Meeting with Norwegian Standing Committee on Education, Research and Churches

Meeting report

Opening Remarks and Introductions

The Chairperson welcomed all the members back together with the Norwegian Standing Committee on Education and Research which was being hosted by Parliament.

He then outlined how science and technology and higher education were linked in South Africa and gave a brief history of the country’s socio-economic status from before democracy to date. He said that more than 40 million citizens had deliberately been left behind in terms of research and innovation during the time of oppression.

The Chairperson then introduced members of the Science and Technology Committee to the Norwegian delegation and apologised for the Ministers of both Departments as they were absent. He also allowed Ms J Killian (ANC) to introduce members of the Higher Education Committee as well.

Ms Iselin Nybo, Chairperson, Standing Committee on Education Research and Churches, briefed the committee on the Norwegian government’s interest in requesting a joint meeting with the two portfolio committees in parliament.

She told the Committee that they had visited one of SA’s leading universities - the University of Cape Town and expressed hope that the information exchange will be fruitful to all.

Ms Nybo further explained that the Norwegian Parliament had 169 elected members from eight different parties. However, the government was dominated by two political parties though they did not have a majority in Parliament. The delegation was interested in how the South African Parliament and political parties were doing leading up to the 2016 local government elections. Additionally, they wanted to know more about the challenges in SA regarding education and research.

Ms Nybo said that in Norway basic and higher education were very high on the agenda. SA’s excellence in research, as measured by world rankings for universities, had been the major attraction for the delegation.  She then asked her delegation to introduce themselves with the Chairperson’s permission.

After the introductions the Chairperson enumerated a few challenges that the SA government was grappling with. Key was that because of SA’s past; science and higher education were not equally and broadly accessible to the greater population. Because of the divisions of the past, SA currently had two societies. There were leading universities and poorly performing universities in the same country where balancing quality over quantity was a big challenge: since the government did not want to drop the standards in the best performing institutions whilst not wanting to leave behind those that were struggling. For example; how could the state keep Witwatersrand University (Wits) and UCT performing at their current level whilst transforming them but at the same time pulling those varsities that were without resources up to a similar level as the two mentioned above.Additionally, if one had a tax base of approximately 50+ million people benefitting a minority previously: that would have made any country seem wealthy. However, when that base had to benefit all in the country, that became a serious challenge. The biggest challenge was convincing young voters that change would take time and would not happen overnight though the process of change would be embarked on by the current leadership.

Education in SA was driven by the Departments of Basic Education (DBE), Higher Education and Training (DHET) and Science and Technology (DST). He commended the delegation for having more female and youthful representation.

Ms Nybo spoke briefly to the key differences between Norway and SA noting that, Norway did not charge fees for higher learning and that they understood the economic impact of the global down turn on SA’s economy. The major similarity between the two countries was that democratically there would always be citizens expecting more from a government.

Thereafter the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) presented to the joint committee.

Briefing on Open Learning and Distance Education

Mr Firoz Patel, Deputy Director General (DDG): Planning, DHET introduced his delegation and submitted an apology for the DG in DHET. He then read the presentation. Notably DHET had introduced the Higher Education Amendment Bill to Parliament on 27 January 2016 which marked a milestone for the Department.

The DHET always emphasized training together with higher education since part of its objectives was to have an intergrated higher education and training system.

Relations with Norway

The Department expressed an interest in the short-term courses offered by the University of Oslo (UiO) to train Master’s and Doctoral students. A South African delegation led by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) undertook a study visit to Norway from 5-12 June 2015. The purpose of the visit was to leverage support from Norway as it had expertise in programmes to develop skills and human resource capacity, as well as having intensive experience in university-industry partnerships to drive research and development, marine technology development and innovation.

The President of SA, Mr Jacob Zuma had undertaken a project to exploit the oceans economy named Operation Phakisa - Oceans Economy. With Norway’s history of being seafaring people the SA delegation that had gone to Norway had gone to look at possible partnerships particularly in the maritime economy.

National and Education Plans

National Development Plan:

• Targets 1,62 million learners enrolled in Universities by 2030
• Targets 2,5 Technical and Vocational Education and Training learners by 2030
• Targets 1 million Community and Education and Training learners by 2030.

The White Paper on Post-School Education and Training had been the driving force behind the tabling of the Higher Education Amendment Bill.

The DHETs definition of post-school education and training was not post-secondary but everybody outside school.

National Qualifications Framework

Mr Patel said that the National Qualifications Framework Act dealt with quality control, assurance, registration of qualifications through systematization. Additionally the Act attached levels to all qualifications.

Cabinet had also recently passed a decision where it instructed DHET to decisively deal with misrepresentation of qualifications.

Discussion

Ms Kristin Vinje (Centre Party: Norway) was interested in knowing more about what improvements and achievements had the government brought to the educational system of SA in the past 21 years. 

Mr Anders Tyvand (Christian Democratic Party: Norway) asked whether the approximately 3 young people of about 10 which were “Not in Employment, in Education or in Training (NEET) presented on where dropouts or children that had never had access to school in the first place. If they were dropouts; what interventions had DHET put in place to address that challenge?   

Ms Anne Tingelstad Woien (Centre Party: Norway) noted that Norway had similar challenges and it was also looking into how it could start its own vocational training programme in a similar manner as the Germans and the Swedes. Could the DHET elaborate on its vocational training partnerships with Swedish and German businesses trading in SA? 

Mr Christian Tynning Bjorno (Conservative Party) said that in Norway teacher education and qualifications were high on the political agenda. How did DHET tackle that question?

Ms Bente Thorsen (Progress Party: Norway) asked what DHET was doing to get dropouts to get back to school as in Norway teachers generally physically monitored the children through walking them to and from school in trying to remedy the situation.

Ms Norunn Tveiten Benestad (Conservative Party: Norway) said that over the last couple of decades Norway had experienced an increase in the number of students at university and colleges however; a challenge for her country was how to maintain the quality of higher education whilst broadening access. How was SA grappling with those issues?

How was vocational education catered for in the National Qualifications Framework (NQF)? What were DHETs strategies to develop vocational education at the highest level of the NQF?

The Chairperson noted that any part of the world had unique challenges and though knowledge exchange was important, sometimes only the principle learned was more than simply applying strategies because they originated from similar challenges between countries in a specific sector.  

He repeated his earlier emphasis that apartheid education was skewed according to race to the advantage of a minority over the majority.

Mr Patel responded that in 20 years the higher learning landscape had changed significantly since prior to the 1994 general elections; SA had approximately 14 different departments of education for different race groups. Higher education was also divided in a similar manner.

Specifically since ’94 the curriculum had become standardized such that it was the same in any school in SA. There was also only one department of education instead of 14.

There had also been 3 universities that had recently been established since ’94. Higher learning was now accessible to 50+% of African students instead of the 10% before democracy.

There was one challenge of males performing worse off than females in higher learning institutions.

Regarding the 3 out 10 NEET young people; Mr Patel explained that it was actually 3, 2 million young people that were NEET in the age category 15- 24 years.

The dropout rate at secondary schools in SA was about 30%. Moreover; in the democratic SA, education was compulsory whereas it was not so before ’94.

In terms of teacher education: after ’94 the education department had a surplus of teachers because the class ratio of African schools was one teacher for a class of 60+ learners. In white schools the ratio had been one teacher for every 20 learners. Therefore the Department had had to rationalise and equalise that ratio. The Department also closed teacher colleges at that time however: in 1999 it reopened them when it realised it would be chaos in the future.

From then on, it had created the Fundza Lushaka bursary scheme programme as an incentive to get young people into the teaching profession.  

Vocational graduates or interns that were exposed to in-service training generally through the Swedish and German partnership were more employable than those without experience.

In terms of access versus quality, Mr Patel said that one of the ways quality could suffer as a result of increased access would be increasing access without the full costs and inputs required then quality could suffer. However; expansion with the same amount of resources for quality was a manageable exercise.

Mr Sandile Williams, University Policy and Development Support, DHET, said that the DHET was ensuring the expansion of the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges as a way of increasing access to employability and training of those in the NEET category. Going forward the DHET was in the process of establishing 12 new TVET colleges and capacitating the current Community Colleges to ensure absorption of those not in employment or training. 

Regarding quality versus access, the DHET had the Council on Higher Education (CHE) was responsible for ensuring that each programme approved by DHET would be on the same level as the best international standards in terms of quality. Regarding access, the DHET allowed institutions like the University of South Africa (UNISA) to enroll a large number of students for Open Distance Learning (ODL).

Regarding the NQF catering for vocational education and to what level of the NQF vocational students could attain qualification, Mr Patel referred the audience to the education level slide in the presentation explaining the categorization and how it was rationalized between vocational, school grades, and the NQF levels. Moreover the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and the CHE ensured the appropriateness of a qualification level whilst also monitoring the examinations for the different qualification sub-frameworks.  The Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) had a level 1 -10 sub-framework though the Minister of DHET had only activated levels 1-8 occupational certificate.

Mr C Mathale (ANC) asked the Norwegians how Norway was funding free education and how long it had been doing so. 

Ms Nybo replied that it had been important for Norway for a long time to have compulsory and equal basic education for all its children though there was private learning. Even those private schools received state funding making them accessible to those who could access them without been very wealthy.  Higher learning was mainly funded by the state as well which was why it was free however; because the cost of living was quite high in Norway students could access loans and scholarships for the portion of their studies which the government did not cover. Norway also had a small population of only about 5 million people

Ms Trine Skymoen, Ambassador of Norway in South Africa, added that higher learning in Norway was also free for immigrant students though of course the cost of living there was high for them as well. Additionally the government of Norway had the countries reserves invested diversely in other currencies in more stable economies.

Ms Nybo said that the government of Norway had also ensured that its gas and oil industries had been set-up to benefit all of Norway’s citizens

The Chairperson thanked the delegation for visiting Parliament and allowed Ms J Kilian (ANC) to say the official vote of thanks for the SA government after which the meeting was adjourned.