C Dugmore: Cape Town Press Club

5 September 2006

Thank you MC
Esteemed members of the Press Club
Ladies and gentlemen

It is almost exactly halfway through my term of Office; so I thought that
this occasion would be an opportune time for me to share with you some
reflections and challenges since being appointed as MEC for Education in the
Western Cape shortly after the elections of April 2004.

It has been a tough and challenging period, but also one in which I believe
important steps have been taken along the road to a Learning Home for All. Our
key challenge is to ensure that every school is able to deliver the National
Curriculum Statement giving every learner the opportunity to develop their full
potential.

Besides developing the full potential of every learner and providing quality
general education and training, we also have a responsibility to develop the
human capital in our province to ensure that we produce learners with the
knowledge and skills to contribute to the economic growth of our country and
province.

As a provincial education department, we also have the responsibility for
the six Further Education and Training Colleges in the province and it is these
colleges, which have a critical role to play in skills development aligned to
the Micro Economic Development Strategy of the Western Cape.

The fact that we have not been producing sufficient numbers of matrics
qualifying for entrance to higher education especially from historically
disadvantaged schools and matrics with mathematics and science, remains a huge
challenge. While the setting up of 50 Dinaledi (Maths, Science and Technology)
and 28 other focus schools is, I believe, improving quality of passes in these
key subjects, our challenge remains quality in each and every school.

When I came into Office, I found a situation where some schools have more
than 12ha of land, a fully-fledged sports field, school hall, fully equipped
science laboratory, television, technological and digital equipment, and
computer lab with internet access. On the other hand, twelve schools in the
rural areas did not even have electricity!

I am proud to say that as I speak there is not a single school in our
province today, which does not have access to electricity and also that every
high school now has a computer lab. The fact that 419 of our schools
voluntarily accepted the status of no-fee schools this year and that they and
some additional schools will be declared no-fee schools by Minister Naledi
Pandor later this year, will bring relief to many of our mainly rural schools.
At the same time, over 650 of our 1,500 schools do not have school halls and
many do not have sports fields.

While the introduction and gradual expansion of no-fee schools will greatly
assist in the day to day running of our schools, it is clear that dedicated
funding to overcome the historic inequalities in regard to school
infrastructure will be required.
The National Department of Education's process of compiling a national audit of
needs at all our schools with a view to presenting a consolidated bid to
treasury will hopefully lead to additional resources for this purpose. I have
also been encouraged by efforts by Minister Pandor to provide incentives to our
educators. As you may very well know, the Education Labour Relations Council
earlier agreed on a R4,2 billion package to encourage and reward teachers.

This agreement provides for improved career pathing for qualified post level
one teachers, as well as accelerated salary progression for all teachers on
certain salary levels. The agreement makes provision for the new rank of Master
Teacher. We can promote Senior Teachers on Salary Level 8 to the rank of Master
Teacher on Salary Level 9, if they meet performance criteria determined by the
Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS).

The agreement on accelerated pay progression now enables teachers to
progress more rapidly through a salary level, for example, by three notches
after three years of good performance. Teachers can also achieve three notch
increases over five years, for example, if they achieve three good performance
ratings during this period.

Whilst on the one hand we must make sure that the conditions of service of
teachers is continuously improved, I learnt from my trip to the United Kingdom
last year, that the single most important contributing factor in 80% of
successful, effective schools, is leadership. If our schools are effectively
led and managed by principals and senior management great success can be
achieved. We can never invest enough in building the leadership of our schools
and moves at a national level towards ensuring that every aspirant principal
will have to complete a Diploma in School Leadership and Management before
being able to apply for such a post, will have a fundamental impact on the
management of our schools.

The challenges we face in seeking to transform education range from the
basics, such as providing enough classrooms, to the complex task of ensuring
that our learners achieve the outcomes required by the national curriculum.
That is why I have declared six key priorities for the Western Cape Education
Department (WCED) to focus on as we start implementing our Human Capital
Development Strategy and meet the challenges identified by our President and
Premier, especially in the area of skills development.

The priorities are not only applicable for the 2006/07 Budget Year, but in
fact, for the rest of my term of office, namely: literacy and numeracy; Further
Education and Training (FET) in schools and colleges; infrastructure
provisioning; school safety; redesign of the WCED; and building social capital
in education.

Literacy and numeracy

We have a duty to ensure that all of our learners achieve the outcomes
required by the national curriculum, especially in our poorest schools. We have
to start at the beginning with reading, writing and calculating in the
foundation and intermediate phases, from Grades R to 6. The WCED has been
studying learner performance in Literacy and numeracy in Grades 3 and 6 over
the past few years. This is arguably the most complex and difficult task we
face as we seek to provide quality education for all.

Our learners are already showing improved scores in our system-wide
provincial testing. Our Grade 6's of 2005 showed a seven percent improvement in
literacy scores and two percent in numeracy since the previous tests in 2003.
However, with only 42% of learners scoring at the required level for Literacy
and 17% for numeracy, it is clear that we still have a long way to go.

We have recently announced a strengthened, sustainable and coordinated
literacy and numeracy strategy for the Western Cape. I do not believe there are
quick fixes but if we are able to place this strategy at the centre of all our
endeavours and provide sustained support to our teachers in the classroom, we
can turn the situation around. The first thing our new strategy does is spell
out a theoretical framework for teachers and teaching.

The new curriculum, the national curriculum statement, for the first time
stipulates the specific assessment standards for each grade. This means that
teachers now have a good map for the skills needed and the required pace of
development. Our approach emphasises the explicit teaching of phonics in the
context of a whole language approach and also that mental skill and competency
are a critical aspect of becoming numerate, there is thus clearly a place for
drill and practice with regards to mental mathematics.

Our strategy is based on three key strands, which is teacher support and
development; promotion of mother tongue based bilingual education; and advocacy
for community and family literacy. We have a new curriculum with a
fundamentally different approach to teaching and learning. Worldwide there are
discrepancies between the intended curriculum and that which is actually taught
in the classrooms.

Our teachers have to have "time out" so they can stock up on new skills. And
they need more than a quick workshop at the end of a long hard day. The
training that we envisage for teachers will be very carefully designed. I have
just declared that the basket of posts will grow by 500 next year to 30 872 at
a cost of R83,5 million. It represents the highest increase in the number of
posts over this period.

The total number of learners in the Western Cape has stabilised between 919
000 and 920 000 over the past two years, in Grades 1 to 12. Despite this trend,
the WCED has continued to increase the total number of teaching posts to
address specific challenges.

While I agree that this allocation does not make any significant impact on
our teacher-learner ratio, which is currently 39:1 for primary schools and 35:1
for high schools, the situation cannot be described as a 'crisis'. We
continually have to balance the demands of personnel and non-personnel
expenditure and the declaration of extra 500 posts was the best scenario, which
could be managed for 2007. I remain convinced that as a country we need to move
towards improved teacher-learner ratios especially in our primary schools.

Strengthening of Early Childhood Development, for Grade R and pre-grade R
remains a critical part of our strategy. Here again investment in the quality
of our pre-school and grade R educators as well the creation of safe and
resource-rich centres, are fundamental. I have already increased the subsidy
for grade R sites from R3 to between R6 and R8 per learner per day in the
poorest communities.

With regards to language, research tells us clearly that our children have
better chances of educational success if they learn through their mother tongue
for as long as possible. Therefore we have a duty to tell parents this and we
must help our schools to manage this better. The first target of our
language-in-education transformation plan is that, wherever possible, learners
should have mother-tongue instruction until the end of Grade 6 at the
earliest.

A second part of our transformation plan is to introduce at least three
years of trilingualism for all our learners before the end of the GET band. We
plan to make sure that all three of the languages of the province are given
status. I firmly believe that paying proper attention to supporting learning
through the mother-tongue and helping teachers to manage both this and making
sure that their learners get excellent teaching of English as a second language
will help make a major difference in the schools where learners are really
struggling to meet the performance demands.

We must admit that those inside the classroom need help, we do not have to,
or we cannot provide all the solutions in our classrooms. We must ask what the
literacy levels in our learners' homes are. Do their parents read? Can their
parents read? Is there anything to read?

Do family members talk to one another? Do they tell stories? Does the child
belong to a library? Read for pleasure? Do our parents know exactly how to help
their children? Have we tried training them to offer good support at home?
While the classroom itself remains the key, because of the skills of the
teacher and the resources of the school, I am calling for a provincial campaign
which goes far beyond the classroom walls and which gathers momentum in
families, communities and workplaces. I hope that the rallying call of "Each
One Teach One" will be taken up in the media, in the homes and in the streets
of our province.

Earlier, this year we appointed 510 Teaching Assistants to support
foundation phase teachers in poor schools across the province, where they have
the greatest need for this kind of support. The teaching assistants are helping
teachers to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of learners in the
foundation phase in a school, which covers Grades 1. I am looking forward to
the outcome of the study into how this intervention impacted in our over
efforts to improve quality.

Further Education and Training (FET)

We are focusing on developing skills needed to meet the objectives of the
provinces Micro Economic Development Strategy, by increasing numbers in our FET
colleges, while also encouraging learners to enter Higher Education, especially
those planning to study maths, science and technology.

Thanks to thorough preparation in our schools and by the WCED
administration, we are firmly implementing the new national curriculum for
Grades 10 to 12, starting with Grade 10 this year. I think it is important for
the media and the general public to understand that the curriculum revision for
this country was long overdue. Most subjects have been running on a syllabus
dating back to the 1980s and some back to the 70s.

Post-1994 there were major revisions to school history syllabi, but
generally subjects have been governed by interim steps set out in 1996 which
simply drew all the disparate syllabi from the different racially-segregated
departments into one common one. The new curriculum is thus a much-needed
curriculum for the 21st century. There is definitely much new content.
Critically there is a new approach as well, a learner-centred and investigative
one, which demands high-order critical, thinking. The old model was the "body
of knowledge" lay in the textbook has been exploded with the
knowledge-revolution of the information age.

Our children need all the old skills (the so-called) basics but there is a
new basic been added, that is information literacy the skills to de-code,
de-construct, investigate, explore, select, classify and then to en-code, write
it all up in a coherent way. But any period of curriculum shift is a challenge
for a teacher who needs to master the new content him or herself, manage the
pace of learning and set and maintain standards.

You will remember that the introduction of the new curriculum into this
country was called Curriculum 2005 because that was the year the first Grade 12
class would have graduated with the new certificate. The process of
implementation was slowed as Curriculum 2005 was revised so that we could have
a better chance of getting it right, And now we are finally there; we are into
the FET implementation period and we all need to work together to ensure that
this is a success.

Some schools reported disappointing results in the press and resulted in a
public debate about the curriculum and the June exams. Preliminary analyses
though suggest that not all schools are reporting poor results. Nobody is
planning to be careless about this critical period.

I am pleased that schools have signalled their problems in fact and allowed
us to step in to support. Many schools have taken very practical steps
themselves to work smarter. That is what tests are all about they are a means
of diagnosing so that one can know what to do next. I hope that the media and
parents will do all they can to support our children in this time.

Generally we would love parents to take an active part in the learning life
of their children. With new demands our learners also need career guidance,
motivation and ongoing support. Our biggest dropout of learners has always been
at the Grade 10 level. It is for this reason that special care must be taken in
subject selection for the FET band. Our campaign to grow enrolment at FET
Colleges at this point is also part of our wish to grow the pool of learners
who experience learning success, who value education, and who stay in the
system until they have a viable qualification.

We have a good system of loans for intending college students and additional
money is being directed to our FET colleges, via a re-capitalisation project.
We will shortly be placing supplements into the media to support our enrolment
drive and would value it if you could attract high-profile extra attention to
this campaign. Back to the schooling system and supporting the implementation
of the new curriculum, what are we doing? Part of the solution clearly lies in
ongoing teacher development with strong focus on content-based knowledge of the
subjects. The orientation provided across the province has assisted but can
never replace ongoing development of our teachers.

As the National Curriculum Statement is introduced over the next year into
Grades 8 and 9 there will be better system alignment. We will continue to
increase funds spent on learner and teaching Support materials for learners. We
are engaging actively with schools and have provided extra support with study
skills material. The department is supplying teachers with exemplars of grade
10 exams; as well as a manual on exam setting; and workshops to mediate the
manual.

In the October/November exams this year, we will introduce a pilot national
exam in ten schools, each one writing three national subjects. Next year all
schools will write a common national grade 11 exam as part of preparing our
first cohort of 2008 matrics who will write the senior certificate exam in
terms of the new curriculum.

The department will work with our schools to develop a policy that ensures
all learners spend at least five hours a day minimum contact time with teachers
even during our exams period. We are looking at developing guidelines to bridge
the gap between the GET and FET especially in subjects requiring specific
foundational skills, example Accounting.

We are also developing courses in consolidating numeracy with teachers in
Grade 8 with a view to expansion (to help bridge the gap between primary and
high school). I honestly do not think there is reason to panic. I know that the
graduates of our new programmes will be better equipped to fulfil their
potential in the 21st century than their predecessors were.

Infrastructure provisioning

While we still have a long way to go before we have enough classrooms where
they are needed the most, we have made significant progress over the past year.
In 2005/06, we set a record by completing no less than 15 schools in one year
and in time for the opening of the 2006 school year. We are completing a
further nine schools, as well as 60 additional classrooms. The province will
build a further 11 schools during this financial year, bringing the total
number of school built during the last two years to 35.

Safe schools

Crime, family violence and gangsterism and the influence on the psyche of
our youth, the levels of unemployment, parental educational levels and drug and
alcohol abuse, continue to stretch our collective wisdom. However, sometimes,
because of the way the media use their headlines, an impression is created that
government only responds to crises. This is far from the truth. In fact, we
have an integrated prevention, crime control, and intervention and response
strategy.

The WCED has developed safety structures for schools to support and
encourage safety at school level. This starts with encouraging a team spirit
within the school and surrounding community and a willingness to engage in a
continued process of critical assessment and change. The School Safety
Committee (SSC) consists of a wide range of service providers.

The School Safety Committee is responsible for ensuring that safety is part
of the school's vision, conducting safety audits, compiling and revising safety
plans, advising with regard to selection and implementation strategies,
conducting an audit of service providers relating to safety and security at the
school.

Our safe schools programme has provided 100 schools with security
infrastructure, ranging from remote control gates with Closed Circuit
Television (CCTV) cameras, intercom systems in order to do evacuation and
safety drills, safety gates, burglar bars, maintenance on broken fences, and
barbed wire, depending on the need as identified by the safety committee and
verified through a risk analysis by the safe schools co-ordinators.

The 100 schools identified have been secured appropriately and access
control has been improved. These schools were identified based on the criteria
as stipulated in the procedural manual. Twenty-eight schools received an alarm
system linked to an armed response unit that has a car in the vicinity of the
school and is able to respond to the schools need in less than seven minutes.
Armed response subsidies were paid to all schools that installed an alarm
system.

In addition to infrastructure, WCED in partnership with Community Safety
identified 400 high-risk schools that needed additional human resources to
control crime. Of these, five Bambanani Volunteers were deployed to 100 schools
identified as extremely high-risk, at a cost of R6 million. At least one of the
Bambanani Volunteers is a parent and member of the SGB. Furthermore, many
schools involve parent who assist with the monitoring in and around toilets on
school premises.

We have also, with community safety helped pioneered the appointment of
Learner Support Officers (LSOs) based at schools and Education Management
Development Centres (EMDCs). The LSOs contribute significantly to building
safer environments, by reducing truancy, dropouts and bunking and promoting
crime prevention. Perhaps what is not reported on and what is not common
knowledge, is the fairly successful outcomes of our crime prevention and
attitudinal or behaviour modification programmes, through learner seminars,
corrective, assertive discipline and positive discipline, conflict resolution
and mediation training, and establishment of peer mediators on school
premises.
This is part of a long list of ongoing programmes and projects, in conjunction
with numerous partners, tackling many issues, including substance abuse, sexual
abuse and cultural diversity.

In addition I think we need to review the codes of conduct of schools. I
also support the planned random searches of learners to assist in creating
weapons and drug free schools. We are also considering additional measures,
including the possibility of cameras at certain schools. In my view the WCED's
Safe Schools programme has developed to the point where our schools generally
offer safer environments under the most difficult circumstances. But, clearly,
recent incidents indicate that massive challenges remain.

The spate of incidents in the last two weeks in which learners were stabbing
fellow learners, to the point where at least one stabbing occurred every day,
is of great concern to me and the department. Clearly it is not just the
responsibility of the school to promote respect and tolerance, those are values
best learnt in the family and home environment. Having said that, we are in the
process of reviewing our Safe Schools Programme with a view to strengthen it.
Although there are many of our officials who are doing excellent work, I think
they need more support and resources.

Social capital development

In his State of the Province Address earlier, Premier Ebrahim Rasool said
that "The fourth element of the battle plan against poverty must be safe,
healthy and integrated communities. Strong communities based on vibrant and
loving families are the cornerstone of prosperity."

"Ordinary people are the most important actors in achieving developmental
success over the long term. What guarantees such success is when ordinary
people are organised and networked into and across community structures both to
protect and serve communities".

I am convinced that it is through inspired partnerships and the conscious
cultivating of social capital that we will find the power to make huge and real
strides in learning and development in this province. I am talking about all
kinds of partnerships, from the small local partnerships between, for example,
parents and the school, right through to macro-partnerships between government
departments, with civil society, with business, with labour.

Therefore in terms of my vision for the Learning Cape as a Learning Home for
all, we will have not just learning schools but also learning homes, learning
streets and learning communities. We need a community mobilisation such as we
have never imagined it before. About two weeks ago we held our inaugural
Community Schools Initiative Week under the broader banner of the Learning Cape
Festival. I am very pleased, encouraged and inspired with the response of our
schools to re-look at the relations with their communities.

I believe a school is part of the community, and there is a reciprocal
relationship between safe schools and safe communities. A community that feels
ownership and pride for its school does not vandalise it and does not allow
others to do so.

Some 200 of our schools rose to the challenge and reached out to serve their
communities in a different way. Many of our schools opened their doors to
everyone and enable the whole community to become a learning community. I have
witnessed some amazing and creative initiatives. The principal of Westridge
High School in Mitchell's Plain told me that they have regular incidents of
burglary, and that they had suspected that it was maybe residents of a nearby
informal settlement.

But I thought the way they responded to this was fantastic; they have used
the Community Schools Initiative Week to make friends with the residents, and
actually delivered to them blankets, clothes and food. Another school, some
years ago, had a problem of gangsters frequently having running battles on the
premises. What they then did was to offer one of the classrooms to the local
neighbourhood watch as a base, and the school appears not to have any problems
now.

Kalkfontein Primary in Kuilsriver presented an amazing sight. The whole
school was lit up and in use, as it is three times a month, as a medical clinic
being run by students from Stellenbosch University. The parking lot full of
Bambanani volunteers made visitors feel secure and welcomed. Inside, the
classrooms were filled with mothers and babies, a pharmacy and signs of huge
efficiency. There were educational speakers, entertainment and every indication
that this is a community hub to be proud of.

This meeting in particular will be interested to hear that this service runs
under an impressive Kuilsriver Network called the "Local Integrated Network of
Kuilsriver" I can not list the achievements and wonderful work done in all of
our schools and I am not going to try: these are just some examples of
communities and schools that are already fully mobilised.

Some of my other social capital priorities include the provincial
association of Representative Council of Learners (RCLs); convening a
conference of all our 1 500 school governing bodies (SGBs) in the province;
building links with local government; Youth and Heritage Celebrations;
strengthening school sport; developing; roll-out partnerships with businesses
through the Western Cape Education Foundation; forming a Retired Teachers'
Association; and pilot projects regarding past pupils associations.

WCED redesign

Our sixth priority for 2006 will be to look at redesigning the WCED to
implement the Human Capital Development Strategy. The process will also provide
us with an opportunity to address the issue of transformation in the WCED.
Restructuring is critical to ensure that our organisational structure and
culture is aligned to our strategy. At the same time the opportunity will allow
us to make sure that our department represents all the people of this province.
The critical challenge will be to ensure that our department is structured in
such a way as to give maximum support to our schools.

Ladies and gentlemen, you know what drives me every morning as I get up for
work, is this simple vision. I would like, for every parent to be comfortable
to send his or her child to the nearest public school, within walking distance,
confident in the knowledge that his or her child will acquire sound values,
attitudes, knowledge and skills, in a safe environment, and is able to compete
with any learner in any school anywhere in the province, in the country and
indeed in the whole world.

I thank you.

Enquiries:
Gert Witbooi
Media Liaison Officer
Tel: (021) 467 2523
Fax: (021) 425 5689
E-mail: gwitbooi@pgwc.gov.za

Issued by: Department of Education, Western Cape Provincial Government
5 September 2006
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government (http://wced.wcape.gov.za)