of teachers were set at very low levels. In the 1970s, the per capita governmental spending on black education was one-tenth of the spending on white. In 1976, the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974, which forced all black schools to use both Afrikaans and English as languages of instruction from the last year of primary school, led to the Soweto Uprising in which more than 575 people died, at least 134 of them under the age of 18. The Act was repealed in 1979 by the Education and the Training Act of 1979, which continued the system of racially-segregated education but also eliminating both discrimination in tuition fees and the segregated Department of Bantu Education and allowed both the use of native tongue education until the fourth grade and a limited attendance at private schools as well. Segregation became unconstitutional after the introduction of the Interim Constitution in 1994, and most sections of the Education and Training Act were repealed by the South African Schools Act, 1996. The Bantu education Act created a separate inferior education system for black students. The purpose of this act was to make sure that black South Africans would only ever be able to work as unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, even if they were intelligent enough to become skilled. This kept them the servants to white South Africans. References http://nmmu.ac.za/documents/mward/Bantu%20Education%20Act%201953.pdf External links Article on apartheid and education that mentions the Bantu Act (in Dutch) "Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953", South African History Online. 1953 in international relations 1953 in South African law Apartheid laws in South Africa Education law