I am pleased to announce the upcoming visit by State President Jacob Zuma to some schools in the Eastern Cape. The visit will take place on Tuesday, 7 June in East London. I would also like to highlight some of the major policy matters that myself and MECs in all 9 provinces will discuss and endorse today.
The Presidential visit
The President of the Republic of South Africa: His Excellency, President Jacob Zuma made public his intention to monitor the implementation of programmes and policies of all 5 priorities of government. The President has therefore undertaken to visit all provinces, the first being to the Eastern Cape province, on 7 June 2011.
The key focus of this visit is to assess the general state of education in the Eastern Cape province. He will further assess progress made in the implementation of Section 100 (b) (1), and the delivery of quality basic education in line with Outcome 1.
The Presidential monitoring and assessment on the delivery of Outcome 1 will anchor on the following outputs, to:
- Improve the quality of teaching and learning
- Undertake regular assessment to track progress
- Improve Early Childhood Development
- Ensure credible outcomes – focusing on planning and accountability
The President will visit several schools in the Amathole District and the Buffalo Metro. He will be accompanied by several cabinet Ministers and Members of the Provincial Exco, and will interact with key role players in education. In wrapping up the visit, the President and his entourage will take part in a special meeting with the Eastern Cape Executive Council.
The media is welcome to join us during the visits, to witness and report on the work that government is doing. As our partners, we appreciate your involvement and support, as we continue to bring quality education to all the children of this nation. Indeed together we can do more.
All 9 provincial MECs and myself will convene a Council of Education Ministers (CEM) this afternoon to discuss burning issues that affect the education system. These include:
Annual National Assessments (ANA)
At the top of our list will be discussions on the Annual National Assessment (ANA) results. The ANAs were written by all learners, in all public schools in grades 1 to 6, in Literacy and Numeracy. About 6 million learners wrote the tests in February 2011. Teachers marked the tests according to the department’s specifications, and school principals had to ensure that parents receive the ANA results of their children.
An independent body, the Human Sciences Research Council, was appointed to conduct a verification of results in a sample of 1 800 schools with grade 3 and 6, which makes it 200 schools per province. Data analysis is currently being done for Grades 3 and 6 learners in Literacy and Numeracy.
The department has now received the results, and many parents have also received them. We are currently in the process of analysing and interpreting these results to assist us to intervene.
We have also developed guidelines to assist stakeholders, in particular teachers, in the interpretation and use of ANA results. During this month (June), I will announce how our learners fared nationally. However the outcome, we believe that recognising, accepting and dealing with the challenges we have immediately, is indeed the first step towards our main objective of delivering quality basic education to our children.
Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS)
Following the 2009 review of implementation on the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) in schools, I established a Ministerial Project Committee to oversee the development of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement. The Committee carried out a huge task in the development of the CAPS. We followed due process including broad consultation.
A total of 1 890 submissions were processed through the public comment process. I am happy that the CAPS have now been finalised. Tomorrow afternoon I will meet with the Ministerial Project Committee to receive a full report and hand over once the work is completed.
195 CAPS have been developed and will be ready to be uploaded onto our website for easy access by teachers and all our stakeholders. We will begin by making available the Foundation Phase and Grade 10 CAPS. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) is currently finalising the design and layout and printing processes.
We have already carried out a pre-implementation workshop with a selected group of teachers nominated by the teacher unions to assess the practical aspects of implementation in the classroom. We have received good feedback about the accessibility from teachers.
The response from the pre-implementation workshop will also help the department plan in a systematic way the implementation of the CAPS in the classroom in order that they can support and promote effective teaching.
The development of CAPS has been a major undertaking. I would like to extend my gratitude to the members of the Ministerial Project Committee for overseeing the development of the CAPS.
The success of the implementation will require that all of us in the system rally around a common goal – effective delivery of the curriculum.
School infrastructure
I am pleased to announce that the National Treasury has provided funding for Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) to the value of R8,2 billion during this Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), beginning in the 2011/12 financial year.
This is a specific allocation to deal with backlogs in education infrastructure and an amount of R700 million has been allocated for 2011/12. 60% (R420 million in the first year) is allocated for mud schools in Eastern Cape and 40% (R280 million in the first year), basic services for all provinces. The first batch of mud schools has been identified and costed.
With regard to basic services, on sanitation we are looking at 354 schools, providing water to 188 schools and electricity to 231 schools, across all provinces. The time line for the completion of all projects is 31 March 2012.
Delivery agreement for Basic Education
This morning, I convened a meeting of the Basic Education Implementation Forum, a mechanism we have created in government to enable us to track progress on the targets we have committed to, in the Basic Education Delivery Agreement.
You will recall that I signed the Delivery Agreement with all MECs of Education in October 2010 as well as a number of my Cabinet colleagues, committing all of us to a set of measurable outputs with targets. The four outputs that we had committed ourselves to are:
- Improving the quality of teaching and learning
- Undertaking regular assessment to track progress
- Improving Early Childhood Development
- Ensuring a credible outcomes-focused planning and accountability system.
Together with our key partners in education, we had a robust discussion on progress and I intend to provide you with a progress report in this regard at a later date.
In conclusion
We are making great strides as a department with support from our stakeholders, to ensure that our mandate of providing quality basic education is indeed a reality. We consider you, the media, as our valued partners in this regard and will therefore keep you well informed on all progress, including the challenges we face in achieving our goals.
Enquiries:
Hope Mokgatlhe
Cell: 071 680 6849
Source: Department of Basic Education
