South Africa's Minister for Education, Prof Kader Asmal, said Ireland's economic success was largely due to technical training provided by institutes of technology rather than universities.
The Minister, a former law lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, was in NUI, Galway, yesterday to receive an honorary degree. He said he had sent his own officials here to study the Irish technical education models as part of a fundamental reform of the South African educational system.
Last week, he opened a national institute of higher education in Kimberley, which was modelled on the institutes of higher education in Dublin and Limerick. "The Irish education system is by and large very successful, with one of the highest rates of participation at second- and third-level in Europe, " he said.
The Irish Central Applications Office (CAO) system was also being applied in South Africa, as it was "fairer, less prejudicial and administratively successful".
Prof Asmal has been Minister for Education in South Africa since 1999, and is involved in a radical restructuring of the system there. Eradication of poverty is a central theme of this reform, he said, and involves re-organising and merging 36 universities into 21, and 150 technical colleges into 50 such institutions.
In tackling basic issues such as illiteracy rates, the Minister has also been concerned with the issue of identity in the school system, and the role of religion in a multi-religious society.
Prof Asmal was one of six people on whom honorary degrees were conferred at NUI, Galway, yesterday. The other five were Mayor of Chicago, Mr Richard M. Daley; SDLP deputy leader, Ms Bríd Rodgers; Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill; sociologist Father Andrew M. Greeley and Galway businessman Mr Joseph Higgins.