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Humanities
- ISSN: 2155-7993
- Journal of Modern Education Review
Access for Success: Ensuring Social Justice in South African Higher Education
Naziema Jappie
(Centre for Educational Testing for Access & Placement, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Abstract: 1948 was the year that white supremacy, the Nationalist Party consolidated power in South Africa and very systematically abolished Black participation in the political system. Under this system education was segregated along ethnic, racial and geographical lines.
In South Africa, social inequalities were embedded and reflected in all spheres of social life, as a product of the systemic exclusion of blacks. The higher education system was no exception. Given this, South Africa’s new democratic government committed itself in 1994 to transforming higher education as well as the inherited apartheid social and economic structure and institutionalizing a new social order. These included redefining of the purposes and goals of higher education policy formulation, governance, funding, academic structure and major restructuring and reconfiguration of the higher education institutional landscape. Issues of access and success, critical to this process, are multifaceted and contested and deliberated. Access is a twofold concept. The first aspect is access with participation. The second aspect is access with success which is essential for economic growth.
This paper aims to contribute to existing work drawing on various documents and reports to highlight the following areas:
(1) The rationale for increasing access to higher education;
(2) The transition process and challenges;
(3) Interventions to ensure success — what has been achieved?
Key words: transformation, social justice equity, access and success
