C Dugmore: NBI Business Leadership Dialogue

15 March 2006

Mrs Judith O'Connel, Head of the NBI in the Western Cape,
WCED senior officials,
Mr Darryn von Maltitz, Programme Manager Mr André Fourie,
CEO of NBI Captains of Industry and Entrepreneurs,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Friends and colleagues, thank you very much for taking the time to attend
this breakfast and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share
some thoughts with you about our role in preparing young people for good
citizenship and your possible role in helping us prepare our young people for
the world of work.

In the beginning of this year there were three significant things that
happened in Western Cape Education.

First was the completion and handing over of 15 new schools in communities
historically neglected which was a record. I would also like to add that we had
the smoothest start to a school year yet in the history of our province. No
illegal schools springing up unexpectedly and an excellent delivery of learner
support material. This is partly due to our early admission campaign, the
proactive ‘hotspots’ strategy and better provisioning.

As we speak there is not single school still platooning in our province.
Yes, we still need 40 new schools and overcrowding remains a problem in some of
our schools but we have greater stability and certainty in the system.

Our plans to finalise 44 local education provisioning plans, one for each of
our 24 category b municipalities in the province and one for each of our 20
sub-councils in the city of Cape Town will bring focus and certainty to the
development of human capital at a local level.

Secondly, we along with the rest of the country have made a decisive break
from apartheid education with the launch of our national curriculum statement
for the Further Education and Training (FET) Band.

Every grade 10 learner is now doing four compulsory subjects. These are
firstly maths or maths literacy, secondly life orientation, thirdly the
language of learning and teaching and fourthly a first additional language.

Our learners then offer three additional subjects available at their school.
In 2007 this cohort will move to grade 11 and in 2008 all grade 12s will write
the senior certificate (matric) in terms of the national curriculum
statement.

And lastly, just over a week ago we have launched what we call our Human
Capital Development Strategy (HCDS), which is one of the lead strategies of the
Western Cape Provincial Government's growth and development blueprint ‘Ikapa
Elihlumayo’ to grow and share the Cape.

All of the above are not just simply empty deliverables or promises. They
stem from our desire and commitment as government, that "we should move faster
to address challenges of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation
confronting those caught within the second economy to ensure that the poor in
our country share in our growing prosperity" to quote our President Thabo Mbeki
in his State of the Nation Address earlier.

I believe that despite infrastructural backlogs that remain, we now can say
that the transformation of our curriculum is nearing completion bringing
greater stability and certainty.

While we have to continue our redress drive, (and the gradual phasing in of
no-fee schools in our poorest schools is an example of this), all of our
schools now need to focus on quality and impact.

We have a curriculum which can meet our human capital needs. Now we need
schools that are led, managed, supported and nurtured so that we develop young
people ready for life. Young people who are ready for work. Young people who
are ready and passionate about creating work for others.

I want to illustrate briefly how this new curriculum is preparing our young
people for good citizenship. Tomorrow's South Africa needs people who are
compassionate problem solvers, who work with others. Good citizens are systems'
thinkers who can take risks and give a lead because they know what they're
doing and why.

South Africa's new education system plans to give us these 21st century good
citizens. The new education system is built around a central core of 12 major
life role outcomes like be a critical thinker, be an organised person, work
well in groups and so on.

This means that there will be an actual programme in place which
systematically trains learners in those key competencies or aptitudes, which
you and I have had to just pick up as we go along.

The new system is set up around a broad based general education and training
band with nine years in which all learners do the same core learning areas what
we used to call subjects.

The most obvious one to talk about today and which focuses, as it were, on
citizenship is the Learning Area (LA) called Life Orientation which
systematically takes our children through a range of issues like the learner
will be able to make informed decisions regarding personal, community and
environmental health which is outcome number one of that LA or the learner will
be able to demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to constitutional
rights and responsibilities, and to show an understanding of diverse cultures
and religions (Outcome two of life orientation)

But other parts of the curriculum are just as critical for developing good
citizenship; the history part of social sciences sets up exercises where
children explore issues of our time. Here's a quote from a grade nine learner
knowledge focus for one of the outcomes.

It says that grade nine learners will be learning about dealing with crimes
against humanity; apartheid and the truth and reconciliation commission
compared with the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials; xenophobia and genocide
(e.g. Rwanda, the Balkans); the effects of globalisation on Africa" and "a new
vision for Africa: Africa's economic recovery. This is not listing the reasons
for the Great Trek which was the staple diet of my school history course!

The ‘National Curriculum Statement’ the name of the new curriculum
explicitly sets itself up to address values' education and human rights
issues.

I think one of the main ways that the new curriculum will be doing a better
job of making our children good citizens is that it is by definition a
performance based curriculum. Learners must actually give evidence that they
can ‘do’ certain things.

I don't, for example, just write a paragraph about the outcome I just read
out to you. Instead the ‘assessment standard’ for that outcome or the thing
that will give evidence that I have achieved a particular level, spells out
that (and I'm just picking out one little bit here):

“We know this when the learner:
Shows evidence of respect for others and the ability to disagree in
constructive ways.
Demonstrates and reflects on decision making skills.”

I'll just run through the eight LA of the GET band quickly and also show how
they link to the FET band.

Learners must do two languages right the way through to Grade 12, one on a
home language level and one on an additional language level. I can't resist
putting in a plug here for an innovation we are planning to introduce shortly
which is for our learners to have at least three years worth of a third
language by the end of the GET band.

And that will surely be a huge step towards ‘good citizenship’ once we can
all speak one another's languages in this province then we can really claim to
be making progress!

Back to the other GET learning areas. I've mentioned history the other part
of the social sciences LA is geography of course. Then its natural sciences
which might still sound a bit familiar to us.

The big new LAs is technology, arts and culture, economic and management
sciences. You will see that this is a wide ranging set of focuses which lays
the foundation for a degree of specialisation in the last three years of
school.

The curriculum transformation process has been a necessarily complex one.
This year the revised new curriculum has got as far as grade seven. Next year
it gets to grade eight and then it's into grade nine in 2008. Year 2008 will
also be the first year of the new senior certificate. So that will be a big
year for us!

Every single subject curriculum has been heavily revised. Many will soon
convert to subjects that will require learners to actually use computers to
complete the curriculum, e.g. subjects like accountancy and the old technical
drawing simply have to be computerised in the 21st century.

All our high schools in the province now have computer labs and teachers are
preparing themselves to manage a large scale migration to computers as the
normal tool for study.

Our focus now is additional provisioning at our 50 Dinaledi maths, science
and technology focus schools. Our department has now also approved the
conversion of 28 of our high schools into focus schools, ten focussing on arts
and culture; eight focussing on business, commerce and management and ten
focussing on technology and engineering.

In 2006 we will turn our attention to making sure that our primary schools
are also equipped with computer labs.

The corner stones of the new curriculum are the critical outcomes. The class
of 2008 will be proficient problem solvers and critical thinkers. They will
have chosen their subjects carefully helped by the life orientation program in
the GET band and the provincial pace career guidance program aimed at
strengthening this.

All of the above initiatives are part of a plan, the human capital
development strategy. Our mission with this strategy is to provide our youth
with relevant skills, knowledge, values and attitudes they need to participate
meaningfully in the mainstream economy and be internationally competitive.

With this strategy, we want to increase the participation and success rates
of our youth in FET colleges and higher education institutions especially those
from poor backgrounds.

The further recapitalisation and financing of our six FET colleges, (R70
million this year, R80 million in 2007 and R77 million in 2008) is a visible
demonstration of how we aim to increase the number of learners obtaining
critical vocational skills.

Introducing additional courses in line with our provincial Micro Economic
Development Strategy (MEDS) will be a key contributor to the success of
government’s accelerated and shared growth initiative.

To highlight the challenge of achieving quality across our system I want to
talk to you about the matric results of 2005. Last year at Leeuwenhof, I said
that whilst we must applaud and praise those schools and learners for doing
well, we can never use the matric results alone to determine whether we are
indeed making progress in terms of the transformation objectives of the
country.

For example, out of the 10,144 African learners who wrote matric in the
Western Cape, only 2.38 percent passed accountancy on the higher grade that
means about 240 learners!

For mathematics on the higher grade 3.9 percent passed which is about 395
learners and 4.3 percent passed physical science on the higher grade which is
about 436 learners!

The same applies for coloured learners in these subjects. Of the 18,772 who
wrote the senior certificate examinations, 6 percent passed accountancy on the
higher grade (1,126 learners), 4.9 percent passed mathematics on the higher
grade (919 learners) and 4.7 percent passed physical science on the higher
grade that is 882 learners!

On the other hand, the results of white learners in this regard are quite
extraordinary when one does comparative analyses. Of the 8,795 white learners
who wrote, 21.3 percent passed accountancy on the higher grade, 30.2 percent
passed maths on the higher grade and 26.7 percent passed physical science on
the higher grade.

The results of white candidates exceed African and coloured candidates
substantially and the location of success is in the former model C schools
environment mainly. After 10 years of democracy these statistics pose us with
serious challenges about how we deploy our resources.

Our national Minister and Premier have challenged us to formulate a learner
attainment strategy which will ensure that all of our schools achieving less
than 60 percent (we have 34 in our province) are supported to obtain more than
60 percent.

We have started already and our final plan will be in place by the end of
March. What we have learned is that these schools do not simply require a quick
fix. If we simply focus on the matric class of 2006, we may find that the class
of 2007 drops below 60 percent again.

We need integrated, whole school development and support in an ongoing way
committed and motivated leadership; involved parents; dedicated learners who
share in the vision for their school.

It is not just about passing; it is about the quality of the passes and the
number of endorsements. The number of learners passing higher grade maths and
science.

One target of the Human Capital Development Strategy (HCDS) is to double the
number of learners passing maths higher grade by 2009. This means moving up
from 4,000 to 8,000. We are now busy making sure that all of our schools set
individual targets to achieve this impact. Not only our 50 Dinaledi and 28
focus schools all of our 350 high schools.

Mobilising partnerships, friends and business acquaintances in fighting
poverty and creating work is a key component of our HCDS, which is about
building social networks.

The National Business Initiative (NBI), has, since its inception been a key
contributor to our country now being in the age of hope in the words of our
President and on the “threshold of prosperity” to quote our Premier (Ebrahim
Rasool) from his Budget Speech.

Your initiative has contributed enormously to sustainable social and
economic development and I want to thank you for continuing to do so. Support
for the equip programme by business for instance has assisted with whole school
development at a number of our schools.

It is these schools then that are better placed to deliver the curriculum,
better placed to prepare our learners for life and the world of work. So,
continued support for equip is one way of making sure that our learners are
prepared for the world of work.

In one of a series of publications that seeks to analyse education
investment, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organisation’s (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics published a report entitled:
"Financing education investments and returns analysis of the world education
indicators 2002 edition.”

It is quite a lengthy report but I just want to quote a paragraph that I
thought is very relevant to this forum. It states: "There is now robust
evidence that human capital is a key determinant of economic growth and
emerging evidence indicates that it is also associated with a wide range of
non-economic benefits, such as better health and well being.

"Investment in human capital and by implication in education has thus moved
to centre stage in strategies to promote economic prosperity, fuller employment
and social cohesion.

"As a result, education is increasingly considered an investment in the
collective future of societies and nations, rather than simply in the future
success of individuals."

You may have read in the Sunday Times newspaper of 12 March, in the business
section, that the emphasis of corporate social investment has in the last
decade changed dramatically.

According to the findings of the Deloitte Corporate Social Investment Survey
published in December 2004, investment in housing enjoyed number one
priority.

Whilst I am by no means implying it has become less of a challenge or a
priority, it is heartening to note that education is now the top priority for
businesses in South Africa.

According to the Survey, business analysts do not see themselves as
competitors when it comes to corporate social investment but rather as partners
to make sure “we work for the benefit of the community concerned."

And therefore your involvement in education, gives us an opportunity to
share ideas and exchange notes which in the long run will ultimately also
benefit the business community and assist us in meeting the Accelerated and
Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) targets.

The almost complete introduction of a new, progressive and modern curriculum
creates possibilities for our schools develop new and innovative ideas about
how business can further assist in preparing our learners for the real world of
work.

For example, the Rhenish High School in Stellenbosch has a program of "job
shadowing" for a full week for all for their grade 11 girls. For a full week
before the end of the second term these girls go into a working environment and
then report on their findings in the third term.

Now a school like Rhenish has huge amounts of social capital to make a
project like this work. Our challenge is to expose more of our grade 11's from
Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain and Worcester for example to the world of work as
well. Can business in general and the National Business Initiative (NBI) in
particular help with this?

I have talked of our Focus Schools.

I would like to call upon our business leaders to network with these
schools. An organised programme of visits by business leaders and role models
at these schools talking about careers in business and commerce, arts and
culture, ICTs, accountancy, project management, engineering, could have a major
impact on the lives and future of our learners.

Maybe your company works in a niche operation and you would love to support
schools, which offer engineering subjects, or art subjects or things
entrepreneurial. Again our doors are open!

I will ask my department to provide a list of these schools so that together
we can develop a strategy to bring the world of work into these 78 schools for
a start.

As you know we started last year to breathe life into the Western Cape
Education Foundation. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) will now be held before
the end of March. I see the foundation playing a key role in building
public/private partnerships, which are aligned and complimentary to our human
capital development strategy.

We hope to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Cape Town
chamber of commerce soon to initiate an 'adopt a school' campaign which aims to
encourage businesses to support schools at risk according to a template of 10
possible interventions.

Some of these include whole school development, learner, teacher and
parental leadership development, information and communication technologies and
infra-structural improvement.

So far I have given you four ways to help us prepare young people for the
world of work. Firstly, keep on doing what you are doing by supporting
NBI/Equip Initiative.

Secondly support our focus schools. Thirdly open your doors to more of our
learners so that they like the Rhenish girls can practically experience the
world of work while at school. Fourth consider supporting a school at risk via
the proposed "adopt a school" campaign.

Two more ways you can help before I sit down.

Number five: you can adopt a teacher. These are variations on a theme but
you know that many of our teachers did not have the benefit of a good training
in the first place.

Through certificates like the further diploma in education or the advanced
certificate of education teachers can make huge professional strides.

Further study is not cheap but, again, we will not make real progress unless
our teachers and the mentors of our children are fully equipped. Teachers of
technology and Information Communication Technology (ICT) are in short supply.
Your support could help existing teachers with passion obtain Advanced
Certificate in Education's (AEC) in these critical learning areas.

Finally or number six: keep up to date. It's a fact that good news is not
really the stuff of banner headlines. We don't rush out to buy a paper because
of a poster which screams "Teenagers are rushing to school because the
curriculum has been modernised."

So I think my final message to you is, keep abreast of developments. Be well
informed. If things are going well let us know. And if they're not then let us
know too.

Our learning organisations, our learning districts and our learning province
depend on a networked system. I think you're here on a kind of goodwill mission
maybe, unless it's just for the good breakfast.

And it’s that kind of social capital that goodwill that we desperately need.
Of course we'd really love your money but at the very least we'd like your
support and certainly good doses of your business acumen.

So, thank you very much to Judith, Mr von Maltitz, Fourie, and everyone
associated with NBI for your continued energy, passion, commitment and
involvement in making our province a learning home for all. It gives our youth
hope that tomorrow shall be better than today.

Many thanks to all the officials in my Department as well, you are all an
integral part of the answer to the President's call to grow the economy with
six percent and the Premier's vision of building a home for all.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Education, Western Cape Provincial Government
15 March 2006