United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Director, Dr Mmantsetsa Marope
Esteemed delegates and
Distinguished guests,
A warm welcome to all participants, local and international. Thank you for honouring us with your presence at this important review meeting on the General Education Quality Framework.
As we all know, this meeting is co-hosted by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Department of Basic Education. But, in terms of value, it should contribute to the creation of a better life for all the children, in a world of peace and tolerance. This meeting should help us advance the delivery of better and quality education for all.
We’re meeting here at a critical time when global developments point sharply to the fundamental role of education.
Our backdrop is the current global economic situation, which is quite unsettling, coupled with protests in parts of the globe, and more sharply in the United Kingdom, with many suggesting that such sporadic acts may be symptomatic of social and economic exclusion of some sections of the world population.
This state of affairs, characterised by images of conflict, fear and despair, validates concerns on the capacity of countries to meet the shared education for all goals as envisaged, by 2015.
South Africa is glad to be part of the review process flowing from the High Level Forum on improving general education, which was held in Beijing, in January 2011. We are very grateful to Dr Marope who undertook this important task of planning the review meeting in South Africa.
As you know, the initial forum brought together five large middle-to-high income countries that had almost attained the Education For All goals relating to access to general education.
Common among these countries was also the observation that they had not yet made commensurate progress with respect to the important matter of quality.
Both the Jomtien Declaration of 1990 and the Dakar Framework for Action of 2000, recognised the fact that quality of education is a prime determinant of whether Education For All (EFA) is indeed achieved, or not.
But this I say well aware that quality is a very complex and context-specific concept open to a variety of approaches and interpretations.
In its 2005 Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO identified the following five dimensions of quality that influence the core processes of teaching and learning:
- Learner characteristics: Aptitude, perseverance, school readiness, prior knowledge and barriers to learning.
- Context: Globalisation; economic and labour-market conditions; socio-cultural and religious factors; parental support; peer pressure; public resources that are available for education; competitiveness of the teaching profession in the labour market; national governance and management strategies;time available for schooling and homework; and national standards.
- Enabling inputs: Teaching and learning materials, physical infrastructure and facilities, school governance and human resources: teachers, principals, inspectors, supervisors and administrators.
- Teaching and learning: Learning time, teaching methods, assessment, feedback, incentives and class size.
- Learning outcomes: Literacy, numeracy, life skills, creative and emotional skills, values and social benefits (UNESCO, 2005).
These dimensions appear to be disconnected, yet they are interdependent, thus reminding us always to consider the systemic nature of education.
This conception of quality allows for an understanding of education as a complex system, embedded in a political, cultural and economic context. It is this reality that makes the measurement of education quality a vexed issue.
South Africa has made significant strides towards the attainment of almost all EFA Goals. Already, in 2010, we had achieved:
- An increase in the percentage of five year old children attending an education institution, from 39% in 2002 to approximately 78% in 2009
- Almost all school-age children (seven to 13 years) are enrolled in schools. Overall, 99% were attending education institutions in 2009 compared to 96% in 2002
- Attendance of learners by gender is almost equal for both females and males and
- The proportion of functionally literate adults increased from 70% in 1995 to 79% in 2009.
A greatest challenge facing education in South Africa, and I believe, confronting many other countries as well, relates to quality of education. Related to this is the imperative of improving learning outcomes.
It is this situation that makes this review process the more important.
Our response, in this country, has been to devise an effective strategy for improving quality and building on the gains we have made so far. This is the Action Plan to 2014: Towards the realisation of schooling 2025.
It is South Africa’s first comprehensive long-term sector plan for schools. Much as it extends to 2025, its strength resides in the fact that it sets out clear targets and specifies what needs to be done within the current electoral cycle, which extends to 2014, to turn schooling around.
This Action Plan articulates current challenges facing the sector and corresponding interventions. It is through its careful implementation that we plan to deliver fully on all six goals of Education for All, as agreed to by the international community in Dakar, in 2000.
Allow me to express our gratitude and thanks to UNESCO for its firm commitment to the promotion of the goals of Education for All and the education-related Millennium Development Goals. We also thank the South African National Commission for UNESCO for its hard work.
I would like to wish all participants fruitful discussions over the next three days.
I have no doubt that our efforts will be enriched by international expertise that has been mobilised.
I trust that we will emerge from this engagement with greater clarity and determination to work toward that common goal of quality delivery and enhancement of education.
Every positive move we make helps in closing what the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011 has called the “great distance from the world envisaged by the architects of the Universal Declaration” of Human Rights.
Working together we can do more to “unlock the full potential of education to act as a force for peace”; this we must do in keeping with UNESCO’s Constitution which states that “since wars begin in the minds of men [and women], it is in the minds of men [and women] that the defences of peace must be constructed” (EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011).
I thank you.
Source: Department of Basic Education
