Keynote address delivered by the Minister of Basic Education Mrs Angie Motshekga, MP, at the SANASE Conference held at the Premier Hotel in Kempton Park, Gauteng
Programme Director,
SANASE Chairperson Dr. Smal,
Principals of Special and Full-Service Schools,
Members of Governing Bodies,
Provincial and District Officials,
Representatives of Disabled Peoples’ Organisations,
Parents,
Distinguished Guests,
It gives me great pleasure to address you on the occasion of the 2015 SANASE Conference.
"We have tried to give special emphasis to the rights of people living with disability. It is so easy to think of equality demands with reference primarily to race, colour, religion and gender; and to forget, or to relegate to secondary importance, the vast discrimination against disabled persons." so said the founding President of the new South Africa uTata Nelson Mandela affectionately known as Madiba in his Message to the Conference for the Disabled held on the 4th April, in 2004.
We believe that through the work we have done in this sector over the last few years, Madiba’s dream for disabled children is being incrementally realised every single day. Under the equality clause in our constitution’s bill of rights we affirm that, and I quote:
“The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.”
Our world renowned constitution affirms that no person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more of the grounds mentioned above.
We have striven to give legislative and regulatory content to these founding precepts in our nation-building constitution. We have in this past two decades progressed, slow as it may have been, towards living together in the acknowledgement of the basic equality and right to dignity of all human beings.
Our Ministry in particular and the Department of Basic Education in general appreciates the work that your organisation does to serve the needs and interests of learners who attend special schools and the growing number of full-service or inclusive schools.
We also value this opportunity to recognise the achievements of exceptional schools amongst your ranks but also to deliberate on the challenges that you face in ensuring the delivery of quality education and support in your schools.
In our address to the 2013 AGM during the, ‘Year of Inclusive Education’, I outlined the areas in which our Department would like to give priority attention over the next few years to strengthen delivery in the sector. With the assumption of our renewed term of office I have indicated that we are committed to support this sector with renewed emphasis as it is the only sector where we do not yet have 100% access in contrast with mainstream education where school attendance exceeds 99%.
And as in mainstream schooling we are also concerned about quality of delivery of curriculum and services. This can be observed in the significant drop-out rate of learners over the age of sixteen (only 68% attendance) and the substantial number of children and youth with profound and multiple disabilities who are out-of-school (estimated 400 000).
In reviewing the progress made during the 14 years since the publication of Education White Paper 6 in 2001, the Department of Basic Education found that there has been significant progress in many areas of implementing the policy on Inclusive Education. It is however also felt that the progress should be accelerated and expanded across the system over the next few years towards 2020.
Thus, in 2013 during the, ‘Year of Inclusive Education’, we introduced a clear mandate to all sectors within education system to take responsibility for ensuring that the constitutional right of learners with disabilities to have access to a full cycle of quality education.
Our ultimate dream is to see that all learners with disabilities being accommodated in their ordinary neighbourhood schools. And, for this purpose we would like to see schools becoming more responsive to their needs by changing the attitudes of school communities who are often still biased and prejudiced against people with disabilities.
We have since made great strides towards addressing the plight of disabled learners. The Department of Basic Education has noted the report released this week by the Human Rights Watch on various issues regarding inclusive education.
It is disappointing to note that Human Rights Watch researchers approached the Department of Basic Education with predetermined findings of their research. Despite asking for our input they failed to include our submissions in their final report which address many of the concerns raised in their report. It is almost as if there is an attempt to sensationalise the very real and very serious challenges faced by learners with special needs.
The DBE is working at various levels of Government to educationally enrich the lives of children with disabilities, it is disheartening when these concerted and genuine efforts are trivialized, and worse, ignored for the purpose of releasing a report with a predetermined outcome. It calls into question the legitimacy of the report if the researchers chose to strategically omit crucial information that seriously impacts on the real situation in the country.
The implementation of the Policy of Inclusive Education as outlined in Education White Paper 6 of 2001 is a critical priority of the Department of Basic Education. However, it is incremental and systematic and the change that has been achieved, against a background of disparity and inequality inherited from the previous dispensation, is huge and requires multi-sectoral collaboration.
The Department is far advanced in establishing improved data gathering systems which would provide more accurate and disaggregated data on the number of out-of-school children with disabilities, which is a challenge faced by most countries.
The introduction of the Policy on Screening, Identification, Assessment and Support (promulgated at the end of 2014) with the concomitant development of funding, post provisioning and infrastructure norms for an Inclusive Education system, will also ensure a new dispensation in which children with disabilities will have expanded opportunities to access their local neighbourhood schools and receive support in inclusive settings from an early age onwards.
The Department is committed to honouring the South African Government obligations to realise the prescripts of especially Article 24 of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
For example in January 2015 the DBE conducted a follow up survey on the number of learners per province who are on waiting lists for admission to special schools. The number stood at 5 425 in March 2015.
Provinces have been advised to ensure that all waiting lists must be managed centrally from the provincial head offices by ensuring that all learners who have been referred are assessed in terms of the SIAS Policy and receive the necessary support in the school where they currently are enrolled. The waiting lists are monitored quarterly by the DBE.
The Policy on Screening, Identification, Assessment and Support was promulgated in December 2014 for implementation with effect this year, 2015. Most provinces have been setting up structures in selected schools and districts for the implementation of the policy since 2008.
The policy will now be incrementally rolled out nationally across all districts and schools, starting with the training of a National Training Team which we conducted in July. We have set 2019 as the target date for universal application. Currently, we have 453 number of special schools with the nationwide 2014 enrolment of 116 740.
Progress in strengthening of special schools
Our Department has as a priority to ensure that there is a more equitable and cost-effective special education dispensation. Without neglecting the specialised needs of special schools, it is critical to provide funding in the mainstream and District Support Services so that all children could exercise their constitutional right to access quality education and support in their local neighbourhood school without any discrimination (Bill of Rights, Sections 9, 28 and 29 and the South African Schools Act, Sections 5 and 12).
But also learners with profound disability must have access to basic education and can no longer be refused admission to special schools.
What is cause for concern is still the unequal distribution of special schools and the disparity in provincial expenditure. The per capita expenditure in Gauteng is R31 445 in comparison with R50 800 in the Northern Cape.
Provinces such as Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal also have more special schools and have to face the challenge of many cross border referrals. We are happy to report that many provinces have increased the number of Full-Service/Inclusive Schools from 30 in 2007 to 550 in 2014. There are now only 2 districts in the country that do not have full-service schools.
This is incrementally improving South Africa’s response to Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which we have ratified in 2007 and which obliges us to introduce an inclusive education system at all levels whilst ensuring that learners receive the necessary support in schools closest to where they live.
A range of audits have been conducted in special schools since 2002 informing the DBE of the challenges faced and the areas in which improvement is urgently required.
Of particular concern remains the unacceptably high incidence of child abuse occurring in special school hostels, the significant number of learners who remain in special schools over the age of twenty one, the lack of specialised training of teachers in the respective areas of disability such as Braille, South African Sign Language and Autism, the lack of LTSM in accessible format and assistive technology, etc.
Since 2013 we have intensified steps to address the challenges identified through the audits.
Provincial Education Departments are conducting training in all special schools, involving provincial and district officials in the following areas:
- Training on the Guidelines on Quality Education and Support in Special Schools and Special School Resource Centres (2013). The main purpose of this programme has been to ensure that all special schools are truly centres of excellence that guarantee quality education and support in the programmes in which they specialise. It is the plan of our Department to eventually convert all special schools into resource centres but this will not be possible if schools do not meet the standards that are set for special school resource centres as outlined in the Guidelines. It remains a serious concern that there are many schools that do not offer a quality curriculum programme and operate more as care centres, keeping youth with disabilities enrolled into their twenties without strategies for transition to the world of work.
- Training of all teachers in special schools for visual impairment in Gr 1 and 2 Braille, Orientation and Mobility, the use of assistive technology and effective curriculum adaptation. This programme is being run in close collaboration with key stakeholders in the Visual Impairment Sector such as the South African Braille Authority and the South African National Council for the Blind as well as with Higher Education. In 2014 and 2015 the DBE aims to train 600 teachers who are not fully competent in Braille. By 2016 no teacher will be allowed to teach in a special school without the requisite specialist knowledge of Braille. We are also hoping that teachers are making effective use of the beautiful Braille versions of the Workbooks and the toolkits that have been distributed to schools.
- Training of Foundation Phase and Grade 9 teachers in 39 schools for the Deaf on the South African Sign Language Curriculum which was approved as national policy on 3 July 2014. This is a huge achievement for our Department and heralds a new dispensation for learners who are Deaf who will for the first time be able to learn through the medium of their natural home language which is Sign Language.
- Training of full-service schools on the Guidelines for Full-Service Schools (2010) which will orientate teachers on how to make schools truly inclusive in terms of policies, practices and cultures.
- Training on the Guidelines on Curriculum Differentiation (2012) so as to ensure that multi-level teaching materialises in all special and ordinary schools.
Increasing access to special education provision in an inclusive system
A major step ahead in improving access to schools and ensuring that learners receive the necessary support was the gazetting of the Draft Policy on Screening, Identification, Assessment and Support for public comment in April 2014. A wide range of stakeholder organisations have responded to the policy and the response is generally positive.
Our Department has also identified the Institutionalisation of Curriculum Differentiation as one of the main foci of our administration. All teachers will henceforth be expected to differentiate their teaching methodologies and assessment so that all learners can achieve to their full potential and no-one is left behind. The Policy on Accommodations (Concessions) was also published on 16 May 2014.
All learners should be assessed and registered for accommodations in the National Senior Certificate Examinations and all other exams and school-based assessment. This must be monitored by subject advisors and district assessment committees.
We are also very happy to report on the good progress that is being made in the development of the General Education and Training Certificate: Skills and Vocational Training which is being developed to ensure that there is an exit level qualification at NQF level 1 for which learners with moderate and severe intellectual disability and those who prefer to enter a vocational track below Grade 9, can qualify.
The Qualification is being benchmarked against international best practice and is being developed in close collaboration with Umalusi, SAQA, the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Quality Council on Trades and Occupations (QCTO). The Learning Programme that is being developed concurrently with the qualification will repackage the academic subjects of the National Curriculum Statement to contain more functional content and subject statements will be drafted for twenty new skills subjects. The development of a Learning Programme also for learners with severe intellectual disability (Grade R to 5) and children with profound intellectual disability who are mostly in care centres (below gr R level), is part of this project.
Teachers from special schools have been requested to submit nominations for the writing teams and a rigorous selection process has been conducted through which 110 writers have been identified to participate in curriculum writing sessions in October 2014, February and March 2015 respectively.
Once completed, the Learning Programmes will be piloted during the first half of 2015 after which we hope to finalise the policy and Learning Programmes by August 2015 for implementation in 2016. The DBE recognises that there is a critical need for teachers who are trained to offer skills and vocational subjects and the matter has been raised with the Department of Higher Education and Training to ensure that Higher Education Institutions will reintroduce courses in skills and vocational education. We will also collaborate with the Technical and Vocational Colleges, business and industry to ensure that enough teachers will be available to offer this Qualification.
Conclusion
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has introduced a new era for special education where it will no longer be business as usual. We expect of all special schools to operate within a rights-based model of disability.
However, our department also wants to be realistic and practical and ensure that resources are optimally utilised, teachers appropriately trained and school managers supported by District-based Support Teams that operate at full capacity and are knowledgeable about the support needs of special schools.
Our department sees stakeholder organisations such as yours, as well as the range of Disabled People’s and Parent Organisations as key partners in our programme of implementing an Inclusive Education and Training System.
All learners in the system must be exposed to children, youth and adults with disabilities. By learning together, we can learn to live together. Special schools must form partnerships with neighbouring ordinary schools to promote joint participation in sports and cultural events. In that regard the Glasgow Commonwealth Games of the past two weeks has been an inspiration to the whole world in the way in which it was organised to mix events for disabled and non-disabled athletes. As a country we are equally proud of our disabled and non-disabled medallists.
The Funza Lushaka Bursary Scheme has a portion that supports students with disabilities to become teachers. Special schools have the responsibility of encouraging their learners to make use of this opportunity.
Programme Director,
I wish you well in your deliberations and hope that all will derive from this conference renewed strength and inspiration for the tasks ahead.
I trust that this conference will be guided by the wisdom of Amartya Sen, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, who argues that
“Development requires the removal of major sources of non-freedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation and neglect of public facilities” (Development as Freedom, 1999).
As a society, we must still deal with all forms of division and intolerance emanating from our divided past, but we believe that we have made huge strides in bringing about a better education dispensation for all South Africans and that such endeavours will ultimately lead to freedom and a better life for all. Let us ensure that learners with special needs share equally in the gains made and can also aspire to an economically active life as adults and as fully recognised members of their communities.
I thank you!
