The National Qualifications Framework in South Africa: A democratic project trapped in a neo-liberal paradigm?

Much criticism and debate about the South African National Qualifications Framework (NQF) has been about issues relating to implementation. Instead, the article argues that the problems with the NQF are fundamental to the way in which it has been conceptualised. The NQF was designed on the one hand to contribute to the drive for international competitiveness, and on the other hand to democratise and transform an elitist, discriminatory, and divided education system. The article argues that the drive towards democracy and the neo-liberal economic agenda have been incompatible, and that the pressures of the latter have been dominant. However, the location of the NQF within a democratic project in South Africa has meant that it has been seen as an egalitarian and transformative project, and has insulated its basic assumptions from criticism. Its approaches, policies, and mechanisms, which were designed to replace apartheid education, have come to be perceived indistinguishably from their mission, even when they are in fact not achieving it.|spagf|ro|epagf|