Opening address delivered by the Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga, MP, at the SAPA’s Annual National Conference held at in Port Elizabeth
Programme Director,
The National President of SAPA, Mr Marius Ehrenreich,
Members of the National and Provincial Executive Committees present,
Departmental officials from national and provincial offices,
All SAPA members present,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting me once again to address you on this august Annual National Conference.
Programme Director before I proceed with my address, I must be candid with all of you. A storm is raging over the 2015 Annual National Assessment (ANA) throughout the country and it’s threatening to engulf us all. In the process, the gains we have made painstakingly over the years in developing and cementing the current regime of collective bargaining and the normal day-to-day engagements with teacher unions is at the stake.
Programme Director, please allow me to dispel the myth perpetuated in the media that when the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) resolved to proceed with ANA this year, it was some sort of a power trip to “draw the line in the sand”. There can be nothing further from the truth. At the CEM, we had a robust debate about the nature and form of assessments in the sector.
We agreed as the CEM that going ahead with ANA in 2015 is in the best interest of learners in particular and sector in general. At the core of our decision was about protecting the integrity of the system. We strongly believe that if you tamper with the integrity of the assessment tool at the eleventh hour, you are likely to devalue the entire education system. There is no education system in the world that is not assessed.
Programme Director I want to assure you that our decision was never meant to create instability in the sector by going head-to-head with the teacher unions. We place a premium on unity in the sector for the sake of our learners. Labour peace based on mutual respect is a cornerstone of any sector poised for growth. At no point did we deliberately want to flex our muscles instead of our intellect.
In this regard, Programme Director, it is correct to say that the collective wisdom of the Council of Education Ministers has been undermined by these melodramatic pronouncements in the City Press and other media. I want to assure you that we have no delusions of grandeur nor do we conduct mega-phone collective bargaining with the organised labour. Our decision on proceeding with ANA still stands until the CEM decides otherwise.
To conclude on this ANA hullabaloo I must say that we have no irrational attachment to the current form of neither ANA nor its frequency. Our door for engagements with all stakeholders on the nature and form of assessments, ANA included, in the future is wide open.
Programme Director, as the Basic Education Department we truly value the partnership we are having with SAPA. This partnership has been growing over the years to an extent that SAPA has currently deployed one of its members to work at the department focusing on matters relating to school management and leadership. It is hoped that through this kind of deployment the department will have a better understanding of SAPA’s operations so that we can together ensure that our schools are effectively managed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the role of school principals as primary and key drivers of education transformation in education cannot be underestimated. I am pleased that you are having an organisation such as SAPA that serves as a platform for discussing and debating management and leadership mattes with a view to laying a strong foundation for quality learning and teaching.
Given that our schools function in communities that are bedevilled by social ills and underdevelopment it is not surprising that many of them perform poorly. This would suggest that SAPA has a role to play in management and leadership development of school principals who find themselves in these communities.
The theme of this conference “Growing Creative Minds” is befitting as the conference comes at a time when South Africans are celebrating heritage month. “Growing Creative Minds” is not limited to intellectual activities only but has also the social and cultural aspects. Goal 25 of Action Plan to 2019 points out to the use of schools as vehicles for promoting access to a range of public services amongst learners in areas such as health, poverty alleviation, psychosocial support, sport and culture.
Our department continues to prioritise a number of services in schools that are not academic in nature, but are important for the development of the child and support the education process indirectly. Dr. Wanda Draper, in Your Child Is Smarter Than You Think!, bridges the gap between how children learn and think and how they feel and behave. She discusses a whole-child approach to articulate the child’s development and its relationship to learning and behaviour from infancy through adolescence. She often says:
“You can’t send the head to school and leave the body at home—the whole child goes to school, the whole child lives at home, and the whole child participates in the world.”
Thus creative minds can be developed in many ways: creating conducive environment for teaching and learning, creating opportunities for recreational activities such as sports and encouraging art and cultural activities. Success in all these activities is dependent on the effective school management.
The DBE has initiated several projects that are intended to stimulate the child’s mind. It is important that these projects should be supported by the school management teams for them to be sustainable. One such initiative is an agreement with the Department of Sports and Recreation on an Integrated School Sport Framework.
The purpose of this framework is to promote mass participation in school sport and physical activities that are aimed at enriching the curriculum. We believe that sports and recreation play an important role in the holistic development of a child
Another initiative worth mentioning is getting the nation to read campaign dubbed “Drop All and Read”. At the heart of the campaign is the power of the written word. The Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, Professor Orhan Pamuk captured the importance of reading succinctly when he opined: “I read a book one day and my whole life was changed”.
The “Drop All and Read” is a national reading campaign that gives effect to the many reading promotion and library provisioning initiatives has been launched in collaboration with the Department of Arts and Culture, and municipalities.
At the heart of this campaign is that all our schools have been advised through a circular to observe at least 30 minutes per week of mandatory reading as part of this programme. Beyond the reading at schools, we are encouraging families, churches and communities to reinforce the Drop All and Read Campaign at home and at various community engagements.
Our ultimate prize is to make Drop All and Read Campaign a regular established part of both children and parents’ daily routine.
Programme Director I must stress that our reading campaign started early this year and it involves more than just school going children. We have just completed a nationwide reading promotion roadshows in June and July to raise awareness about the importance of reading under the auspices of our Adult Mass Literacy Campaign dubbed Kha Ri Gude.
Programme Director at the core of our efforts is our deliberate determination that in-order to improve literacy and reduce the number of learner drop outs, we must make reading fashionable. However, we cannot do this without providing fully functioning libraries in our schools.
We view libraries as a key player because they have a role in almost all of these literacy factors - from access to materials and training to promotion and cooperation. The role of libraries in our view is to offer our learners more than just prescribed books but reading material that will expand their horizon beyond the confines of their schools and villages.
In this regard we have declared Reading Library and Information Services (RLIS) an apex priority.
Hence in July, in a bid to make reading fashionable, we launched the 1 000 School Libraries Campaign to target all needy schools per year from 2015 until 2019. The launch event held at uVuyo Primary School, Dobsonville, Soweto, we announced that by the end of July, the construction of 18 new libraries (two in each province) will be completed and resourced with the required reading materials. We said all new libraries will be Information Communication Technology (ICT) enabled and compliant. I am glad to announce that the target has been met.
As part of this project [1000 School Libraries Campaign] we also held a business breakfast to mobilise the private sector and non-governmental organisations to partner with us in-order to ensure that all libraries have all required reading materials to make them both viable and sustainable. I am glad to report today that the support we have received is overwhelming.
We are also hard at work steering the formation of Reading Clubs, Spelling Bee projects as well as Book Flood Campaign throughout the country.
Some of you may be aware that the Sunday of the 6th September 2015 was declared Drop All and Read Sunday, where selected churches in 8 provinces (with the exception of Northern Cape, because of the mishap that befell them) were visited by senior officials from the DBE, Arts and Culture and municipalities to promote the reading campaign. I call upon SAPA to support this initiative for the sake of its sustainability.
At last year’s conference I had the opportunity to share with you that the Basic Education sector has entered an era of ‘Business Unusual.’ I said the CEM had declared the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as one of the key priorities for the sector to act as an anchor for the radical transformation of the basic education.
Programme Director I am glad to report that we are on the cusp of finalising an Integrated ICT Strategy and Implementation Plan for increasing access to ICTs in all public schools nationally.
We are doing this through the Presidential lead project known as Operation Phakisa. In this regard, as we speak an ICT in Education Operation Phakisa Laboratory (collaboration sessions involving key stakeholders from the public and private and sector, academia as well as civil society organisations) is in progress. It seeks to:
- identify strategic areas with high impact and fast delivery potential with respect to integration of ICT into teaching and learning;
- explicitly identify detailed goals, resources, capacities and roles and responsibilities for implementation success and outcomes including detailed problem statements and theory of change;
- improve the implementation and delivery of quality basic education in SA;
- design and implementation plan for delivery in the identified priority areas;
- build consensus for action in collaboration among relevant stakeholders with respect to the six key priority areas;
- identify how global evidence may be leveraged for implementation designs
- Build in a monitoring and evaluation mechanism for each programme.
The main output of the Operation Phakisa ICT in education Laboratory is to develop a systematic and detailed roll-out plan for the delivery of curriculum through ICT infrastructure to schools across South Africa. The roll-out plan will include:
- A costed implementation plan for all schools;
- A professional development programme for all teachers and administrators;
- A documented change management plan for ICT integration; and
- A monitoring and evaluation plan including the indicators for successful ICT use in all schools.
Our department has also researched alternative approaches to solving problems in our sector and I will only name a few interventions.
The quarterly NSLA reports from provinces allow the department to keep a close eye on the implementation of our strategic objectives. It allows us to recognise excellence and ensure support where intervention is needed. Recently we have changed the training processes to ensure more sustainable outcomes of training.
An example that I could cite is the training programme for principals on curriculum management. We have ensured that we train 1 175 circuit managers nationally, the reason being to boost their confidence in supporting schools in curriculum delivery not only in underperforming schools but also in high performers.
I am pleased to announce that a policy on the South African Standards for Principalship is about to be gazetted. Not only will the Standards define the role, core purpose and key areas of school principals, but will also guide deputy principals and principals on key aspects of professionalism, image and competencies required. The Standards will provide a framework of leadership and management development.
The principal is the nerve centre of school improvement. When the leadership is strong even the most challenged schools thrive. But when it is weak schools fail or badly under perform. Quality Leadership is widely regarded as a key factor in accounting for differences in the success with which schools foster the learning of their students.
Indeed, there are virtually no documented instances of troubled schools being turned around without intervention by a powerful leader. Many other factors may contribute to such turnarounds, but leadership is the catalyst.
In conclusion, I am informed that this conference will be attended by approximately 600 guests and delegates. This will be a good opportunity for SAPA to share ideas and learn from the presentations and deliberations over the few days that you will spend here. I look forward to the presentations and deliberations that will follow. I also look forward to robust debate on all the pertinent issues you have identified for discussion in this conference. The DBE alone cannot achieve its objectives without the support of all relevant stakeholders especially principals.
I thank you all.
