Implementing education policies : The South African experience

Abstract

For the first time in South Africa, a critical dialogue has been recorded between government policy-makers and academic researchers on the subject of education policy and practice. Implementing education policies attends to problems, politics and possibilities of implementing the policy goals of the first post-apartheid government established in 1994. The value of this book lies in several ‘insider accounts’ of the policy process, told through the voices of the legislators, politicians and bureaucrats concerned with steering national value commitments through the education system. Running parallel to these practitioner accounts lie a number of critical analyses of the technical capabilities and political designs that explain the trajectory of education reform in the 1990s. The dialogue brings together, in a developing-country context, different experiences and analyses of one of the most intractable problems facing all national education systems: the persistent gap between policy ideals and practical realities. This volume is essential reading for all academics and students of education at higher education institutions as well as teachers, researchers and policy makers.