The impact of neoliberalism on South Africa's education policy discourse post-1994: The quest for a radical critical pedagogy

Abstract

Since the 1980s several different forms of privatisation had been introduced into the South African educational system by the De Lange Commission. Since the 1990s a raft of neoliberal policies has been implemented under the banner of "educational transformation" by the post-apartheid state. This qualitative exploration will apply a critical policy analysis approach to analyse the impact of neoliberalism on post-apartheid education policy discourse in the public schooling system in South Africa from a historical, social and critical perspective. More specifically, I will apply the insights of critical education theory to interrogate the impact of the neoliberal orthodoxy and its concomitant values on the public schooling system with regard to the delivery of accessible, quality public schooling in post-apartheid South Africa.