Honourable Chairperson
Honourable Members
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen,
Introduction
Honourable chairperson, I feel specially honoured to be given a chance to address the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) only six days after the local government elections.
Thank you for giving us a hearing in spite of the mood of excitement and jubilation all around. Honouring these democratic processes is very vital for nurturing and sustaining our heart-won freedoms and rights.
It is in this spirit, of accountability, responsiveness and transparency, that I stand before this august Council to present the budget vote of the Department of Basic Education.
Our focus this year is mainly on strengthening the delivery-driven basic education system in line with the Delivery Agreement we entered into in October 2010.
It is only through education that we can roll back the tide of poverty and joblessness and redress apartheid inequalities. It is precisely because of the pivotal role it plays in creating a better life for all that education remains the apex priority of the current administration.
Budget for 2011/12
For the 2011/12 financial year, the overall budget for our department has increased by R6.369 billion to R13.868 billion.
Note that this allocation concerns only the national Department of Basic Education – Vote 15. It does not include allocations for provincial departments of education.
The 2011/12 consolidated investment in the education sector, which includes the national department and all the nine provincial departments of education, is 168.056 billion.
2010 commitments
Last year, we made bold to say we have made huge strides in education since the advent of democracy and committed to do more to address challenges to the provision of quality education.
We committed to develop an education sector plan that would help us transform schooling, ensuring all of us, as the national department and provincial departments of education, worked together to deliver an education system speaking directly to the current needs of our democratic and developmental state.
Thus, on 2 August 2010, we gazetted Action Plan to 2014: Towards the Realisation of Schooling 2025. This step we took following consultation with the Council of Education Ministers and in terms of the National Education Policy Act of 1996.
This action plan provides key outcomes and performance deliverables for the entire education system and will help us coordinate provincial planning and reporting.
In spite of formidable challenges, including the teachers’ strike, we achieved an impressive 67.8% pass-rate in the 2010 Grade 12 National Senior Certificate exams. All provinces improved performance with Gauteng achieving the highest pass rate in the country, with 78.6%.
Curriculum review
We are satisfied with progress on preparations for incremental implementation of the reviewed Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements. This will start in January 2012, in the Foundation Phase and Grade 10.
National Education Evaluation and Development Unit
As indicated last year, to enhance quality, we required an effective performance evaluation mechanism.
Accordingly, on 17 to 18 March 2011, we launched the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU). We appointed Prof John Volmink as its inaugural CEO, with effect from 1 July 2010. Since then, six additional staff members have been appointed to the team.
NEEDU’s main task would be to provide an authoritative, analytical and accurate account on the state of education and the status of teaching and learning in all schools.
A Draft Bill has been developed and we look forward to the support of the NCOP in finalising relevant legislation.
Workbooks
Last year, we promised to provide high quality workbooks in Literacy and Numeracy for Grades 1 to 6 learners, and Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills for Grade R learners, to improve and enhance the quality of learning.
Workbook 1 was rolled out to schools from January 2011, but with difficulties and delays in some schools. Workbook 2 should reach learners next month.
To reduce delivery glitches, the department has verified relevant data with provinces, including the number of learners.
Assessments
We committed to improve performance of Grades 3, 6 and 9, from an average performance of between 27% and 38%, to at least 60% by 2014.
One way of doing this was to administer Annual National Assessments that are standardised and internationally benchmarked. Analysis of results of such assessments will inform the plans we adopt to improve education.
We started in February 2011 with Grades 1 to 6 and Grade 10. Approximately 6.5 million learners participated. We wanted to release the report at the end of April, but had to move the date due to the enormity of the work involved. A new date will be announced soon.
Challenges
Honourable chairperson, in spite of the footprints we made, a lot still needs to be done. Institutional challenges include inefficiencies resulting in poor management and weak financial controls.
This we see in some provincial education departments continuing to receive qualified reports.
We are still battling with poor accountability in the system, including poor planning, implementation and reporting.
The education system is also plagued by learner-related challenges around (learner) wellbeing, exacerbated by poverty and social deprivation; Ill-discipline and youth criminality; and reproductive health-related problems, like teenage pregnancy.
It is behind this background that this year we launched the Bill of Responsibilities campaign in partnership with Lead South Africa and the South African Inter-Faith Council. This will help in raising awareness around the Bill of Responsibilities so as to promote the Bill of Rights, constitutional values and civic responsibilities.
Educator-related challenges include educator wellbeing, which is aggravated by the nation’s burden of disease, like the impact of HIV and AIDS; low levels of skills, commitment and discipline, and inappropriate working conditions.
While great progress has been made, the sector needs to intensify ongoing work in the area of curriculum development, implementation and monitoring. Provincial departments, as conduits to schools, are very critical in this regard.
Our educational outcomes continue to reflect socio-economic patterns of inequalities. One of our major challenges remains addressing inequalities in the system. Believing that ‘every child is our national asset’, we will work with our provinces to ensure that no child is left behind.
Our response
Honourable chairperson, given the many challenges plaguing the education system, and the need effectively to respond to them better to support the national goal of achieving inclusive growth and economic freedom, we have decided to up the bar and work even muchharder towards a delivery-driven basic education system.
In keeping with government’s commitment to outcomes driven service delivery, the department will continue aligning itself to outcomes delivery processes.
Therefore, during the 2011/12 financial year, we will up our current delivery programme by establishing a Planning and Delivery Oversight unit.
This unit will work with and through provinces in weaving together all current initiatives so as to allow for a coherent value chain from policy to implementation in the classroom.
The department will continue to focus on the following levers to steer this quality education outcomes improvement programme:
Given the key role of gateway subjects in accelerating economic transformation and growth, we will do more to improve performance in Mathematics and Science.
We’re already developing a Maths and Technology strategy to reinforce the Dinaledi Schools programme which has received a conditional grant amounting to R70 million in 2011/12.
All our efforts aimed at enhancing quality of learning outcomes will indeed benefit immensely from heeding the President’s call for more focus on ‘Triple Ts’ – teachers, text and time.
Thus, working with provincial departments of education, we will ensure that we indeed deliver on the objective of providing a textbook for every learner, in every subject.
Plans for the central procurement of learning and teaching support materials are underway. In this regard, consultation with provincial departments of education is continuing.
We hope this will result in efficient service through which we will eliminate risks associated with expensive and inefficient procurement processes which have up to now made it difficult for us to provide every child with a book in every subject.
All these efforts will not adequately produce a delivery-driven basic education system without quality teachers.
We will therefore up our work on teacher development proactively to advance the Triple Ts and ensure that teachers are in class, teaching, at least seven hours a day, as President Zuma has directed. For us, teachers are a critical resource for improving quality.
On 5 April 2011, with Minister Nzimande, we launched the Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development. It is key to achieving output 1 of the Delivery Agreement, that is, improving teacher capacity and practices.
Improving quality and conditions of service for teachers is a top priority. Last year, monitoring of implementation of the Occupation Specific Dispensation was stepped up. We will continue to monitor full implementation by provinces to ensure unintended consequences are addressed.
Funza Lushaka bursaries have increased to R449.44 million and will reach R893.867 million in 2013/14. Our targets include attracting young qualified teachers and filling vacant posts to help advance this year’s clarion call for the creation of decent jobs and economic transformation and freedom for all.
Honourable chairperson,
This year, we will continue to strengthen school management and governance. The department is reinforcing the training of principals, particularly those from underperforming schools.
More work will be done to improve school infrastructure. We will continue working with communities at all levels, encouraging their participation and urging them to take ownership of school buildings. A community facilitation team has been constituted to work with school communities.
We will eradicate mud and unsafe structures. For 2011/12, we have prioritised 85 mud schools and 246 inappropriate structures.
We will provide water to at least 807 schools, provide sanitation to 391 and electricity to 286 schools.
For free standing facilities without adequate resources, we will build 29 administration blocks, 25 libraries and six laboratories.
Working with provinces, by 2014 we would have attended to 3627 schools that need to be brought to basic functionality and safety levels.
An allocation of R5.498 billion for the Education Infrastructure Conditional Grant has been introduced for 2011/12. The School Infrastructure backlogs Indirect Grant of R700 million for 2011/12 has also been introduced.
We will continue to pay serious attention to the health, safety and protection of children, mainly children at risk.
In 2010/11, the National Schools Nutrition programme reached over 10 million learners in approximately 21 000 schools. For 2011/12, the National Schools Nutrition Programme conditional grant has increased to R915 million to cater mainly for implementation in Quintile 3 secondary schools.
Education being a concurrent function, indeed we’re very worried that 18 of our districts are underperforming; and we are very much aware that provinces are also not performing satisfactorily in different areas, including slow spending on some programmes and over spending in other areas.
We will work with provinces, particularly those that have received qualified reports properly to deal with the Auditor-General’s concerns. We will also prioritise the strengthening of outcomes improvement plans of poorly performing provinces and districts.
On the intervention in the Eastern Cape department of education, I presented a ministerial statement before Parliament, on 16 March 2010. The Eastern Cape department of education had struggled, for the past sixteen years, to establish itself as a stable and fully functional department.
The challenges resulted in a Cabinet decision to invoke Section 100 (b) of the Constitution, in March 2011, to allow the Ministry of Basic Education to work with the province to implement a comprehensive and sustainable intervention.
Subsequently, as required by the Constitution, a notice regarding the intervention was lodged with the NCOP, on Tuesday 15 March 2011.
Since then, we have established an Intervention Unit that coordinates activities of the intervention.
An intervention framework has been completed and a detailed intervention plan will be completed in a month’s time.
Following engagements with the Premier and the MEC for Education, a Memorandum of Agreement will soon be signed.
Regarding critical areas of service delivery, the National School Nutrition Programme has been resuscitated. The programme has been decentralised to schools and a strategy has been developed to strengthen it.
Temporary teachers whose contracts were terminated in December 2010 have been reinstated.
Temporary relief, in the form of mobile classrooms, has been provided to address the challenge of mud and unsafe schools while plans are being finalised for building permanent schools.
On Learner and Teacher Support Materials, 90% of non-Section 21 schools have received textbooks and workbooks.
Learner transport has been restored, particularly in rural areas. A team from the national department is working with officials from the Eastern Cape Department of Education and Transport to ensure norms and standards are adhered to in this regard.
The shortage of stationery is also receiving urgent attention.
It is our hope the intervention will turn around the situation in that province and ensure delivery of key educational services.
Conclusion
A special ‘thank you’ to all patriots who supported the class of 2010. Let’s all support the class of 2011!
I thank for their support, Deputy Minister Surty, MECs, HoDs, the Director-General and all our officials. I am grateful to our teachers, principals, parents and learners for their hard-work and dedication to education. Working together we can deliver a transformative, high-performing, quality education system.
I thank you.
Source: Department of Basic Education
