Honourable Speaker and Deputy Speaker
Honourable premier
Honourable Members of the Executive Council
Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Education
Honourable members of the provincial legislature
Acting Director-General
Head of Department and senior managers of the Education Department
Members of our school governing bodies (SGB)
Principals, educators and learners
Representatives of the private sector
Labour unions
Religious and community based organisations
Representatives of the media
Comrades and friends
Ladies and gentlemen
Honourable Speaker,
All South Africans are joined by most throughout the world in remembering and celebrating two decades since the release from incarceration of one of the most honoured and revered statesmen the world has ever seen. As we remember and celebrate, we remain mindful of the sacrifices and legacy that our beloved Madiba has made for all of us.
In the words of one of our best, our beloved Madiba, "we dare not rest or slumber" until the society envisaged in the Freedom Charter is attained, through education. Our iconic Madiba goes on to say: "Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine and that a child of a farm worker can become the president of a great nation".
Honourable members, the message that our hallowed Madiba is giving us is that it is only through education that the human capital responsible for developing and sustaining our economy will come, that it is only through education that we will succeed in our efforts of defeating unemployment and that it is only through education that we will improve the living standards of our people.
Our government, under the leadership of our honourable President Zuma, has in line with this correct assertion of the Freedom Charter and our own Madiba's call, rightly identified and positioned education as one of our key priorities for the next five years.
During her State of the Province Address, our honourable premier, called upon us to work harder towards the attainment of quality education for all our children; the honourable premier went on to say: "in order for the department to turn things around, its administration must be stabilised to ensure that sufficient and effective support and administrative systems are in place to guarantee learner performance and ensure that learner performance is by design and not by default".
We will therefore, inspired and guided by the words of Madiba, the command of our president, the directive of our premier and the vision of the Freedom Charter, rise to the challenge collectively placed before us.
Honourable Speaker; the budget of R3.46 billion that I present here today represents our first steps out of the quagmire that we found ourselves in during the recent past and our first steps toward a meaningful and concerted response to the imperatives of Madiba, our president and our premier. This budget, albeit hugely influenced by the trauma of the 2008/09 and 2009/10 financial years, will NOT be characterised by "cost containment" or is it a deficit budget already at the onset, as was the 2009/10 budget.
Whilst I am generally confident in the ability of this budget to take us forward in our quest to return to the provision of quality education in the Northern Cape, I must warn that we are not out of the woods and continue to remain extremely vulnerable. The 2010/11 budget is therefore characterised by austerity and efficiencies and in so doing responding to the MEC for Finance, Honourable John Block's call to do more with less. And so while we are out of "cost containment" mode, we must maintain complete discipline in all aspects of financial management, expenditure control and sound administrative systems.
The 2010/11 budget has also allowed us to make fundamental corrections to the glaring budget weaknesses of the past years. In this respect, we have sufficiently provided for compensation of employees, corrected budget anomalies in Early Childhood Development (ECD) and programme one: Administration and we have brought the budget for Adult Basic Education (ABET) in line with national norms and standards.
Honourable Speaker, my confidence that this financial year will be a better one is further buoyed by the progress that we have been able to register in bringing our expenditure under control. It is public knowledge that we started the 2009/10 financial year projecting to overspend by R165 million which was further burdened by accruals from the 2008/09 financial year of R65 million resulting in a deficit of R230 million in real terms. Through tough decisions, strict expenditure controls and careful reprioritisation, I can now announce that as at 15 March 2010 we have reduced our projected over expenditure to R20.4 million!
Let me immediately caution that these gains came at a painful price, the 2009 national senior certificate results! We must never again allow education in the Northern Cape to sink to these levels. We must all jealously guard against the decline in the provision of quality education by all committing to the ideals of the Quality Learning and Teaching campaign (QLTC). We must make education a societal issue and everybody's business.
When we launched the Quality Learning and Teaching campaign in Upington on 24 February 2010, we received pledges from all provincial stakeholders in education to commit to the attainment of quality education in the Northern Cape. By mid April 2010 we would have launched the campaign in all five districts and by mid May 2010 we would have established QLTC committees in all schools in the province. By this time all stakeholders at all levels would have pledged their commitment to quality education.
Honourable Speaker, it is my intention to ensure that the officials of the Northern Cape Department of Education honour the pledge that they took, which is to:
- ensure all schools receive the necessary resources in time for teaching to commence
- ensure all schools have their full staff allocation and that any vacancies are filled without delay
- improve their own knowledge and skills base to be more effective
- always be available to assist schools, principals and teachers
- respond to requests or concerns of education stakeholders
- visit all schools within the district on a regular basis
- monitor teacher and learner attendance and ensure no child is out of school
- assist all schools to improve their performance, ensuring regular tests are conducted and results are reported to parents.
It is in up-holding this pledge that we can bring about a turnaround in the administrative systems of the department so that we can provide improved support and services to schools. Again, I intend to lead this turn-around and to hold slacking officials accountable.
I can announce that we have, in the past nine months, started the process to turn around and stabilise our administration. We have completed our asset register and for the first time the department now has an asset register! We have implemented local government information systems (LOGIS) in the department as part of the measures to improve our financial and supply chain management systems.
We have established a finance registry so that for the first time in three years we are able to submit complete finance batches to the Auditor-General for auditing. We have developed and implemented a supply chain management policy to regulate procurement in the department. We are finalising the processes to conduct a head count of all staff by May 2010. And a forensic audit of the department was completed with the draft report now being studied before submission of the final report to myself on 16 April 2010.
Again, Honourable Speaker and members, I must warn that we still have long way to go to complete the turnaround of our administration, especially to do so in time to reverse our poor audit outcomes already in this year. We remain particularly vulnerable in the control of our personnel filing and information, prevention of irregular expenditure and in meeting payment deadlines. These are areas that now demand our complete attention so that we can begin, in this MTEF cycle, to improve on our audit outcomes. Again, I will lead this process!
Our resolve to get the administration right is precisely because we fully understand that it forms the back bone for optimal support to schools and ensures that our core business, quality teaching and learning in schools is attained. Of course, the surest indicator of a successful system and whether quality learning and teaching are happening is the academic outputs we achieve.
We must immediately emphasise that we view academic outputs across the system, grade one to grade 12 of equal importance. There are however, some key benchmarks that coincide with either exit points or transition points from one phase to another. These are key benchmarks that test the success of our system are the grade 12 national senior certificate exam and the levels of attainment in numeracy or mathematics and literacy or language in grades three, six and nine.
To this effect Honourable Speaker, we have set certain targets for this year, developed strategies to attain these and assigned budgets accordingly.
Following the calamity of the 2009 national senior certificate results, we have allocated R6.30 million to a Matric Intervention programme (MIP) to radically improve on the 2009 grade 12 results. The Matric Intervention programme for 2010 has already started with our learning area managers having thoroughly analysed the 2009 question papers, weaknesses and outcomes with grade 12 teachers. Subject specific interventions were identified and are being implemented.
The MIP will further entail Saturday classes, winter and spring schools, provision of supplementary study aids and materials and the writing of common exam papers in June and September. We are also aware that many schools have already started their own initiatives such as afternoon classes. While we appreciate and applaud these efforts, we have already cautioned schools not to use these classes to complete the curriculum, but to rather do remedial, enrichment or consolidation work.
Schools that attained a pass rate of less than 60 percent in 2009 are deemed to be underperforming and will receive focused support and come under intense scrutiny. I have already had one on one sessions with the principals of all serial underperforming schools where they were expected to explain themselves as well as show plans to improve their performance. I will continue to monitor these schools closely!
We are encouraged that 2 837 learners who did not pass the 2009 national senior certificate examinations were assisted to register for the March 2010 supplementary examinations, but we are convinced that more learners could and should have been reached. We remain confident that the support provided to these candidates will yield good results, and we take this opportunity to wish them well as they are currently busy writing their exams.
Honourable Speaker, the results in mathematics and physical science in most of our Dinaledi schools are dismal despite significant resource allocations and support to these schools. This year again we will allocate R6.18 million to the Maths, Science, Technology and Languages programme, including the Dinaledi schools, to attain pass rates of 65 percent in maths and 60 percent in physics.
I have now however run out of patience with continued underperformance in some of these schools and will certainly review their continued status of being a Dinaledi School after this year's results. Principals must be warned that they will be held accountable for poor performance.
We are excitedly looking forward to the Bloodhound project in the province for the value that this project holds for the promotion of maths, science and technology in our schools. Learners will be encouraged through the Bloodhound project to discover new knowledge such as learning about the history of the speed of sound. They will also measure the speed of sound using simple equipment and free software.
Furthermore, our engineering students at FET colleges will be encouraged to build their own rocket propelled car and balloon powered car. Our Dinaledi schools will be directly linked to the project with the learners having to complete specific projects linked to the curriculum of relevant subjects.
I am particularly pleased to at this point to introduce a new category of focus schools in the system, technical schools. We have allocated R3.42 million in 2010/11 as a technical schools recapitalisation conditional grant with a further R8.56 million in 2011/12 and R8.98 million in 2012/13.
In this year we will lay the foundation for more substantial capital and infrastructural improvements as well as curriculum changes in the outer years. Our focus this year is therefore on providing computer laboratories at four schools, refurbishing all ten schools to comply with safety standards and to do subject content training for educators.
Attaining acceptable levels in literacy and numeracy in grade three and in language and mathematics in grades six and nine are important pre-determinants for eventual success in grade 12 and beyond. To this effect we have allocated a total of R93.24 million to the Curriculum unit to do their work which includes the implementation of the foundations for learning campaign to support educators and to enable them to implement the revised national curriculum statement.
The foundations for learning campaign assist educators with lesson planning and with their classroom teaching through the provision of structured lessons and other support material. These materials are now being provided to all primary schools in the province. The campaign further allows for common national quarterly and annual assessments of proficiency in literacy, numeracy, languages and mathematics in grades one to six and in grade nine.
Honourable members, a key challenge for the next few years will be the implementation of the revised national curriculum from grade one to grade 12. The purpose of the review of the national curriculum was to reduce educators' administrative load and put back the focus on the actual business of teaching and facilitating learning. This is part of a five years plan for the improvement of learning and teaching as one of the government's key priorities.
We are not changing the vision of the curriculum transformation process that started after 1994, but we are implementing changes in order to strengthen curriculum implementation. We are striving to achieve quality learning and teaching. The revised curriculum will do much to improve the quality of education by offering very clear benchmarks or outcomes for learner development and clear guidelines on how progress can be assessed.
All of the academic outputs in the system that we have just referred to, whether it be at grade three or at grade 12 level, will be so much easier to attain if all learners are exposed to quality learning and teaching at grade R level. To this effect we are allocating R47.93 million to our Early Childhood Development programme.
In accordance with White Paper five (2001) we will continue to introduce publicly funded grade R in public schools to ensure that 85 percent of all learners are enrolled in public schools and 15 percent are registered in community based sites. We will continue to expand access to grade R to ensure that we meet the target of ensuring universal access by 2014.
To this end, we have already enrolled our target of 12 000 grade R learners at public schools in 2010. In addition 4 700 learners are also currently enrolled in grade R community based sites. We are pursuing the strategy of promoting access to grade R at public schools and community based sites while we pursue our short-term strategy to improve the quality of learning and teaching in all grade R classes.
In line with this strategy we will build 36 grade R classrooms at public schools in this financial year. In addition, 80 practitioners will enrol to study toward the national qualifications framework level four qualification, to augment the 250 practitioners studying toward the national qualifications framework level five qualification and who are graduating in May 2010.
Honourable Speaker, we have earlier referred to this budget being austere and rightfully so. We have however done everything possible to ensure that we do not compromise on the funding of our core business, the provision of quality learning and teaching in 600 public ordinary schools for 267 000 learners. The functionality of schools together with the pursuit of quality learning and teaching, equality, access and transformation of the education system, remain at the heart of what we do and continues to inform how we spend the budget in schools.
To this effect, we are proud to announce that in the Northern Cape province, 67.6 percent or 170 785 of our learners, that is all learners in quintiles one to three schools, will benefit from the no fee school policy in 2010. This constitutes 455 out of 600 schools in the province not charging school fees. The department is currently reviewing applications from a number of fee charging schools which have applied to be re-classified as no fee schools as they too serve many learners from poor communities.
Our total direct investment in schools in this financial year in the form of school funding allocations for both section 21 and non-section 21 schools amounts to R171.28 million. This is further augmented by a budget of R2.39 billion for salaries of educators in public ordinary schools.
R137.39 million will be transferred directly to section 21 schools of which R48.97 million is earmarked for the procurement of learner teacher support material (LTSM), R21.98 million for school maintenance and R66.45 million for payment of services.
R33.89 million is available for non-section 21 schools of which R22.97 million is for LTSM, R3.72 million for maintenance and R7.20 million for payment of services. The department will closely monitor the utilisation of these allocated funds to ensure that they are used for the intended purposes and all schools are required to submit audited annual financial statements.
A further R21.9 million is provided to support 6 111 learners in 77 hostels in the province. We must immediately acknowledge that this amount which is made up of a per learner allocation of R1 000 per quarter is grossly inadequate and that as a consequence our hostels are struggling to survive. This is therefore one of our top priorities to correct and to increase in this medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) period.
Honourable Speaker in our last budget speech, we committed ourselves to ensuring that the provision of Learning and Teaching Support Material is delivered to our schools on time, or well ahead of the first day of the new school year. We must now apologise for not quite reaching that target even though the rate of LTSM delivery this year is much better than in 2009. To date we have delivered in excess of 98 percent of LTSM with the outstanding deliveries being due to small orders which are out of print and to publishers not prioritising these small orders of the province, rather favouring the massive demand of bigger provinces.
This year we will spend R25.07 million on the purchasing of LTSM, including the re-supply of life sciences and physical science textbooks for the grade 12 learners of 2011. We will continue to strive to improve on our performance in this regard. Our management plan for this financial year is progressing according to plan, and meeting our target this year is not negotiable!
Honourable members, access to education for all suggests that learners who live far from schools should be able to get to school without great difficulty. This is still not always the case in the province, especially in rural areas and other areas where public transport is unavailable.
Our provincial learner transport policy states that all deserving learners walking for more than five kilometres to school must be provided with free learner transport. The department currently provides transport for 18 500 learners over 306 routes. The expansion of learner transport in the John Taolo Gaetsewe district as well as transport for learners with special educational needs remain a challenge the department is determined to overcome.
The poor conditions of roads in the John Taolo Gaetsewe district make service providers wary of rendering a service at the current rates offered by the department. As a consequence, we are currently devising a new strategy to meet the unique needs in this district.
To meet this challenge we would need an additional R30 million to the R81.13 million that is provided for learner transport in this budget. Learner transport also then constitutes a priority area for increased allocation over the MTEF period so that all deserving learners in the province can benefit from this service.
In spite of these difficulties, I can announce that we have registered some gains in the administration of learner transport. We now for the first time have signed contracts with all our service providers and we are systematically eliminating late payments to service providers.
Honourable Speaker, it is a known fact that a school is only as efficient as the management of the school and that the quality of learning in a school is directly dependant on the quality of work done by teachers. It therefore follows that we must continuously invest in our human resource capacity at schools.
This year, a further 100 school principals will, at a cost of R1.80 million, be enrolled for the advanced certificate in education specialising in leadership and management. This serves to further strengthen the initial induction programme that the 40 newly appointed principals have already undergone earlier this year.
We will also, with the aid of the school food nutrition conditional grant, provide each principal with a cell phone so that our communication with principals through a web-based short message service (SMS) system is greatly enhanced. Principals of schools on the feeding scheme can now report immediately on matters related to the feeding scheme.
In addition to investing in principals, our Teacher Development programme will train the following teachers at a cost of R3.57 million:
- 100 teachers will do the advanced certificate in education in maths, science and technology and all of these educators will be drawn from the John Taolo Gaetsewe district
- 104 under qualified teachers are participating in the national professional Diploma in Education to improve their qualifications
- 25 educators are enrolled in the advanced certificate in education specialising in foundation phase teaching
- 100 educators are doing a certificate course in multi-grade teaching and
- 25 teachers are enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal with the gracious funding support of BHP Billiton to the value of R10.8 million over a five year period.
Honourable Speaker, further initiatives to improve the functionality of schools include the South African School Management and Administration System (SASAMS) and the Learner Unit Record Information Tracking System (LURITS). Both systems are designed to assist with school management and administration by especially reducing the burden of excessive paperwork.
The systems, when functioning optimally will also assist the department’s medium to long term planning as schools will now submit surveys, data and other information electronically to the department. We are working to ensure that by the end of this term we have real time access to all school based data and information. This year we will invest R1 million for continued support to schools to use the systems.
While we are working hard to provide an environment in which quality learning and teaching is guaranteed through investing in teachers, school management, school administration and systems; we must also be cognisant of the factors that militate against learners benefiting optimally from this environment of quality learning. These factors include learners been hungry and therefore unable to learn and threats to the safety and security of learners.
The department will therefore continue to provide nutritious meals to over 200 000 learners in the 2010/11 financial year at a cost of R113.04 million. As an exit strategy for food handlers, the department plans to assist them to establish five cooperatives to deliver services to schools through its School Nutrition programme and 50 additional sustainable food gardens will be established in schools. A total of 1 800 food handlers and garden caretakers continue to be employed in the school nutrition programme.
The threats to the safety of learners at our schools, violence, substance abuse, vandalism and theft are a major concern for the department. We must protect our learners and be in a position to affirm the safety of all learners in our public schools.
To this effect, the following programmes are in place: we have last year launched the United Nation's Children Fund (UNICEF) funded "Child Friendly Schools campaign" in 164 schools, all schools must develop integrated school safety plans, all schools will participate in the School Safety Emergency Readiness programmes and 100 schools will be focus schools participating in the Anti-vandalism programme. Our Safer Schools unit will receive a budget of R0.25 million to support schools with these programmes. In addition we are now working in close collaboration with the South African Police Services (SAPS).
As a result, the joint operations between the department and the SAPS will continue until all the unwelcome elements in and around our schools, are weeded out to ensure that learners remain focussed on their academic activities, and become the pride of the nation. The department will continue to enlist the services of the SAPS to assist principals and educators in schools with random raids and searches to keep schools drug-free, weapon-free and abuse-free zones.
Our earnest appeal to parents, to the community and particularly to the educators and learners, is to cooperate with the police and the department to ensure that these necessary and vital operations are carried out successfully, without any hindrance and resistance.
The assurance is also given that such operations will always be conducted in accordance with the law. Furthermore, acts of serious misconduct and vandalism as well as the suspected or detected use of drugs or alcohol must immediately be brought to the attention of the authorities. The Northern Cape Department of Education, together with the Departments of Social Development and Health, are ready to assist parents and learners to deal with such problems or addictions.
Honourable Speaker, our task of educating and the provision of quality education is not only limited to the classroom. Our Sport, Race and Values Unit has been allocated R0.614 million to get our children playing and participating in sport and healthy activities.
This being the year of the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup, allow me to focus on how our schools will participate in related activities, build up events and how they will benefit from 2010 legacy projects:
The Schools’ Football World Cup is currently being played in our districts. District winners will compete in the finals on the 21 April as a build up to the 50 days countdown celebrations on 22 April in the province.
Various schools in Kimberley are participating in the South Africa Express Top Eight competition. This competition is open to under 16 boys and girls teams. Eight schools per category will participate. The finals of this competition will be played on 5 June in Kimberley. Winners of both the boys and girls competitions will win 40 tickets per team to watch a world cup match in Johannesburg.
South African Express will fly all the winners to Johannesburg and accommodate them for one night as well. In addition, all 16 teams competing in the competition will receive playing kits sponsored by a team in the English Premiership League.
Further five schools are participating in the Coca Cola "Live for a Difference" campaign, an environmental project where schools are competing to collect the most empty cans and bottles. Participating schools are Vuyolwethu High School, Boresetse High School, NJ Heyns Special School, Technical High School and Rietvale High School. Each of these schools will receive 100 match tickets per school to attend world cup matches in Bloemfontein. In addition, the winning school, to be announced in April, will receive R40 000 as prize money. We wish all the schools "happy collecting"!
Honourable Speaker we are extremely grateful that education will benefit from the R100 million availed for 2010 legacy projects in the province. At least 50 schools will benefit by having sport facilities developed and upgraded. We will target these 50 schools in such a manner that enables us to contribute to township renewal in the province.
Honourable Speaker, we cannot provide quality education and attain the objectives we have set out in this budget unless we make a concerted effort to address our infrastructure backlogs and improve the physical conditions of schools. To this effect, we have provided a total of R120.51 million for infrastructure development in 2010/11 that will be used as follows:
- two new schools in John Taolo Gaetsewe, Bathlaros Special School and Bhankara Bodulong High School, will be completed in May 2010
- Maruping High School that is now 60 percent complete will be completed in this financial year
- Bongani High School at 90 percent completion will be completed this year
- the site hand over for the construction of 20 classrooms at Barkly West Primary School has happened
- 36 new ECD classrooms
- 20 new classrooms
- three science laboratories
- seven media centres
- four administration blocks
- seven ablution blocks will be built
- eight schools and 16 hostels will be repaired
- the sanitation systems at 5 schools and the water supply at a further five schools will be upgraded and
- eight schools will be fenced.
We are acutely aware that the budget for infrastructure and the projects that I have just referred to are not sufficient to address all of our backlogs and needs. In this regard, Honourable Speaker, we will continue to seek additional donor funding to augment our own resources. We must at this point express our gratitude to those donors who have already assisted with the construction of school infrastructure across the province.
R82.35 million will be spent on inclusive education. Inclusive education is one of the key components in education in the Northern Cape. We are concerned about ensuring quality education in all schools and for all our learners. This budget will therefore not only fund special schools but will also be utilised to strengthen Inclusive Education in the districts.
The budget will enable the department to address some acute shortages in therapist and other educational support personnel in districts, training of educators to attend to learners with barriers to learning, procure assistive devices and to increase support to full service schools.
Honourable Speaker, we have also provided R52.10 million for FET colleges. This budget for FET colleges is now allocated as a new conditional grant. In addition, R29.84 million goes to Adult Basic Education.
Honourable Speaker, we have throughout this speech honestly acknowledged our challenges and the shortcomings of the budget. We must however highlight a few more challenges that we will face and tackle head on in this financial year:
- We must strengthen the human resource and administrative capacity of our district officesSeek to bring some relief in the learner-educator ratio used to determine staff establishments
- Release a gazette to fill school based educator and promotion vacancies permanently
- We must address the matter of small and non-viable schools especially in the John Taolo Gaetsewe District and implement our schools rationalisation plan in this district
- We must address the challenge of multi-grade teaching in rural and farm schools
- Improve the general learner performance in ABET and FET colleges
- Promote indigenous languages in public ordinary schools and
- Strengthen our monitoring and support systems to ensure the delivery of quality public education.
We have also said before that this budget represents an opportunity to make fundamental budget corrections and to effect significant re-prioritisation. This obviously cannot happen in one year and we must already signal that the following areas must be corrected still within this MTEF period:
- Allocations for school hostels and learner transport, including special schoolsIncreased allocations to increase the capacity of district offices
- Strengthening our exams and assessment function to cope with the increased demand
- Providing support staff to schools.
We are, Honourable Speaker, mindful of the fact that the allocation to vote four for education was done under extremely difficult and trying economic conditions in the country and in the province. We acknowledge with great gratitude and humility that the executive committee has granted us an increased allocation and the biggest slice of the provincial budget. They have done so in spite of our poor track record over the past years. We are now acutely aware of the responsibility that comes with this trust and the faith they continue to display in us.
We have no choice but to get our act together and to reciprocate this continued trust in the best way possible; improve the quality of our educational outputs, maintain financial discipline, ensure efficiencies across the system and continuously improve our administration!
Honourable Speaker, we have every intention to do so because we know that education in the Northern Cape knows better and deserves better. We have invited to the house today, those who know better and who are winners in our province. We trust that their spirit of winning and enduring will inspire us to greater heights.
Allow me Honourable Speaker to acknowledge retired educators who after more than 30 years of selfless and dedicated service now enjoy a deserved rest. It is they who will constantly remind us of the better that we knew and that we can be better than we are, Ms Mamise Lily Mngoma retired last year after serving as an educator for 38 years and Ms Alice Edith Greef started teaching in 1964 and retired last year after 45 years in education, we salute you!
We also wish to acknowledge the achievement of Kimberley Girls High School who was the only school in the Northern Cape to be voted amongst the Sunday Times top 100 schools in 2009. We acknowledge Diamantveld High School's achievement in winning the Media 24 National School Newspaper competition.
We recognise Franco Haai and Evander Spandiel from Ritchie who were selected for the national under 17 football squad, Cinatia Jaarts and Simone Hendricks from Douglas who represented South Africa in volleyball and Claire Lawrence from Kimberley Girls High School who was selected as a HIP2B Square brand ambassador and who will attend a Leadership Summit at the prestigious Harvard University in the United States of America later this year. We salute all these winners and we are inspired by your achievements.
Allow me, Honourable Speaker, to conclude by thanking the head of department, senior management and all officials of the department, all educators and school based officials for their continued commitment to the provision of quality education, even under the most difficult conditions.
I must extend a very sincere and special word of gratitude and appreciation to the honourable premier, my colleagues in the executive committee, the chairperson of the portfolio committee and its members and all other stakeholders in education for all of your support for education in the Northern Cape and your commitment to assist us in all respects to provide the best quality education to all the learners in the province.
We assure you that together we can achieve quality education for all; education is indeed everybody’s business!
I thank you.
