the Education Summit, Johannesburg
24 March 2007
Programme director
MEC Motshekga
Representatives of the various stakeholders
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
We are gathered here this morning to consider one of the crucial matters in
the transformation of our nation, the development of our province and the
prosperity of our country. Education is bedrock upon which we base all our
efforts to reduce poverty, grow the economy and build Gauteng as a globally
competitive city region.
It is generally accepted that education determines the station that one
ultimately occupies in society. What stations are we preparing for occupation
by African children from Gauteng? Consider this for a moment; all 14 schools
that obtained a matric pass rate below 30% last year are in the townships, of
the 21.65% learners who failed matric last year, the majority are African.
The question that must confront all delegates to the summit is, what are the
long-term implications if the education of the African children, especially
those who go to township schools, does not improve? These children constitute
the majority of school-going children in our province and if they continue to
underachieve, they will not be able to fully benefit from the shared growth of
our economy. They will be marginalised by development, our efforts at growing
the economy will be compromised, social transformation will be hampered and a
better life will remain an elusive dream for them.
That cannot be allowed to happen as it will reinforce inequality, uneven
development and social exclusion. Considering that young people under 19 years
of age constitute 43% of the entire South African population and 32% of them
are of the school-going age of between five and 19, the effect of African
children remaining at the periphery of social development could be catastrophic
for our province and our country. When we developed our strategy on the
globally city region, we closely considered this matter and came to a
conclusion that we must avoid the mistake committed by other city regions to
exclude young people from social and economic development.
I invite you to be open and forthright in your discussion. You should not
have holly cows and your analysis must critically examine every factor that
impacts on the education of the African child. Do not confine yourself to the
appraisal of the matric results only. It takes twelve years of continuous
education to produce a matric class and therefore, to properly understand the
outcomes we get at this class, we must evaluate even the preparation done at
the foundation phase of the education system.
When launching our city region strategy, we said, "One of the most pressing
challenges facing the Gauteng city region is the development of the necessary
skills to drive economic growth and social transformation. This requires
effective early childhood development and general education as well as at the
level of our institutions of higher learning and our Further Education and
Training (FET) institutions. These are critical components in skilling our
people in giving them access to quality jobs and in generating further economic
development."
This summit must therefore assist us in addressing this broader challenge.
The proposals coming out of your discussions must be informed, practical and
capable of producing results in the short, medium and long term. Therefore the
solutions that you propose must be sustainable and we must be able to monitor
and review their impact periodically.
There are many factors that you may want to consider in your deliberations.
At a macro level there are socio-economic factors such as poverty, crime, HIV
and AIDS, social decay and the breakdown of the family unit. At a micro level
there are issues such as leadership, teacher and learner motivation, parental
involvement, resources, supervision and support from the department and
discipline.
Poverty has affected the African child for many decades. It is a legacy of
apartheid economic mismanagement and poor planning that continues to hamper the
development of our entire nation. We recognised it as a challenge at the advent
of democracy in 1994 and we immediately introduced the school feeding scheme to
mitigate its impact on the education of our children. We followed this
intervention by introducing the child support grant to help poor parents
especially single ones to deal with poverty at home.
We have introduced the Bana Pele programme to guide and promote the
well-being of children. This requires all departments to work together in an
integrated manner to safe guard the interest of all children. We have also
introduced scholar transport and prioritised the phasing in of "No Fee"
schools.
We have said that we will be investing in the construction of 20 Early
Childhood Development facilities in each of the 20 poorest townships for the
next three years. To improve the quality of preparation that our children
receive before the start of their school years, we have introduced a school
readiness programme for Grade R as part of our early childhood development
programme. We intend to phase in Grade R into the formal education system and
make it compulsory by 2010.
As we undertake these measures we are concerned that in the past, despite
all the hardship and poverty, our children never felt the temptation to engage
in transactional sex to the extent that it seems to be happening now.
The level of drug and alcohol abuse was not as rampant. It would seem to me
that what we are dealing with are the unintended consequences of liberation,
economic growth and development. Liberation has opened our borders and, among
the people who have come in, are drug lords looking for new markets for their
products.
Economic growth and development have placed resources at the hands of people
who previously did not have them. These people, who now can afford flashy cars,
now drive around flaunting their material possessions, picking up
schoolchildren as trophies and impregnating them. The problem is exacerbated by
parents who look away when the sugar daddy picks up and drops the child at the
doorstep of their home. We can no longer be quiet at this ill-disciplined and
morally repugnant behaviour. It undermines our value system which is based on
Ubuntu and requires us to accept every child as my own and not to treat her as
a girlfriend or sex partner. We cannot expect schools to teach discipline to
our children, when parents allow ill-discipline in their homes and adults sell
drugs and alcohol to children in school uniform, during school hours.
The Department of Community Safety is in the process of revising the school
safety plan to reduce the proliferation of illegal weapons, drugs and alcohol
in our schools. I invite you as stakeholders in the education sector to take
interest in this process, to think of campaigns that can be undertaken together
with the police to make our schools safe and conducive place for imparting
knowledge and achieving excellence.
We also need to understand the impact of HIV and AIDS and other health
related factors on the performance of our schools. The department of health in
collaboration with the department of education have introduced the School
Health Policy and Implementation Guidelines to carry out health assessments on
children in grades R or grade 1. The health assessments focus on the early
detection of problems and the appropriate referral thereof, pertaining to gross
motor, vision, hearing, oral health, immunisation, child abuse and neglect as
well as mental health.
For grades 2 to 12, the provision of health promotion and health education
focussing on life-skills, child abuse and high risk behaviours such as
substance abuse and violence amongst others is carried in what is termed Health
Promoting School. The first national youth risk behaviour survey undertaken in
2002 found that 9% of learners throughout the country carried weapons on school
property, 15% had been threatened or injured while a third (32%) felt unsafe at
school. The survey further found that a quarter of learners (25%) had
experienced feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 19% had considered suicide and
17% had attempted suicide; substance abuse was also investigated and it was
found that the 49% had consumed alcohol, 13% had used dagga, 12% had used
heroine and 6% had used mandrax.
With regard to sexual behaviour, 41% of learners had had sex, and the age of
initiation of sexual activity was under 14 years for 14% of them. Among the
learners that had ever had sex, 54% had more than one past sexual partner, 14%
had had sex after consuming alcohol or drugs, 16% had been pregnant and only
29% practiced consistent condom usage.
These factors must certainly have an impact on the performance of schools.
What we need to understand is how effective have our interventions been to deal
with these challenges, particularly in township schools? What more can we
do?
The manner in which a school is managed and run by principals and their
management teams has a bearing on the outcomes that a school achieves. When the
relationship between the principal and the management team is not healthy, the
motivation of the rest of the teaching staff and learners is impacted upon. We
have to increase the competence levels of our principals to administer their
schools properly, to motivate their staff and to achieve better result.
Principals must be able to allocate their resources appropriately. It is not
helpful for a principal to assign a teacher to teach mathematics when the
principal knows that the teacher has qualifications to teach biblical studies.
This is not an appropriate use of resources and will not achieve higher
results.
We must however recognise that parents have a role in the success or failure
of a school. I am certain that a closer analysis of factors that lead some
schools to under-perform is lack of parental involvement. We must try and
understand why parents tend to be distant and disinterested when their children
are in township yet become involved the moment their children go to former
model c schools in the suburbs.
One of the areas we may want to look into is the agenda for parents'
meetings. Generally in township school the tendency is to call parents to a
mass meeting to discuss problems and to get them to pay more fees whereas in
the former model C schools the practice is to invite the parents to meet the
teacher, to discuss a child's progress and support required. The difference
between the two approaches is that the other is impersonal and emphasises the
negative whereas the other is individually focussed and emphasises positives. I
hope that you will be able to find best practices to share and to learn
from.
There is a view out there that the black elite at all levels, politicians,
black business and professionals, are partly to blame for the exodus of the
African Children from township schools in that our children are not in township
schools let alone public schools. While accepting that it is our right to
choose the right schools for our children, it does not help build confidence in
public township schools when people who teach in those schools, or develop
policies for such schools send their children to public schools in former white
suburbs. Talk of a parent preparing food in the house and then sending children
to eat food prepared by the neighbours!
Let me repeat, I am not saying that we are wrong, I am merely saying that
this sends a wrong message and erodes the confidence that parents should have
in public education in the townships. It has partly led to the situation we see
every morning where taxi loads of schoolchildren leave the township to former
white suburbs. Even struggling parents feel that they must stretch their meagre
resources on the extra cost of transport to get their children to these
schools.
Former learners who have gone on to become successful in their chosen
careers, are also a resource that schools can tap into to motivate learners and
provide positive role modelling. Schools need to be assisted to develop
programme, along the lines of an adopt-a-school campaign, to encourage their
former learners and other prominent people in society to play their role in
improving results, fund raising and support the restoration of a culture of
learning and teaching.
I have given you issues that I think are important to discuss in a summit of
this nature. I am certain that there are other issues that you will identify
yourselves and include in your package of proposals. I wish you a fruitful
deliberations and I look forward to your recommendations.
I thank you.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Gauteng Provincial Government
24 March 2007
