Educational Institutions in Durban Home Page

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."
BF Skinner

Education plays a central part in creating prosperity for all and giving new hope to all people of our province. Quality basic education for all is absolutely essential for sustainable development and to ensure that we achieve our vision of a world-class city.

KwaZulu-Natal has a population of some 9.3m citizens, of which nearly 3.8m (or some 41%) are under the age of 18 (Source: Development Bank of South Africa 2002) and are therefore currently in school or are pre-school learners.

Add to this the enormous current requirement for effective adult education and literacy training and the scale of the task becomes all too evident. As it now stands, there are approximately 1.7m citizens in KwaZulu-Natal, or some 18% of our population, who are functionally illiterate.

Schools in Durban range from top-end private schools to government schools that are open to all. Schools in the former white areas are still much better resourced that schools in the historically disadvantaged areas, which means that many young people get bussed in from the townships every day to go to inner city or suburban schools, where their parents believe they will get a better education.

There are also private colleges and schools that teach school subjects as well as other trade, technical or job-specific subjects.

Technikons and a University of the highest level complete the educational landscape in the city. The tertiary education scene is in the process of mergers and transformations at present, so we now have the University of KwaZulu-Natal which has emerged from the merger of the University of Natal and the University of Durban Westville and the Durban Institute of Technology (which absorbed the ML Sultan Technikon) as well as the Mangosuthu Technikon in Umlazi.