education
13 February 2009
Mafikeng: North West Premier, Edna Molewa, says the province has recorded a
major success in the improvement of education over the past five years.
Molewa was speaking today before the North West Provincial Legislature
during her State of the Province Address.
She said the provincial government has opened 252 Adult Basic Education and
Training centres (ABET) between 2004 and 2008 as part of a goal towards 100
percent literacy in the province and that this made a progress which brought
about an improved matric results from 57,1 percent in 1996 to 66 percent in
2007.
Molewa said the number of Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres,
increased from 184 in 2006 to 290 in 2007. To ensure equitable distribution of
service to all those that are eligible within the province, an additional 386
ECD sites have been registered through the classification project. The subsidy
has been increase from R6,00 to R12,00 per child per day.
On the school front Molewa said: "We have registered some progressive in
matric results with graduation from a 64,9 percent pass rate to 68 percent over
a period four years."
She said the project of 60 Dinaledi schools had exceeded the national
allocation by ten, which had proved effective when in 2006 a hundred more
matriculants passed Mathematics at higher grade and 83 passed Science at higher
grade.
This achievement arises as part of the government's effort to support all
high schools in the province with Science equipment.
Molewa added that one of the contributing factors to the ongoing improvement
was the concerted concentration on educator training and was demonstrated by
the 75 percent rise in a number of educators ACE Maths, Science and Technology
training between 2005 and 2008, which has equipped 314 schools with access to
internet in three years.
On the Further Education and Training sector, Premier Molewa said: "The
student numbers stood at 23 113 in 2007/08, while the proportion of the
population with qualification higher grade than 12, improved from 16,6 percent
in 1996 to 26 in 2007."
Molewa added that government continued to render specialised agricultural
education through the Taung and Potchefstroom Agricultural colleges with more
women entering the field.
"In December 2006 we were awarded a R98 million grant by the Department
Labour to support three years of skills development for unemployed youth as
part of Accelerated Skills Growth of South Africa (AsgiSA) Strategic Projects.
This has completed our own workplace skills training where we have since
2004/05 been registering one thousand unemployed youth per annum in internship
programmes resulting in a total of 20 000 young people trained in various skill
areas," said the Premier.
She added that 4 000 students have received bursaries between 1994 and 2008
and that 102 000 skills development interventions were made in the same period
with the budget increasing from R100 million to R269 million.
Issued by: North West Provincial Government
13 February 2009
