A Motshekga: Re-opening of schools for 2009 academic year

13 January 2009

Good morning to you all and compliments for the New Year and best wishes to
you and your families for 2009!

Thank you very much for accepting our invitation and coming this morning.
The purpose of this interaction is to provide you with an in-depth report of
the state of the department's readiness to provide quality education to
learners in Gauteng and also accept in our system the youngest citizens of the
province.

Admissions

Every year, our admission team engages in a massive advocacy programme that
seeks to mobilise our communities to register learners in public schools before
end of September. This exercise involves adverts in both newspapers and radio,
announcements in community meetings, council meeting, ward meetings, etc, yet
after all these efforts, we still have parents who register their learners as
late as when we will be re-opening schools tomorrow,14 January. This puts
tremendous pressure on our schools as they would have planned for learners that
our already registered last year by end of September.

Preliminary figures show that there will be a one percent growth in learner
enrolment for this academic year. They will be placed. No learner will not be
afforded learning space in Gauteng and we will be working with our schools and
school governing bodies (SGBs) to ensure that this happens.

We will place officials from head office and districts in schools to ensure
that there is smooth first day of schooling and to deal with any eventualities.
There are pressure areas which have been identified (see attached report) and
in providing relief to the schools in the areas, once again the department will
provide mobile classrooms.

The opening of 13 schools in the following areas will provide further
relief: Bramfischerville, Buhlepark, Daveyton, Vereeniging, Hammanskraal,
Soshanguve South, Roodekop, Tamboville, Pretoria Inner-city, Diepsloot, Phumula
Gardens, Ebony Park and Vlakfontein.

Learner teacher support material (LTSM)

To date, + 99 % schools have received their LTSM and this includes the 13
new schools that will be opening their doors this month. There were some delays
but
I must commend the schools as they placed their orders well on time. There has
been a great improvement in the prosecution of this function over years. The
department has spent a total of R 424 million for this academic year.

Also of note is that there will be educators in front of learners as our
post provision ensured that schools filled up their posts well on time, this
illustrate that co-operation between school management, unions, and school
governing bodies for the benefit of our children.

Learner support

The department will continue to supply meals to our learners. The schools
nutrition programme has been one of our successful ways of ensuring that our
learners do not go hungry whilst learning and that they should not be
distracted by hunger while being taught. A total of 542 171 learners will
benefit from the programme and an additional number of learners are expected on
the as it is extended to secondary schools.

The department will provide scholar transport to learners who stay more
than
five (5) kilometres from their nearest school. 42 000 learners will be on our
scholar transport this academic year.

The No Fee School Policy is beginning to be well understood by our schools
and SGBs. We are still rolling on the quintile three as we have covered all the
quintile one and two schools.

Intervention on underperforming schools

Of the 139 schools that underperformed in 2007, I am proud that 100 of them
managed to get out of the danger zone. This indicates that our intervention
programme really works. This year, we will again work with the unfortunate
schools who found themselves performing well under the provincial norms. The
26% schools will have to be subjected to a more rigorous and school specific
intervention programme that will look at the management, governance and
curriculum delivery.

We will be working and consulting with key Stakeholders in managing and
refining some of the proposed intervention proposals. During 2008, we conducted
universal testing of learner attainment in grade three and Grade six. We are
currently dealing with validation and analysis using the performance of
learners in schools.

We will intervene to improve the literacy and numeracy competence of
learners in the foundation and intermediate phase. We will continue to
intensify our literacy programme by it into our district programmes. During
2009, we will expand and intensify our numeracy strategy and challenge.

Conclusion

I am satisfied that the Gauteng Department of Education is ready to roll out
a red carpet for our young citizens tomorrow as we open the 2009 academic
year.
The education environment is intact and my officials have undertaken to ensure
that the first day is as smooth as possible. I will be visiting a number of
schools and my office will provide details of the visits and you are most
welcome as always to come along and witness the good work done by our schools
and educators.

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Education, Gauteng Provincial Government
13 January 2009
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government (http://www.education.gpg.gov.za)