Role for local councils in lifelong learning

Many of us would recall the last days of secondary school when, as students, we thought that it was high time we said goodbye to lessons, education and schooling and settle down to a profitable occupation.

However, it must have been quite a shock to realise that as soon as we embarked upon our much-coveted career we started to feel the need to attend specialised courses in order to do our work professionally and in an up-to-date manner.

Indeed, the principle of lifelong education is one that stems not only from the need to keep up with the requisites of the world of work, but also from a continuous need to fulfil oneself. Opening up to new experiences through formal or informal learning situations stimulates self-growth. And since growth is both the cause and effect of life, then learning must end at the end of life itself.

This principle is fully adhered to by the National Minimum Curriculum (NMC), which states that compulsory education is not one that should satisfy the entire student's educational needs once and for all. Rather, it should develop in the student the aptitude to learn in order to survive in an ever-changing global environment (p.27). It must give the student the skills needed to make a good learner, that is, somebody who will go on learning all his/her life.

The NMC puts the onus on the educational system itself to develop into a system that caters for lifelong education. The solution that the NMC proposes is to turn schools into community centres.

The parents had a major say in the process that led up to the drafting of the NMC. The newly published 'Good behaviour and discipline for schools' also considers the parents as major stakeholders in the school's educational programmes. It also identifies the parents as possible beneficiaries of the school's services (p.71).

But the NMC does not target only the parents but rather the whole local community. All sectors of the community have the right to learn and obtain the necessary skills to conduct a decent life. The school must then reach out to all those who need its services. This is where the local council could come into the picture.

The council would be the most appropriate partner. Being elected by the community, it should aspire to voice the learning needs of the community itself and build a partnership with the local school to answer in an effective way to the community's aspirations.

The local council must not only come in to provide funds but also to build a structure that ensures participation of the local community at all the stages of the learning process.

Members of the community should participate in the assessment of the educational needs, in drafting appropriate learning programmes, in identifying the necessary resources and in the running of the school itself. It will also make educational sense to establish links with local societies, most of which are led by elected committees and represent various sectors of the local community.

On a pragmatic level, it is economically viable to open up the school to the community. The school is a major investment: halls, gymnasiums, PA systems, computers, white boards, overhead projectors. Does it make sense to use all these things for about seven hours and keep this capital dormant for the remaining 17 hours of the day? Does it make economic sense for the local council to invest heavily in teaching aids (infrastructure, multimedia and sports facilities) when these already exist in the local school?

All this might seem easy talk. From our own experience we know that cohabitation and cooperation between local institutions is not easy. But we cannot afford to invest in duplicate facilities in all our localities.

It will also be difficult to change the mentality of school staff and administrators who have always seen the school as an enclave within the community under the auspices of the central Education Division. Opening up the school to the local community round the clock will entail a rethinking of the way we have been running our schools.

It will also entail good preparatory groundwork to define clearly the various responsibilities as regards the safe-keeping of premises and facilities.

Notwithstanding difficulties, we must not let ourselves be overcome by the fear-of-the-unknown syndrome. The need for lifelong learning and the need to give local democratic life a helping hand overcomes all fears.

We should strive so that the schools will drift away from the ghetto mentality and open themselves up to the community. The Education Division must give a new direction to its very active adult education department by moving from a centralised to a localised system where the community learns by participating in all the stages of the educational process.