 A CROSS-CASE ANALYSIS OF SOWETO AND GAUTENG HIGH SCHOOL
CHAPTER 9 THE SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY
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