About 280 principals and district education staff met in the Rocklands Civic Centre, Mitchell’s Plain, yesterday (Thursday, 5 February 2004) to help map the long-term future of education in the Western Cape.

The meeting was the first of a series of consultations taking place across the province this year, organised by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).

The WCED is drafting a key strategy document, to be called Education Vision 2020, to mark the first 10 years of democracy in South Africa.

The document will review progress to date, and will look at what remains to be done to meet the challenges facing education in the next 10 years and beyond. The process of drawing up the document will be fully consultative.

Almost every school principal in the WCED’s Metropole South district attended yesterday’s consultation, which was organised by the district’s Education Management and Development Centre.

Ron Swartz, the Head of Education in the Western Cape, spoke on the Education Vision 2020 strategy, followed by four principals who provided their views on the long-term challenges facing education in the province, and related themes.

Mr Swartz referred to various issues in education in the province at the moment, and said that the education community had to work together to develop a vision and a system for effective education delivery.

He said the central focus should be the learner. "The education system must be ready for the learner, and not the other way round."

Key focus areas should be administrative excellence, human capital development and school and district effectiveness.

He said the WCED would launch a new Quality Assurance Directorate shortly, responsible for monitoring performance on all levels, to help develop the quality of education provided in the Western Cape.

Key challenges, Mr Swartz said, included equity and redress; sustainable education; ensuring a better understanding of the theory of outcomes-based education; and school development and support.

Ms Kubeshini Govender, principal of Immaculata High School, covered a wide range of challenges, including the need to build values.

"We are a society in crisis, with a serious lack of parenting skills," she said. Schools had to build values such as respect, tolerance, responsibility, truth and trust.

Ms Debbie-Jane Viljoen, deputy principal of Sweet Valley Primary School, spoke on the school’s "Care" programme, and stressed the importance of building emotional intelligence in learners.

Mr Victor Booi, principal of Nal’Uxulo Primary School, said that challenges included redressing imbalances inherited from the past. He said that educators should also ask themselves what they had done to improve education over the past 10 years.

Ms Myrtle February, principal of Hyde Park Primary School, provided advice on how best to promote literacy and said that literacy was the most important challenge currently facing education.

The WCED will hold further consultations in every education district, as well as with teacher unions, and school governing body and principals’ associations during the first six months of 2004. The department expects to complete the Education Vision 2020 document later this year.