Minister of basic education Angie Motshekga has approved the reappointment of the ministerial task team (MTT) to overhaul the history curriculum to make it more Afrocentric and relevant to South African pupils.

In June this year, the task team presented their recommendations to  Motshekga. One of the recommendations was that life orientation makes way for history as a compulsory subject from grades 10- 12.

“Inside and outside of the education sector there has been a lot of excitement and anticipation regarding the overhaul of our history education in schools," Motshekga said. "This has been characterised by many as perpetuating a colonial or Western perspective. I have absolute faith in the team of experts that are going to be forging the way forward in terms of how we teach our young people about the past. I believe that a comprehensive, well-rounded and accurate teaching of history will help our learners understand themselves better and assist the country in moving forward together.”

The overhaul of the history curriculum is to ensure that the new curriculum is representative and covers multiple perspectives rather than one main dominant and distorted narrative.

The new terms of reference for the task team include the development of a new history curriculum from grades 4 to 12, to conduct provincial consultation in the education sector and obtain inputs into the new history curriculum, to screen textbooks to ensure alignments with the new curriculum and to propose history teacher development programmes for both initial teacher education and In-service teacher education.

The MTT will once again be led by Professor Sifiso Ndlovu who has now been given the mandate by the minister to set the direction of history education in the country going forward.