Education a national and provincial priority
That education is considered a national priority was demonstrated by the recently held Presidential Imbizo with 1 500 school principals from all nine provinces. The President emphasised that education is an apex priority of government and is considered as the most powerful weapon in the fight against poverty. Success in education, in the President's words, "will make it easier for government to achieve its goals in the other four priority areas of rural development, health, the fight against crime and creating decent work."
To ensure that the message of the President was received and understood by all principals in Gauteng, I have had meetings with principals in all but one of our fifteen education districts in the past few weeks. I have also met with all district staff to understand their perspectives on education and the challenges they have in carrying out their roles and responsibilities.
These engagements have provided a much needed platform for people working at the coal face of education delivery to express their concerns and expand on the challenges that they face daily in the endeavour to deliver quality education, in the classroom, everyday.
Building schools of excellence – starting at the primary school!
The department recently concluded the development of a strategic plan for 2009 – 2014. A key part of this strategy is the need to respond to the underperformance of primary school learners in literacy and numeracy. The response to this challenge will also seek to address many of the deep rooted causes of this underperformance.
A strategy to turn around these schools will commence in three pilot districts: spanning across 362 schools:
* Johannesburg Central
* Ekurhuleni South
* Tshwane North
The strategy will entail the following:
An intensive full time teacher development programme for all foundation phase literacy and numeracy teachers for anything up to six months. To ensure that learners are not disadvantaged by the long absence of their teachers, a high quality substitute teacher programme is being developed. The models and programmes developed by amongst others' Sci-Bono's teacher relief programme will guide the approach to be used by GDE on this major intervention. It is intended that the substitute teacher programme will be in place by the start of the new term in 2010.
To ensure that the leadership and management abilities of principals and their teams meet the requirements for effective schools, a review is being conducted of our existing programmes and an improved school leadership and management programme will be instituted in 2010.
From my engagements with stakeholders, it has become apparent that the support provided to schools by head office and districts could be improved substantially. We will be working hard on turning the head office and all 15 district offices into support and intervention driven organisations, whose primary purpose is to ensure that quality education is delivered in all our classrooms, everyday.
This support will focus on ensuring better services in areas such as HR, finance, labour relations, communications, planning, IT, training and development. Most importantly we will be working to make sure that all work targeting schools is done in a more coordinated manner.
Over the next few years this turnaround project will be rolled out across all 15 districts extending across all phases of primary and secondary education. A special training programme for school governing bodies (SGBs), focussing on skills needed to enable them to evaluate the performance of schools will also be initiated. It is extremely vital that SGBs are able to detect when a school is performing below required standards well before it reaches crisis point.
The outcome of all this should be:
* improved learner performances in primary school and thereafter high school as well
* better school management focussed on teaching and learning
* more effective school governance and accountability.
Delivery highlights for the first 100 days
SGB elections: these have been successfully completed across the province. The department will be working with these new leaders on their roles and responsibilities. Functioning and effective SGBs are vital for the attainment of quality education.
2010 school admissions: the end of September is the cut of date for parents to register their children at new schools. All efforts have been made to ensure that this message reaches people across the province. We need to ensure that the 2010 school year does not commence with people turning up at schools that have not planned for them.
Matric exams 2009: Matric exams will commence on 26 October. The department is confident that all requirements for a successful exam are in place. A specific media briefing on the state of readiness for Matric exam 2009 will be held in the near future.
Payment of grade R teachers: The department is also pleased to indicate that the non-payment of teachers, and Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) and Grade R practitioners which occupied much of the headlines at the time I took office in May, is close to complete resolution. I am further informed by my officials that as from the end of September payments to early childhood development (ECD) practitioners will be made via the state payroll system – Persal.
School nutrition: We have successfully extended our school nutrition programme to learners in Quintile 1 secondary schools since 1 April 2009. A total 62 642 learners in 62 Quintile 1 schools are benefiting from the nutrition programme in high risk schools.
No fee schools: We have also successfully consolidated the extension of no-fee school status to Quintile 3 schools on a voluntary basis ahead of the formal determination of no-fee schools for 2010 by the national Minister. As a result a further 337 202 learners in 471 schools are not required to pay school fees. In total 823 238 learners in 1 016 schools are now benefiting from the no-fee school policy.
Merafong: The integration of Merafong schools into Gauteng has been a smooth process thus far. Repairs to schools damaged during the protests have already commenced and extra matric intervention programmes are also being rolled out.
Gauteng City Region Academy: The GCRA recorded these notable key achievements during the last quarter.
* Bursaries to granted to 1 500 learners in scarce and critical skills required by the Gauteng economy. This was at a cost of R45 million. 400 bursaries are being allocated to all quintile 1 schools inclusive of 10 bursaries to the Merafong schools as part of its healing and renewal.s
* 1 140 adult basic education and training (ABET) (Public Service) adult learners trained in basic numeracy and literacy and learners have obtained a 84% pass rate on average. The graduation will take place this month.
* A database of unemployed youth has been created and presently 12 026 have been captured with their skill profile and qualifications and 2 100 has already been placed in various opportunities such as Learnerships, internships and bursaries by private sector companies, government and educational institutions. Interest in the database is growing rapidly. The database responds to the President’s call to create job opportunities and skills for unemployed and displaced youth.
For more information contact:
Nanagolo Leopeng
Tel: 011 355 0414
Cell: 083 450 2872
Issued by: Department of Education, Gauteng Provincial Government
7 September 2009
