District Directors,
Honoured guests,
Education officials,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Let me start by warmly thanking all of you for honouring us this evening with your presence. As always we appreciated your dedication and support.
This is a very special night in which we celebrate the great and remarkable exploits of the districts officials and district directors.
It is for the first time in the history of our education system we are honouring districts that, against all odds, have continued to work tirelessly to ensure our learners receive a quality education.
It is only fitting that this happens this year, the year in which we celebrate twenty years of our freedom and democracy - it is essential that we reflect on Education as the apex priority of Government and the place where efforts to meet the country’s expectations are met. Such reflection requires that we put education districts at the centre.
Education districts play a central role in ensuring that all learners (and adults) have access to education of progressively high quality. Districts are the link between Provincial Education Departments, their education institutions and the public in general.
They are often the major and sometimes the only source of external assistance and support received by schools. Districts are, therefore, a key vehicle for initiating, testing, driving and sustaining systemic reforms. Schools often lack the capacity to redesign themselves and school functionality therefore relies, to a very large extent, on the corresponding functionality of education districts.
The National Development Plan (NDP): Vision 2030, states that districts have a responsibility to “provide targeted support to improve practices within schools, and ensure communication and information sharing between authorities and schools. Schools need to share best practice.”
To enable Districts to fulfil this function, I as the Minister of Basic Education, in April 2013 published the Policy on the Organisation, Roles and Responsibilities of Education Districts, in terms of section 3(4) of the National Education Policy Act (NEPA), 1996 (Act No 27 of 1996). The policy provides for a common approach, approved by the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) to the demarcation, organisation, staffing, delegation of authority and resourcing of districts across all provincial education departments.
In addition to the Policy, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) also established a Forum of District Directors, where the 81 Education District Directors from across the country meet quarterly with the DBE Senior Management Team, led by myself, to reflect on their role in the process of ensuring that education meets the aspirations of the people of this country.
The Forum presents a space where District Directors meet to discuss key national policies and initiatives, share best practices, discuss common challenges together, and agree to the way forward as a collective.
This Forum is not a mere talk shop, but an action-oriented community of frontline providers committed to the betterment of education in their districts, and in the country as a whole, building on their strengths, learning from each other, working around constraints, and leveraging the momentum to keep the process moving forward. Together this group of managers has helped the country on a journey to write positive stories about the education of our children.
I have no doubt that the improvements we are beginning to see in various aspects of the system are in large part due to how you have capitalised on opportunities presented by this platform, particularly the networking and information-sharing factor.
The year 2014 started-off on a very high note with the Class of 2013 ascertaining that we start in a positive mood by achieving the highest results since democracy of 78.2%. We have continued on that note and I am confident we will continue to do so going forward especially if we continue this great working relationship with the districts. The results indeed tell a very good story in a variety of respects:
- Seventy-one (71) of the eighty-one (81) districts improved their performance, with Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape registering the highest improvement at 11.9 per cent, followed by Dr Ruth Mompati at 11.2 per cent, Waterberg at 10.5 per cent and Bohlabela at 10.3 per cent.
- Only seven districts remain in the category of districts performing below 60 percent. This is however down from 10 districts in 2012.
- Districts performing below 65 per cent decreased from eighteen (18) in 2012 to only ten (10) in 2013.
- In 2013, three districts improved their results by no less than 7 per cent to get through the 65 per cent ceiling.
- Districts performing below 50 per cent decreased from five (5) in 2011 to three (3) in 2012, and zero (0) in 2013.
- Thirty-seven (37) of the eighty-one (81) districts performed at 80 per cent and above in the 2013 NSC. The leaders of the pack were Sedibeng East at 90.7 per cent, Ngaka Modiri Molema at 90.5 per cent, Gauteng West at 90.1 per cent, Overberg at 90 per cent, and Johannesburg West at 89.6 per cent.
- Seventy-four of the eighty-one districts (81) performed at 60 per cent and above and sixty-one at 70 per cent and above.
- Only ten (10) of the eighty-one (81) districts registered a decrease in results ranging between 0.1 and 5.3 per cent.
As a consequence of the Forum of Districts, a separate process was established to support all districts whose average learner performance in the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results continued to be below 65 per cent. This group of districts worked together more regularly and significantly improved their performance at the end of 2013.
Of the eighteen (18) districts that performed below 65 per cent in the 2012 NSC examinations, seventeen (17) improved their performance – with only one (1) district, Lusikisiki – showing a minor decrease of 0.3 per cent.
We celebrate the achievements of Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape, Waterberg in Limpopo, Bohlabela in Mpumalanga, and John Taolo Gaetsewe in the Northern Cape for topping this group with improvements of 11.9 per cent, 10.5 per cent, 10.3 per cent and 7.7 per cent respectively in 2013.
Districts have also taken up the challenge of using the results of the Annual National Assessments to guide and mentor schools and teachers in how to interpret and make use of the ANA results to improve the critical skills of literacy and numeracy.
Assessment in the primary phase is an invaluable tool not only in measuring learner achievements, but also in providing relevant diagnostic information which serves as feedback to teaching, learning and assessment processes. The ANA has become a highlight of the education calendar and an enormous administrative task involving over 7 million children in over 24 000 schools in which districts play a crucial role.
From the story told by the performance of our districts, we have seen, overall, a greater sense of focus across all districts. There are, however, still areas that need to be addressed. We have come to accept that as more and more cycles of success emerge, new cycles of challenge emerge, and these we continue to address. Through this process we are working systematically to strengthen the quality of learning and teaching in our schools.
Through the district forum we have been able to constructively reflect on curriculum coverage and performance of our schools and you have helped to guide us on where to tighten our efforts for even better learning outcomes going forward.
With your assistance at a district level we have also been able to look at broad system issues that are critical to quality learning and teaching in our schools. Together we have reflected on how we can strengthen teacher development through a more effective utilization of district-based teacher centres.
And of course we shared strategies on how best we can improve quality for learners in special circumstances such as learners in multi-grade schools and children facing barriers to learning.
Importantly, what I have mostly appreciated is your continued engagement as a team, and how you have willingly drawn from district and provincial best practice to enrich this forum.
The Department of Basic Education believes all South Africans should be encouraged by the good stories being written in our education districts, and accept that the education and future of their children is in good, hardworking and caring hands.
Education Districts are now more than ever before directed and responsive to the challenges on the ground. They know however that the successes being recorded are also a result of the increased participation of communities across the country: parents, traditional leaders, religious leaders, teachers and learners working together.
Fellow Compatriots,
It is through all of this and the continued partnership between districts and the DBE that we are able to meet in this room this evening with something to celebrate.
We want to acknowledge your efforts and highlight the outstanding work you have done.
I’m consistently inspired by the amount of work represented in the working documents you ahead of meetings. Your reports not only provide stats and data that strategically assist DBE.
They actually reflect a team of dedicated officials hard at work.
The local-level analysis that you as districts produced points some of the challenges that the learners experience. It has also suggests what needs to be done to support our teachers and helps inform the national system on a broader level.
It is clear from these few highlights of our work with Districts, how important you are to the system as a whole and how this relationship we have formed has had such an immense impact on how we address challenges at a national level for the best interest of the South African child.
Every success of DBE is a success for us all. We were all able to share in the pride we felt at achieving the 2013 National Service Certificate (NSC) results. This is because as a sector we all played our part. So it is important that as a sector we acknowledge people who have given it their all and made sacrifices that yielded results.
In 2014 we need to continue to strengthen the quality of support that we give to schools. We cannot do things in the same way and expect to get different results.
The School Readiness Assessment for 2014 revealed that while there were some challenges that schools had to deal with, in all the Provincial departments this year we were better prepared than in the previous years. School Management Teams were at school the week before schools opened to ensure that on the 13 January it would be all systems go.
The majority of LTSM was delivered to schools before schools closed in 2013. There have been reports in the media this past week of a group of principals who have taken the Limpopo education department to court because they claim that they have not yet received text books.
The District officials from that province will know full well the interventions and extra ordinary measures taken to ensure every child has a text book, as well as the meetings held with principals to assist them in how to report shortages where they occur. The department is of the view that this court application is extremely disingenuous and we will be challenging it head on through the courts.
In Limpopo alone over 6.5million textbooks were delivered for the 2014 academic year and an additional 306 thousand were ordered to address shortages identified in January. The majority of books reported as shortages in the court application were in fact books from the previous year that schools were supposed to retrieve from pupils; schools cannot shirk their responsibilities by not retrieving books as the lifespan of a text book should be four years.
We would like to thank the districts in the role they have played in identifying legitimate shortages on time and assisting the PED to rectify any possible shortages.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Lastly, I wish to congratulate all the districts that will be recipients of the awards in the various categories tonight. Some districts have excelled while others have drastically improved.
Your dedication, your positive and willing attitude and good leadership qualities have yielded these positive results.
As we prepare our learners for the first CAPS NSC examinations in 2014 let us continue to work together to build a stable, equal and quality education system for all South African learners.
The Department of Basic Education looks forward to even more support for our schools and districts to continue on this journey of improvement - in order that going forward we will write even better education stories for South Africa.
Congratulations to you all!
