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The centrepiece of our legislative programme this year is, of course, the south African Schools Bill, 1996. The initial response to the Bill has been very pleasing. The widespread support for the Bill fully vindicates the painstaking, step-by-step process we have undertaken - first o develop and consolidate the policy underlying the Bill, and then to create the draft Bill and negotiate improvements to it.

The fundamental point about this Bill, which has eluded some commentators, is that it establishes for the first time in our history the legislative framework for a single, national public school system, based on the rights and responsibilities of learners, parents and educators.

For such a Bill to have attracted the wide spectrum of support that it has done is a momentous achievement for our new democracy.

I look forward to the forthcoming public hearings and Parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill. They must be rigorous, and they must expose and correct any defects which the Bill bay still have. But I hope that the Bill is passed in as close to its present form as possible.

This is a very special measure. So long as the Interim Constitution exists, and until the new system of public school governance has been enacted, the government's good faith in bringing about the changes will continue to be under scrutiny. We must ensure that the impressively high level of principled agreement on the Bill is retained and reinforced.

The passage of the Bill will mark the beginning of the implementation phase. My Ministry is looking forward with immense anticipation to getting stuck in, to making the new Act work for the benefit of all school communities. A prerequisite for its successful implementation is that the new law must be known and understood. We will embark on an intensive public information campaign about the new Act, and we intend to do so in all official languages.

This is a national measure which depends largely on provincial education departments for its operation. The Department of Education is already deepening the extremely strong working relationship we have with provincial education departments, so that we can prepare ourselves collectively to create the new school organisation, governance and funding structures as smoothly as possible.

An essential part of this preparation is to intensify the existing programmes of capacity building for the new school governing bodies which will be elected across the land. My Ministry's Task Team on education Management Development is hard at work on this matter in co-operation with the provinces and with public management training institutions and NGOs.

We shall be talking again soon with employee organisations, relevant government departments, and school organisations, to find principled and practical ways for public schools to have the services of staff members paid for by themselves, additional to the staff members on the fixed establishment who are paid for by the state.

The second area of focus in this session is the transformation of both the Higher education system and its institutions.

The Commission on Higher Education is posed to submit its report to me on Thursday 22 August, here in Cape Town. The publication of this important report will signal the beginning of an exciting period of policy development, rigorous public debate, and consensus-building consultation. The Ministry and Department of education will lead this challenging process of policy formulation guided by the principles and values of our new democracy.

This process will not be an overnight affair as it is a task of mammoth proportions which has few precedents anywhere in the world. We shall therefore invest considerable time, resources and energy towards consultation with all higher education stakeholders in order to narrow the differences among them, develop within the sector a spirit of give and take, and most importantly, establish among all role players a willingness to find consensus-backed solutions.

The magnificent example of the highest level of principled consensus on a new non-racial school system which was achieved through months of consultations and negotiations, clearly demonstrates that such a level of consensus is also possible within the higher education sector. The same suspicions, speculations and conjecture that proceeded the development of policy in the school system are evident now in the discourse on the transformation of the higher education sector. I am however fully confident that through hard and frank talk between ourselves and stakeholders and among stakeholders on their own a new higher education system will emerge.

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