The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education held a fruitful two-day workshop in Pretoria to interrogate the budget of Department of Basic Education.
The workshop focused on areas such as Early Childhood Development, infrastructure at schools, inclusive education, national assessments and the Budget allocation to the various programmes.
Committee Chairperson, Ms Hope Malgas, expressed appreciation for the work that the department has done thus far and for its work to be conducted in the future. She emphasised the importance of the child in all the work of the department.
“The performance information enables the Committee to hold the department accountable. It is important to track the targets of the department.”
During the workshop, the Committee heard that when the department is tasked to intervene in provincial education departments, like in the case of Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, it is not given extra resources to do so. They will then have to flexible and use money that was budgeted for other programmes. The distinction between the actual budget of the national department and the conditional grants that they allocate to provinces to implement policies, were also highlighted.
Minister of Basic Education, Ms Angie Motshekga, also addressed the workshop. Minister Motshekga said her department had made considerable gains, but she admitted some challenges still existed.She said greater synergy between the provinces will now help in dealing with some of the challenges.
The minister will for the last year of her term focus on implementation of all policies that had been drafted by the department.
Ms Malgas also stressed the importance of synergy regarding all the programmes of the department and those of provincial education departments.
She expressed appreciation to the department for having aligned its plans, budget and performance indicators to that of the National Development Plan and the State of the Nation Address made by the President last month.
The Committee thanked the department for the candid manner in which it presented its plans, outlined programmes made in key programmes and explained the present challenges.
“We are a lot clearer on what you want to achieve in the coming financial year as well as the medium term. You have assisted us to hold you to account in respect of how you spend the taxpayers' money in the apex area of basic education.”
Ms Malgas said the Committee was pleased that the department have made some revisions to its strategic plan, some indicators have been removed and that new ones were introduced, taking into account new business requirements. “Several policy indicators presented embrace many areas of keen interest to us and we will continue to monitor the progress regularly.”
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