the Education Summit
26 March 2007
Programme Director
MEC Motshekga
Representatives of the various stakeholders
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
We are gathered here this morning to consider one of the crucial matters in
the transformation of our nation, the development of our province and the
prosperity of our country. Education is the bedrock upon which we base all our
efforts to reduce poverty, grow the economy and build Gauteng as a globally
competitive city region.
It is generally accepted that education determines the station that one
ultimately occupies in society. What stations are we preparing for occupation
by African children from Gauteng? Consider this for a moment, all the 14
schools that obtained a matric pass rate below 30% last year are in the
townships. Of the 21 65% learners who failed matric last year, the majority are
African.
The question that must confront all delegates to the summit is, what are the
long term implications if the education of the African children, especially
those who go to township schools does not improve? These children constitute
the majority of school going children in our province and if they continue to
underachieve, they will not be able to fully benefit from the shared growth of
our economy. They will be marginalised by development, our efforts at growing
the economy will be compromised, social transformation will be hampered and a
better life will remain an elusive dream for them.
That cannot be allowed to happen as it will reinforce inequality, uneven
development and social exclusion. Considering that young people under 19 years
of age constitute 43% of the entire South African population and 32% of them
are of the school going age of between 5 and 19, the effect of African children
remaining at the periphery of social development could be catastrophic for our
province and our country. When we developed our strategy on the global city
region, we closely considered this matter and came to a conclusion that we must
avoid the mistake committed by other city regions to exclude young people from
social and economic development.
I invite you to be open and forthright in your discussion. You should not
have holy cows and your analysis must critically examine every factor that
impacts on the education of the African Child. Do not confine yourself to the
appraisal of the matric results only. It takes 12 years of continuous education
to produce a matric class and therefore, to properly understand the outcomes we
get at this class, we must evaluate even the preparation done at the foundation
phase of the education system.
When launching our city region strategy we said, "One of the most pressing
challenges facing the Gauteng city region is the development of the necessary
skills to drive economic growth and social transformation. This requires
effective early childhood development and general education as well as at the
level of our institutions of higher learning and our Further Education and
Training (FET) institutions. These are critical components in skilling our
people in giving them access to quality jobs and in generating further economic
development."
This summit must therefore assist us in addressing this broader challenge.
The proposals coming out of your discussions must be informed, practical and
capable of producing results in the short, medium and long term. Therefore the
solutions that you propose must be sustainable and we must be able to monitor
and review their impact periodically. There are many factors that you may want
to consider in your deliberations. At a macro level there are socio-economic
factors such as poverty, crime, HIV/AIDS, social decay and the breakdown of the
family unit. At a micro level there are issues such as leadership, teacher and
learner motivation, parental involvement, resources, supervision and support
from the department and discipline.
Poverty has affected the African child for many decades. It is a legacy of
apartheid economic mismanagement and poor planning that continues to hamper the
development of our entire nation. We recognised it as a challenge at the advent
of democracy in 1994 and we immediately introduced the school feeding scheme to
mitigate its impact on the education of our children. We followed this
intervention by introducing the child support grant to help poor parents
especially single ones to deal with poverty at home.
We have introduced the Bana Pele programme to guide and promote the
wellbeing of children. This requires all departments to work together in an
integrated manner to safeguard the interest of all children. We have also
introduced scholar transport and prioritised the phasing in of 'No Fee'
schools.
We have said that we will be investing in the construction of 20 Early
Childhood Development facilities in each of the 20 poorest townships for the
next three years. To improve the quality of preparation that our children
receive before the start of their school years, we have introduced a school
readiness programme for Grade R as part of our early childhood development
programme. We intend to phase in Grade R into the formal education system and
make it compulsory by 2010.
As we undertake these measures we are concerned that in the past, despite
all the hardship and poverty, our children never felt the temptation to engage
in transactional sex to the extent that it seems to be happening now. The level
of drug and alcohol abuse was not as rampant. It would seem to me that what we
are dealing with are the unintended consequences of liberation, economic growth
and development. Liberation has opened our borders and among the people who
have come in, are drug lords looking for new markets for their products.
Economic growth and development have placed resources at the hands of people
who previously did not have them. These people who now can afford flashy cars,
now drive around flaunting their material possessions, picking up school
children as trophies and impregnating them. The problem is exacerbated by
parents who look away when the sugar daddy picks up and drops the child at the
doorstep of their home. We can no longer be quiet at this ill-disciplined and
morally repugnant behaviour. It undermines our value system which is based on
Ubuntu and requires us to accept every child as my own and not to treat her as
a girlfriend or sex partner.
We cannot expect schools to teach discipline to our children, when parents
allow ill-discipline in their homes and adults sell drugs and alcohol to
children in school uniform, during school hours. The Department of Community
Safety is in the process of revising the school safety plan to reduce the
proliferation of illegal weapons, drugs and alcohol in our schools. I invite
you as stakeholders in the education sector to take interest in this process,
to think of campaigns that can be undertaken together with the police to make
our schools safe and conducive places for imparting knowledge and achieving
excellence.
We also need to understand the impact of HIV/AIDS and other health related
factors on the performance of our schools. The department of health in
collaboration with the department of education have introduced the School
Health Policy and Implementation Guidelines to carry out health assessments on
children in grades R or grade one. The health assessments focus on the early
detection of problems and the appropriate referral thereof, pertaining to gross
motor, vision, hearing, oral health, immunisation, child abuse and neglect as
well as mental health.
For grades 2-12, the provision of health promotion and health education
focusing on life-skills, child abuse and high risk behaviours such as substance
abuse and violence amongst others is carried in what is termed Health Promoting
School. The first national youth risk behaviour survey undertaken in 2002 found
that 9% of learners throughout the country carried weapons in school property,
15% had been threatened or injured while a third (32%) felt unsafe at school.
The survey further found that a quarter of learners (25%) had experienced
feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 19% had considered suicide and 17% had
attempted suicide; substance abuse was also investigated and it was found that
the 49% had consumed alcohol, 13% had used dagga, 12% had used heroine and 6%
had used mandrax.
With regard to sexual behaviour, 41% of learners had sex and the age of
initiation of sexual activity was under 14 years for 14% of them. Among the
learners that had ever had sex, 54% had more than one past sexual partner, 14%
had had sex after consuming alcohol or drugs, 16% had been pregnant and only
29% practised consistent condom usage. These factors must certainly have an
impact on the performance of schools. What we need to understand is how
effective have our interventions been to deal with these challenges,
particularly in township schools? What more can we do?
The manner in which a school is managed and run by principals and their
management teams has a bearing on the outcomes that a school achieves. When the
relationship between the principal and the management team is not healthy, the
motivation of the rest of the teaching staff and learners is impacted upon. We
have to increase the competence levels of our principals to administer their
schools properly, to motivate their staff and to achieve better result.
Principals must be able to allocate their resources appropriately. It is not
helpful for a principal to assign a teacher to teach mathematics when the
principal knows that the teacher has qualifications to teach biblical studies.
This is not an appropriate use of resources and will not achieve higher
results.
We must however recognise that parents have a role in the success or failure
of a school. I am certain that a closer analysis of factors that lead some
schools to under-perform is lack of parental involvement. We must try and
understand why parents tend to be distant and disinterested when their children
are in township yet become involved the moment their children go to former
model c schools in the suburbs.
One of the areas we may want to look into is the agenda for parents'
meetings. Generally in township school the tendency is to call parents to a
mass meeting to discuss problems and to get them to pay more fees whereas in
the former model C schools the practice is to invite the parents to meet the
teacher, to discuss a child's progress and support required. The difference
between the two approaches is that the other is impersonal and emphasises the
negative whereas the other is individually focused and emphasises positives. I
hope that you will be able to find best practices to share and to learn
from.
There is a view out there that the black elite at all levels, politicians,
black business and professionals are partly to blame for the exodus of the
African Children from township schools in that our children are not in township
schools let alone public schools. While accepting that it is our right to
choose the right schools for our children, it does not help build confidence in
public township schools when people who teach in those schools, or develop
policies for such schools send their children to public schools in former white
suburbs. Talk of a parent preparing food in the house and then sending children
to eat food prepared by the neighbours!
Let me repeat. I am not saying that we are wrong. I am merely saying that
this sends a wrong message and erodes the confidence that parents should have
in public education in the townships. It has partly led to the situation we see
every morning where taxi loads of school children leave the township to former
white suburbs. Even struggling parents feel that they must stretch their meagre
resources on the extra cost of transport to get their children to these
schools.
Former learners who have gone on to become successful in their chosen
careers, are also a resource that schools can tap into to motivate learners and
provide positive role modelling. Schools need to be assisted to develop
programmes along the lines of an adopt-a-school campaign, to encourage their
former learners and other prominent people in society to play their role in
improving results, fund raising and support the restoration of a culture of
learning and teaching.
I have given you issues that I think are important to discuss in a summit of
this nature. I am certain that there are other issues that you will identify
yourselves and include in your package of proposals. I wish you fruitful
deliberations and I look forward to your recommendations.
I thank you.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Gauteng Provincial Government
26 March 2007
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government (http://www.gpg.gov.za)
