Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said the ministry aims to phase in the new style curriculum in history over seven years.
The minister said this while briefing the media on Tuesday afternoon before parliament votes on the ministry's budget.
She said that since the advent of democracy, the broad objective of governments has been to provide access to education, which is a human right. She said she believed the department was making progress in this regard.
But in a time of constant change, she said the curriculum needed to evolve to keep up with current dynamics as governments stepped up efforts to usher in fundamental economic transformation.
festival of ideas
In this regard, she said that the report of the working team set up to consider compulsory history was published on Africa Day, and that officials subsequently called it a “festival of ideas about what the history curriculum should be.”
“Our contention is that fundamental economic transformation is not possible without the right and necessary skills. And what does that require? We need a diverse curriculum, and we need We need to join the revolution and ensure that the skills of the future are transferred to our country.
“History is about teaching history, not only to help with unity, nation-building and salvation, but also to teach and create a South Africa in Africa so that we have an African perspective. It's also about not having a Eurocentric history.The African context.
“We have set up a large task team and we have received a report. We will be releasing the report.” [Africa Day] The gist of the report is that over the next seven years we must develop a history curriculum that is completely new to the current curriculum.
“We will introduce it gradually and make the necessary adjustments, but we will also bring in a paradigm. The paradigm should not be a Eurocentric paradigm that only teaches about the French Revolution. You have to know, but you also have to know about Haiti in order to have an African-centric perspective on other parts of the world,” she said.
Minister Motshekga said this after the launch. [the report]The ministry plans to announce a rollout plan that will culminate in a “festival of ideas” “for people to discuss it within the framework of publishing a report” through collaboration with various groups and communities.
Minister announces funding for education infrastructure
Meanwhile, the minister said infrastructure development continues to be funded through the Education Infrastructure Grant and the School Infrastructure Development Initiative (ASIDI), with R9.9 billion and R1.5 billion allocated respectively.
He said the National School Nutrition Program had been allocated R6.8 billion, an increase of 5.8% from the 2017/18 allocation.
“It must be noted that the National School Nutrition Program budget allocation for 2018/19 was a six-fold increase from the R1.2 billion allocated in 2007/8.
“This is an important intervention by the government to ensure coverage for the poorest of the poor.
“As a department, we have had to address the challenges faced by learners with severe to profound intellectual disabilities. This is almost three times the activation allocation of R72 million.”
