Honourable Speaker
Honourable Minister
Honourable Members
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Honourable speaker. Fifty years ago, in the year that Chief Albert Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first for South Africa and Africa, and which he magnanimously received on behalf of Africa, he had penned an article titled “If I was Prime Minister”. With regard to education he stated, and I quote, that “Education is a paramount unifying factor in building consciousness and pride – a healthy community spirit. In my non-racial democratic South Africa there can be no question of a different system of education for different racial groups”.
He spoke also of free education at a primary stage, later to matric and a generous system of bursaries and loans to students at universities. He moreover spoke of free education at technical and trade schools levels. Special efforts would be made to remove illiteracy. He further spoke about the demand of multi-racial schools to develop common patriotism and national solidarity.
Chief Albert Luthuli, former President of the African National Congress, would have been proud that we have one system of education for all our citizens. He would have been delighted to discover that some 8 million children attend no-fee schools, a destitute learner is by law exempt from paying fees and some 10 million children receive a nutritious meal daily. I imagine he would have been thrilled at the more than 1 billion rand allocated for bursaries to students wanting to study at tertiary institutions and the exemption of fees in Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges and Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).
I do believe he would be overjoyed that more than 15 million adults became functionally literate and numerate in the past three years owing to our Kha ri Gude programme, and our schools are gradually becoming more integrated.
Yet Chief Luthuli would have discovered as he criss-crossed our land that notwithstanding our enormous gains, so much more has to be done to overcome the huge disparities that we must confront as a result of the legacies of the past. He would, as we do, understand that we cannot talk about quality and access without speaking to equity and that, to achieve our goal of quality education, we have to fund and resource our schools differently in order to address the stark disparities in our system of education.
Chief Albert Luthuli would have been further surprised by the nature of our world which is driven by information and communication technology.
Are you aware that:
- South Africa has 3.8 million Facebook users
- 800,000 people are using Twitter
- 10 million use MXiT
- 6.8 million access the Internet using their cell phones, 5 million of those also access using their PC
- There are 51 million SIM cards in the system (20% on contract)
Our learners live in a world that is increasingly driven by information and communication technology. It is a world that is fast changing and interconnected. It requires high levels of skills and competencies in order to meet the needs of the digital age. We need to focus on how best we can prepare our young people to meet the challenges of a world in which they need to be creative, innovative, digitally adept and adaptable. Alvin Toffler states: The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
Honourable Speaker,
One of the main challenges we face in education is how we use our children’s digital skills in furthering our educational goals. We recently entered the world of social media as a way of mobilising our young people, particularly the Class of 2010 around achieving their goals.
The department has tapped into mediums such as Facebook, Twitter and Mxit to allow for this process to gradually get off the ground. These platforms have allowed the department to communicate instantaneous information, allowing for topical issues to be attended to in real time. The new Class of 2011 portal has been well received with well over 65 000 learners having added the Department of Basic Education Class of 2011 contact on Mxit.
Information and Communications technology(ICT) must be integrated into the curriculum in the 21st century. Further, ICT must be used for e-learning, especially for distant learning and teacher development.
In order to prepare our learners for the world of work in a technologically driven age we must continue to focus on mathematics, science and technology education. Our country continues to face a major challenge in terms of a shortage of high level skills in engineering, health, actuarial science, etc for which maths and science are gateway subjects.
The Dinaledi School project supports selected schools in historically poor and rural areas in order to significantly increase the participation and performance of learners, especially African and girl learners, in mathematics and physical science.
It is gratifying to note that the 2010 National Senior Certificate results show a marked improvement in mathematics and physical science.
Dinaledi schools contributed 47 760 of the 263 034 learners who wrote Mathematics in the 2010 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations, with 27 109 (57%) of these Dinaledi learners achieving a pass. Dinaledi learners also accounted for 32% of the total number of learners who achieved more than 50% for Maths.
In physical science, 36 861 of the 205 364 NSC candidates were at Dinaledi schools, and of these 21 925 achieved a pass. More than a third of these candidates achieved between 60 to 69%. Yet those schools make up less than 9% of our high schools.
Analysis of the results show 57% of learners passing mathematics in Dinaledi schools in the 2010 NSC examinations, while 59% of candidates passed physical science, both well above the national average of both of these subjects. This provides further confirmation that the system is on track to achieving its objective of improving maths and physical science results.
In this financial year we will continue to strengthen the Dinaledi Schools project, but more importantly ensure that we make certain that the three areas that we identify as critical enablers namely teachers development, text books and extra tuition (which speaks to the TTT of the President) is expanded to all schools.
We will also continue to work in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology in respect of maths and science Olympiads, Sci-bono centres as hubs for teacher development and learning discovery.
Honourable Speaker,
We continue to strengthen our efforts to address key health and social barriers to learning in order to promote effective teaching and learning. Early intervention programmes are key to address health barriers to learning. The School Health Screening Programme was implemented through two School Health Weeks conducted in 2010. The programme targeted 50 000 Grade 1 learners in quintile 1 schools in the 18 priority health districts. Almost three times that number of children was reached. In 2011, the School Health Screening Programme will again be rolled out to Grade 1 learners in all Quintile 1 primary schools. We should aspire to have a nurse in each school, to promote preventative rather than curative health care.
The department has developed a new Integrated Strategy on HIV and AIDS, 2012 to 2016 launched on 7 March this year to respond to the most recent trends and evidence on the HIV epidemic. The new strategy offers a comprehensive response to HIV and AIDS, with prevention, treatment, care and support as central pillars.
Part of the promotion of a healthy life style is the renewed focus on mass participation in sport in schools. The Ministers of Basic Education and Sports and Recreation have agreed on the need for an integrated schools sports plan for implementation in this financial year.
The plan identifies areas of implementation. Basic Education’s emphasis is on Physical Education (PE) and School Leagues. The curriculum already specifies PE as a specific subject with dedicated time within the time table. Further teacher training for PE and sport will occur in partnership with Supersport and the Red Cap Foundation. Through this programme we are aiming to ensure mass participation of all learners in sporting activities at school level. We are reviving the traditional Wednesdays and Fridays school sports leagues as well.
In terms of introduction of school leagues, four codes have been identified together with Sports and Recreation South Africa and Federations for implementation this year. These are football, cricket, rugby and netball. The choice of these specific codes aims to build on the impetus created by the World Cup events that South Africa participates in. More codes will be added as the system matures. A multi year plan is also currently being developed to ensure sustainable implementation.
The intensification of our school sports plan has been made possible to a great extent through the partnerships with sporting organisations and other stakeholders. The sterling work of the Dreamfields project, with the support of its sponsors, ensures that many of our primary schools now have football kits and playing fields. Dreamfields has also been instrumental in starting leagues in primary schools. Adidas has provided football kits for secondary schools worth more than a million rand. Love Life Games has agreed to incentivise leagues from a municipal level. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is playing a vital role in coach development and the donation of 190 900 balls for schools. Supersport will flight all levels of our league tournaments.
It is through this kind of commitment and partnership to our youth and through a focussed sports development plan that we will definitely achieve great heights on the international sports arena.
As part of our efforts to make school environments safe, the Department of Basic Education has entered into a collaborative partnership with the South African Police Service (SAPS) and has identified critical areas of intervention. In 2011 the department aims to ensure that 1 000 schools per province be linked with local police stations and that functional safe school committees and reporting mechanisms will be established in these schools. School-based crime prevention programmes will be implemented.
Honourable Speaker,
In 2011, we continue to call on all South Africans to rise to the call of Hands up 4 Education: Education is everybody’s business and invest in South Africa’s future.
I thank you.
Source: Department of Basic Education
