Thank you for making the time to attend our briefing this morning. We had a fruitful and productive time in the Eastern Cape the whole of last week. That’s the purpose of this interaction, to report back on work that we did and to communicate a way-forward.
Section 100 1(b) interventions in the Eastern Cape.
You will by now know that our focus on the Eastern Cape came as a result of Section 100 1(b) of the Constitution. It remains a unique situation for the Department, one that we plan to normalise soon.
Last week the department officially opened a further two schools, one as part of the ASIDI (Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative) and another school as part of the Department’s continued partnerships with the private sector to uplift and improve the country’s school infrastructure.
You will remember that we opened two schools last year.
Sonata Junior Primary School in Libode, Eastern Cape, was built as a result of a private public partnership between the departments of Basic Education, Mineral Resources as well as Anglo Gold Ashanti.
The project saw the various stakeholders come together to replace an inappropriate mud structure and moved the 120 learners into a newly built school with six classrooms, an administration block, ablution facilities and a fence for the school grounds.
I also handed over Welese Primary School in Ngqeleni. It is a school with a modern design and comprises 14 classrooms, two Grade R centres, a nutrition centre, ablution blocks and a multimedia centre which includes science labs and a library. The school will house learners who previously learned in a mud structure.
The school was built as part of the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI), which aims to implement basic safety norms and standards in infrastructure for schools. ASIDI is funded from the Schools Infrastructure Backlog Grant (SIBG) and aims to replace 510 schools that were built with inappropriate structures with facilities which meet the Department of Basic Education’s standards of basic functionality.
The programme will also supply 939 schools with sanitation and basic water supplies to 1,145 schools for the first time.
Most importantly, we have committed to the eradication of mud schools by the end of 2014/15. The Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI), which is part of the National School Built programme, has already delivered another 13 schools in the Eastern Cape alone.
We have pledged to deliver 49 schools to the region by the end of March. We currently stand at 17. The outstanding schools are at 85% completion on average. Current challenges include the liquidation of one of the contractors who was building 12 schools and the termination of another contract.
ASIDI has set targets already for the new financial year and we will continue working towards their achievement. We will build an additional 200 schools, provide water and sanitation to 873.448 schools, and electricity to 369 schools.
We continue making strides to eradicate mud schools in the Eastern Cape as promised from the level of Cabinet.
Way-forward
Our intervention in the Eastern Cape has yielded encouraging results.
We have received a full report about our intervention in the Eastern Cape. Last week we went to verify the content of the report based on our interaction with stakeholders. We are therefore of the view that we need to downgrade our intervention from Section 100 (1)(b) to Section 100 (1)(a).
We are proposing to both Cabinet and NCOP that our new focus areas should remain finance and the appointment of educators. In this regard we have already appointed a company that will audit leave while Stats SA has been assigned the task to do the headcount.
We have since assisted the provincial department in stabilising the 2012/13 budget and dealing with accruals. We have also developed and started to implement an Audit Rectification Plan to deal with all matters raised by the Auditor-General in his annual report on the Eastern Cape Education Department.
We further assisted the Department with:
- the process of the provision of LTSM for the 2013 school year
- dealing with the Legal Resource Centre court order
- drafting of a comprehensive turn-around plan that must be approved by Provincial SCOPA
- putting in place improved systems such as delegations, procedure manuals, and others.
The Eastern Cape Education department has filled key posts that were vacant for some time and appointed:
- Head of Department and
- Chief Financial Officer.
In addition to this more than 2 300 part-time teachers have now been fully employed and we will be employing more teachers to ensure effective learning and teaching takes place.
The province has also made R130 million available for the rural allowance to encourage teachers to work in those areas.
These measures have ensured a turn around in a province that was previously in debt and struggling. It is through the tireless efforts of the intervention team, provincial officials and the MEC that the intervention has been able to be a successful one.
Talks have commenced to build a special needs school in the district of Libode as one currently does not exist. Inclusive education and in essence the education of learners with special needs remains a priority to the DBE.
In the past six months we opened new schools in other provinces such as North West, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, and of course the Eastern Cape.
It is through projects such as these that the Department of Basic Education and Private Partners are working together to tackle the backlog in school infrastructure.
At this point I call upon all districts and provinces to ensure that they adequately capture learner numbers to ensure that LTSM is delivered on time and in the correct quantities.
Many advances have been made in ensuring quality education yet many challenges still lie ahead. A lot still needs to be done to improve the quality of teaching and learning within the system. We remain committed to ensure that these plans become a reality.
