The de Lange Report opened a progressive debate on education in South Africa and provided the impetus for the outreach programme pioneered by private schools in the 1980s.
In 1981 the Human Sciences Research Council released the de Lange report, an investigation commissioned by government in response to the Soweto uprisings in 1976.
Addressing the 1984 conference Prof P de V Booysen used the Report as his starting point and urged independent schools to increase their enrolment of black students and make better use of their facilities and staff.
As a result, private schools pioneered an outreach programme 1980s which involved:.
- Large-scale provision of bursaries to increase the number of black pupils in Conference schools.
- the Top Matric programme, where disadvantaged children were bussed in to the schools to receive 3 hour lessons on mathematics.
- Project Literacy, which aimed to improve the general literacy of underprivileged people; and READ, which was started because of the importance of reading in the development of children.