Honourable Speaker Honourable Premier
Colleagues in Executive Council Honourable Members of the Legislature Accounting Officer and Staff
Organs of Civil Society
Our Social Partners present in this House Distinguished guests
Friends and Comrades
I am grateful and privileged for the opportunity accorded to table the 2017/18 Policy and Budget Speech of the Eastern Cape Department of Education. On behalf of the Department of Education, I am here to (a) Account about 2016/17 performance, (b) Outline the 2017/18 policy and budget priorities, using the allocated amount of R32, 989 billion.
"Hon Speaker, our biggest challenge is the rate at which we are losing teachers in the Province, resulting in an average loss of 3 314 over the period 2011-2016. We tried our best to counter this by issuing Bulletins frequently. In 2016 alone we issued 4 bulletins covering PL1 and promotional posts and employed 2 272 educators between May 2016 and August 2016. We have now developed a web-based database to register and recruit unemployed teachers online in order to fill vacant funded posts in the shortest time possible," said MEC Mandla Makupula during the presentation of Eastern Cape Department of Education Budget and Policy Speech 2017/18 at the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature on 14 March 2017.
However, the Department has agreed to focus on increasing the pipeline of supply of qualified teachers in scarce skills subjects through a deliberate strategy. In 2017/18 the Department will be launching Mathew GoniweTeacher Development Bursary Scheme targeting 200 students that are following a teaching career in Math, Science and other scarce skills. In return, the Department will require graduands to serve the Department for the equal number of funded years, deployable in areas of need as specified by the Department. An amount of R15 million has been set aside to cater for this bursary scheme for 2017/18. Full speech PDF
