Curriculum Reform in South Africa: a critical analysis of outcomes‐based education

Abstract> Since South Africa's first national democratic elections in 1994, the Government of National Unity has issued several curriculum‐related reforms intended to democratise education and eliminate inequalities in the post‐apartheid education system. The most comprehensive of these reforms has been labelled outcomes‐based education (OBE), an approach to education which underpins the new Curriculum 2005. While the anticipated positive effects of the new curriculum have been widely heralded, there has been little criticism of these proposals given the social and educational context of South African schools. In this article the philosophical, political and implementational dilemmas of OBE are systematically analysed and assessed.