KwaZulu-Natal Premier Dr Zweli Mkhize has reminded delegates attending the South African Basic Education Conference that the forbearers of our democracy used education as a weapon to defeat the apartheid system. He says now education should be used as a tool for nation building and socio-economic transformation. Children must be taught strong human values of love, compassion and more importantly selflessness.
The three-day conference is currently underway at the Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre and is attended by academics, researchers, non-governmental organisations, activists, teachers and school principals.
Over the years, ordinary people of this country across all races and from different organisations civil society, faith based and pressure groups used education to drive social transformation. Whilst we reflect on the racial disparities in education created by Bantu Education system, it is very important to acknowledge the fact that education became a driving force that united the people of this country against the apartheid regime.
The people of this country revolted against the system which they felt it would lead to underdevelopment, economic depression and unemployment. We can look back and be proud of the progress we have made on the education front. Government has recorded significant achievements since 1994 in transforming our schooling system from its apartheid past. The review of the implementation of the National Curriculum Statement in Grades R to 12 has certainly been one of the most radical educational reforms over the past decade.
This has been the most difficult process but we want to applaud the school principals for guiding teachers. We salute the role played by the unions and school governing bodies. The purpose of this review was to deal with certain constraints in the implementation of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning in our schools.
Key among those constraints was overload on teachers brought about by the assessment requirements of the NCS, knowledge gaps in some subjects in the transition from the Foundation to the Intermediate Phase, curriculum overload in the Intermediate Phase, insufficient attention to the teaching of foundational knowledge in literacy and numeracy, and lack of national assessments in the early phases of the schooling system.
As government we believe education should be relevant to the needs of the economy, and it should be judged by the extent to which it makes an individual self-sufficient and able to maintain sustainable livelihoods on leaving school, irrespective of the level attained.
Our most important objectives are to improve the quality of teaching in our schools, and to drastically upscale the quantum of students matriculating with mathematics, science and ICT. There is a need to focus on the quality of human capital being produced. A modern knowledge-economy demands human resources that are numerically and scientifically literate and technology fluent.
As government we acknowledge the need to continuously improve the learner/teacher ratio. Many schools, especially in townships and rural areas, are overcrowded and still have unacceptably high learner/teacher ratios, which puts a strain on educators thereby having a deleterious effect on teaching and learning. Also, we do understand that quality education depends on the linkages between education and the availability of physical infrastructure, basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity, housing, roads and health services. All of these needs to be strengthened to support the schooling system, and this is what this government is committed to do.
We have called on school principals to provide strong leadership. The emphasis on good leadership is paramount for it is through innovative leadership which is mission driven that we reforms our education system can be truly achieved. Of course, one of the key elements of improving quality of education has been the performance of teachers. We have to ensure that teachers receive continuous training and that they are subjected to professional code of ethics. Linked to this is the performance management system which outlines specific standards that teachers are required to meet in the classrooms.
In our interaction with teachers, lecturers and other stakeholders such as teacher unions and parents’ organisations we have been emphasising the importance of working together to ensure the provision of education that is aligned to the social and economic development needs of the wards where learners come from.
This type of education should also provide local children with a firm base for the acquisition of knowledge, skills and positive attitudes for personal growth. We are intensifying the mobilisation of grassroots cadres, community workers, volunteers, religious leaders, traditional leaders, community leaders and the members of the public to join education forums in the townships, villages and suburbs to elevate education to be a societal issue identify community factors which impact negatively to education.
We want to emphasise that there is an urgent need to pay more attention to those learners who fall out of the education system without even reaching matric. These young stars pose a serious danger to social stability and to the country as a whole. Those who do not succeed need to be supported as feel as part of the whole programme of socio-economic transformation. It is clear some learners are affected by factors beyond their individual means.
Enquiries
Ndabezinhle Sibiya
Spokesperson for the Premier
Cell: 082 375 4742
