Schooling in the Future : A South African Scenario

The Class of 2020 entered Grade R in South Africa in 2008. They entered a schooling system that, having undergone a major transformation to reflect the political and societal changes in South Africa, is struggling to produce quality education. A key feature that suggests a positive approach to schooling in 2020 is a confidence in the National Curriculum Statement that has as its outcome a set of critical and developmental outcomes designed to produce learners who are critical thinkers, can engage with each other in a team while organizing and managing themselves effectively, can collect and analyse information and see the world as a set of related systems. It will, however, be the effective use of ICT that will restructure teacherlearner interactions and a revolutionary approach to physical infrastructure that will ensure effective use of scarce resources and allow for an individualized approach to learning in a mass education system.