Programme Director; Mrs Lucy Moyane
Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga
Head of Department; Mrs Mahlasedi Mhlabane
Members of Senior Management
Our Guest Speakers; Mr Martin Prew, Dr Mouvia and Dr Tibane
Hosting Principals, Mr ZE Mvula and Mrs TC Masondo
Principals
Officials from the department
Representatives from Labour
Representatives from the media
Learner formations
Greetings are always in order.
I take this time to extend my profound appreciation to you for gracing this conference. The Head of Department (HOD) has confirmed that that last week, principals through out the province gathered to take stock of the half yearly performance of learners against the recently released Annual Assessment Results and I equally take this time to appreciate that endeavour.
It remains imperative that we make an honest analysis of the problem areas leading to curriculum implementation dysfuctionality to free our schools from a state of misery.
We have pronounced publicly that we will not rest until learner performance in the province reaches acceptable levels. We will continue to call consultative meetings, summits, conferences and izindaba until we attain our objectives of ensuring that all learners who enter our system make the grade.
Let me be upfront and express my joy to the Minister of Basic Education for showering this summit with her presence.
I also express our gratitude to our guest speakers, Mr Martin Prew, Dr Muavia Gallie and Dr John Tibane for volunteering their time and resourcefulness for the success of this summit.
My take is that their presentations were enriching and are something to take home. Dr Tibane will shower us with words of inspiration and enhance our motivation levels after the delivery of the Minister.
Targets
At the occasion of the delivery of the 2011 Policy and Budget Speech on 28 of May, I pronounced that the department is targeting to attain 60% of learners performing at acceptable levels in Grades three, six and nine in Literacy and Numeracy by 2014 and to achieve this, we sat a target of 45% for the 2011 academic year.
Added to this, the department envisages having learners in all grades performing above 70% by 2014.
These targets should guide and inform everything we do. Of significance would be to ensure that all our stakeholders and employees embraced them and work towards their attainment.
Annual National Assessment
The Annual National Assessment (ANA) results released on 28 June 2011 presents us with clear benchmarking instruments and should be clearly analysed and be used to add impetus on our quest to leverage learner performance.
These results indicated an existence of chronic deficiencies within our systems that require 100% collaboration and practical remedies.
In Grade three in Literacy; Mpumalanga obtained 27 % against 35% National average, while in Numeracy for grade three Mpumalanga obtained 19% against 28% National average.
In Grade six on Numeracy; Mpumalanga obtained 20% against the National average of 28% while in Numeracy; Mpumalanga obtained 25% against 30% National average.
These results suggest that for this year we need to increase performance in grade three Literacy by 18% and Numeracy by 26%. For Grade six the province needs to increase the performance in Literacy by 17% and in Numeracy by 20%.
This will enable the province to achieve its 45% performance target for 2011 for Grades three, six and nine.
The question is, is this too much to ask? The answer must be on the enabling factors:
Enabling Factors
Mpumalanga province has an acceptable teacher-pupil ratio of 1:29, classroom pupil ratio stands at 1:40, 98% of principals’ posts are filled and processes are ongoing to ensure that all schools’ principal posts are filled.
The qualifications, age and state of health of our teachers is favourably good and almost all learners attend school every day. 65 414 learners are transported daily and 859 416 learners in 1 633 public schools receive School Nutrition daily. The department has every month honoured its obligations with regards to the remuneration for Principals, Senior Management Teams and Educators.
Training is rendered by the department on management and leadership in policy implementation, Maths, Science and Technology Programmes and so on.
There are endeavours to improve the provision of school infrastructure and comparatively speaking our province is doing very well.
All these and other programmes should ordinarily translate to better results or outstanding learner performance. It is therefore imperative that we must begin to ask ourselves serious questions on why are developments in this way?
Departmental Investigation on Internal Assessment
At the occasion of the Announcement of Grade 12 results on 6 January 2011, I established a team led by the Curriculum Branch to take stock of the trends and inconsistencies that emerged following the analysis of internal examinations.
To this effect, a report was presented to me and subsequently to the Departmental Education Indaba on 1 to 2 April 2011.
Our view is that we should share their findings with you today and are as follows:
- Most of the internal assessment tasks administered by schools are not aligned to learning outcomes and assessment standards.
- Teachers do not seem to understand differences between the various forms of assessment.
- Most of the assessment items were found to be on the lower levels of Bloom’s revised taxonomy.
- Most of the assessment tasks consisted of more objective questions than open-ended questions.
- Most of the tasks were not moderated before they were administered.
- There was no consistency in the manner in which progression and retention is applied by schools in the province.
- Principals, HODs and Circuit Managers do not ensure the correctness of mark schedules and that affects decisions taken on progression and retention of learners.
- The impact and the implication of condoning learners are not seriously considered by schools.
- Schools do not have a common understanding of recording and reporting on the performance of learners in schools.
- There are inconsistencies with regard to learner retention processes.
- The underlying reason for retaining a learner is not always well understood.
- There are no programmes in place to support retained learners.
- There are few schools in the Province that have functional school based support teams.
- Support provided by the Department of Education to educators on identifying and supporting learners experiencing barriers to learning is good.
- Support provided by other departments and Organs of State, is low.
- Learner progress is not monitored in order to inform intervention.
- Support provided to learners that are not coping with assessment tasks during the year is not monitored.
- There are no systems that assist and hold educators accountable for identifying and supporting learners that are not coping with assessment during the year.
I want to believe that these findings confirm the need to act decisively in order to remedy the existing state of affairs in our schools.
I find comfort in the fact that the team made proposals to remedy the situation and are as follows:
That we should:
- develop assessment items banks that are well aligned to learning outcomes and assessment standards
- induct Heads of departments and train them on instructional leadership
- develop provincial guidelines on the management of progression, promotion and retention to ensure consistency in the system
- clarify the roles and responsibilities of Principals, HODs and the Circuit Managers in the verification of mark schedules in a provincial guideline document
- develop a guideline document on the impact, rules and the implication of condo nation
- ensure that all schools use the provided common mark schedules
- develop a strategy to enforce and monitor the support provided to learners that are retained and those that are experiencing barriers to learning
- review promotion schedules in all schools at the beginning of each year to check adherence to policy and hold those flouting policy accountable.
If all these can be taken care of our view is that half of our problems could be solved.
I hope you are now aware that the province has developed strategies to improve Literacy/ Language and Numeracy/ Mathematics, the implementation of the Reading Strategy and Schooling Transformation and Reform Strategy (STaRs).
It will be good that you familiarise yourselves with the content and the intention of that strategy and make an effort to make it work for your schools.
I request you principals to take care of the basics in an effort to improve learner performance.
Stakeholder management, consultation, value for money and accessibility should form the basis for all your programmes. All principals need to account on a constant basis on what is taking place inside the classroom and ensure that we do not take too long to put remedial measures.
The department will play its part and ensure that the required support is rendered and yours will be to reciprocate.
I hope you heard about the results of the 2010 Audit Process: It gives me pleasure to announce to you that on Saturday; 30 July 2011; the Auditor General issued the department with an Unqualified Audit Opinion.
In the opinion of the Auditor General, financial statements of the Mpumalanga Department of Education present fairly, in all material respect, the financial position of the Mpumalanga Department of Education as at 31 March 2011.
This must set the basis for good things and has to motivate us to work even harder to improve the image of the department and the province in general.
Introduction of the Minister of Basic Education
On this positive note let me take this time and present to you our mother, a woman of substance.
- A member of the African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee;
- President of the ANC Women's League since 2007.
- She also served as a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature from 1999-2009 and
- Is currently the Minister of Basic Education in the Republic of South Africa since 11 May 2009.
- An educator in her own right, passionate about matters of community growth and development, a colleague in the struggle for total emancipation of our communities, a perfectionist and visionary.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga.
Thank you.
