Policy and Budget Speech 2005/06 Presented to the Provincial Legislature by MEC for Education, Siphosezwe Masango

12 April 2005

Honourable Speaker and Deputy Speaker
Honourable Premier, TSP Makwetla
Members of the Executive Council
Honourable Members of the Legislature
Esteemed Leaders of Political Parties
The Revered Traditional Leadership present here
Heads of Departments
The Associations of Parents present here
Organized Labour, Youth and Learner formations
Strategic partners in the Business Community and the entire civil society
Distinguished Guests in your different capacities
Compatriots and Cadres of our glorious Movement

Building a Single National Quality Public Education System that Truly Belongs to All.

Before I present our Policy and Budget Speech, let me acknowledge the presence of two learners who have done us very proud as the people of Mpumalanga Province.

Samukelisiwe Dlamini, a Grade 12 learner from Valencia Combined School for winning the 2004 SADC Secondary School Essay competition. For this achievement, Samukelisiwe had an opportunity of travelling to Mauritius to receive her prize during the official opening of the SADC Summit which was held in August, 2004.

The other learner is Badelisile Lukhele, a learner from Sitintile High School for having been selected to represent South Africa in a UN-sponsored debate which took place in the United States of America in March, 2005.

Sithi kuwe Samukelisiwe no Badelisile ningamaqhawekazi wethu, siyaziqhenya ngani. I beseech you to give them a round of applause.

Madame Speaker, the late President of the African National Congress, O.R. Tambo, a gallant son of the African Continent, in his opening address to the historic Harare Conference, a conference devoted to the plight of children, said: “We meet here today because we recognize that our lives have meaning only to the extent they are used to create social conditions which will make the lives of the children better, happy, full and meaningful.”

Madame Speaker, this wisdom of experience could not have been interpreted otherwise, but only to mean that children are moulded by what society offers them and they plough back into society what society has given to them.

Quite clearly, this is an understanding that the historic People’s Congress had in 1955. It was this very Congress which adopted the Freedom Charter, the people’s document which represented the sum total of our aspirations in all facets of our lives by declaring then “Freedom in our lifetime”.

Surely, the Freedom Charter became a mirror image of a future South Africa that would be established after assumption of power, by those who were inspired by it.

Fifty years ago, the Freedom Charter asserted, that “the doors of learning and culture shall be opened” and this vision has not changed; it is now entrenched in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

The Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of the Republic, instructs us that “Everyone has the right to a basic education; including adult basic education and to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible.”

And indeed, the First Decade of our Freedom and Democracy saw this statement of objectives being set into motion. The doors of learning and culture began to open to all the citizens of this country, and we are still on course to Building a Single National Quality Public Education System That Truly Belongs To All.

Madame Speaker,
Our people have witnessed great progress in the provision of access to quality education for all. Last year, in my submission to this House, I saluted the groundwork laid in the First Decade of Freedom by my predecessors who practically dismantled 19 separate, racial and ethnic education departments operating in the so-called independent states (the TBVC states), Bantustans and the abominable tri-cameral system to create a new single national education and training system that truly belongs to all.

This is a significant contribution gravitating towards a total transformation of our education system.

Sikhulumi Sendlu, lesihloniphekile, kulilungelo leftu kutsi sigiye, sishaye ingadla, sihalalisele luhlelo lwemfundvo loluletfwe nguhulumende wentsandvo yelinyenti, luhlelo lwemfundvo lolungahlukanisi ngebuhlanga noma ngebulili. Sitsi halala ngahulumende wentsandvo yelinyenti halala !

The President of the Republic of South Africa, in his State of the Nation Address, 2005, acknowledges that much ground has been covered in education since 1994 when he said: “We are also confident, given the evidence of progress thus far, that various interventions in the area of education and training, including …… provision of additional support to schools in poor areas, will provide positive results, as planned.”

Surely we need to answer the President’s observations with a renewed commitment and a heightened level of service delivery.

Now is the time, to rise to the occasion with the full realization that our heritage of unity and collectiveness, true to the tradition of the African people, has altered the course of history and proved to the world that we are a winning nation that will not succumb to the legacy of an evil, colonial and apartheid past.

With your permission, Madame Speaker, I now beg leave to exchange an opinion and outline a roadmap on how our Department seeks to consolidate, defend and advance the gains accrued over the past 10 years.

Mma, uSomlomo, ngibawa bonyana isitjhaba singivumele ngazise umbiko wokwabiwa kwemmali zomNyango wezeFundo zanonyaka, 2005/06.

Imali eyabelwe umNyango wezeFundo umnyaka lo ka 2005/06 iyi 5,737 bhiliyoni yama Randi. Lokhu kutjho bonyana ingezwe ngamaphesenti ayi 9,2% nayimedaniswa nomnyaka wemmali odlulileko ka 2004/05.

For this increase of 9.2% when compared to last year, I must, amongst others, thank the MEC for Finance, Madam Mmathulare Coleman, for her sharp and insightful understanding of the competing priorities facing government. Thank you, Madam.

I now invite the House to consider favourably the Department of Education’s Budget Vote breakdown per programme. The proposed allocations are, to a large extent, biased towards the priorities as set out by the following:

The State of the Nation and the State of the Province Addresses.
The Provincial Growth and Development Strategy.
The recommendations from the three Regional Education Izindaba, which we convened in 2004, and were later consolidated and ratified at the Provincial Education Indaba. So, clearly, the people’s voice is quite audible in this budget submission and,
Finally, the latest developments in terms of new education policy imperatives, such as the recapitalisation of the FET sector and the Integrated Quality Management System, to mention but a few.

These priorities should and must enhance the environment conducive to building a quality public education system that truly belongs to all.

Administration

Recognizing that efficient and effective public administration is not only the face of government but also an important vehicle to execute our mandate, we have planned through programme one for 2005/06 to allocate 481.6 million rand.

This will enable us to provide a responsive and vibrant overall management of the education system in the province. High on the agenda will be the development of service standards, which are long overdue. These standards, in line with Batho Pele principles, must contribute towards the realization of a citizen-centred public service and people centred society.

We will also ensure the 100% implementation of the Performance Management Development System and the Integrated Quality Management System as an important step to institutionalize the envisaged service standards.

This allocation should further ensure that Regional and Circuit Offices do have the basic labour-saving device package that is compliant to the latest information technology, including connectivity to e-mail and government intranet by the end of this financial year.

In the current financial year, we will also have to finalize the re-alignment of our organizational structure, in view of the fact that the current structure is no longer able to provide an adequate vehicle for the delivery of the Department’s strategic and statutory obligations. This re-engineering will include improved systems and work processes.

We have to ensure that our Department has the pulse and the helicopter view of the strategic dynamics prevailing, by introducing an Outreach Unit, that will continuously scan the environment within and around the school community.

This detachment, already known as Ayihlome Ifunde, will create sustainability in the line function, assist in transforming dysfunctional education institutions, and promote participation of parents and other stakeholders in the Provincial Schooling System.

Public Ordinary Schools

I hope by now, Honourable Members will be aware that the National Government is currently reviewing the funding model to ensure that schools serving the poor are adequately provided with basic educational resource packages, including analyzing factors leading to the growing cost of education. We hope the review will be concluded during the 2005/06 financial year.

We have in the First Decade of the democratic government ensured that no child is denied access to education on the basis of parental inability to pay school fees. This is signified by the per capita expenditure, which has increased by R 3 700 per learner, as compared to 1994.

This also explains why 85% of the Budget Vote will go directly to schools for personnel and non-personnel expenditure. This translates, in Rands and cents, to 4.886 billion rand.

The thrust of this allocation is to provide public ordinary education from Grade 1 to Grade 12 in accordance with the Constitution and the South African Schools Act, to remunerate 26 562 educators and 5 407 public service staff members.

Non-personnel expenditure will cover infrastructure development, scholar transport, learner and teacher support material, furniture, bridging the literature and digital divide, school nutrition programme and transfer payments for the day to day running of schools.

All this is primarily aimed at building a quality public education system that truly belongs to all.

Madame Speaker, I wish to further highlight the following areas:

Human Resources Management

The Mpumalanga Department of Education has consistently, within the framework of the budget, strived to eradicate, over the last ten years, the backlog in the provisioning of posts to schools as a result of inequitable funding.

We have also strived towards achieving the equitable re-distribution of human resources by systematically transferring excess support staff from advantaged schools to disadvantaged schools in consultation with the Mpumalanga Education Labour Relations Council.

Up to 31 March 2004, a total of 1 456 post level one educators appointed on temporary contract, were appointed permanently in terms of the Provincial ELRC Resolution 1 of 2001 and 2002 respectively.

Infrastructure Development

The President of the Republic has, in two consecutive years in his State of the Nation Addresses, called upon all of us to ensure that as we enter the Second Decade of the People’s State, no learner must still be under a tree and/or conditions unfit for human habitation.

In 2005/06 we will be finalizing the process of updating the School Register of Needs, linked to the Geographic Information System. However, there is still a need for water, sanitation and ablution facilities in some schools.

Recognizing that such poor physical fabric threatens the health of learners and educators alike, our resolve is to increase our offensive against these unacceptable conditions.

Therefore, Madame Speaker, within the margin of the 2005/06 Budget Vote, we plan to provide 626 classrooms, 31 special rooms, 44 administration blocks, 1 839 toilets, 87 schools with fences, 121 schools with clean water, 77 schools with electricity and renovate 1853 classrooms.

We have also planned to upgrade 38 schools with rails and ramps in addition to the fact that all new schools must now have these provisions as part of promoting accessibility of education facilities to differently-abled learners.

Madame Speaker, we estimate an infrastructure backlog of 3.3 Billion Rand. If school construction needs were the only challenge, we would have opted to wipe out all these appalling conditions in one financial year.

However, as a nation, we are also mindful of the fact that we are fighting a social deficit accumulated over many years of colonial and apartheid misrule, and as part of ensuring that we are progressively bridging the physical infrastructure divide between the haves and have nots, the advantaged and the disadvantaged, we have planned to allocate R246.8 million for capital works.

I need to indicate that over the past ten years, the unpredictable migration patterns resulting in urban sprawl and the growth in informal settlements have a net effect of under-utilisation of existing infrastructure in certain areas. This results in classroom overcrowding in some areas and the under-utilisation of resources in other areas, such as farming communities.

There are two practical options at this stage. Firstly, the use of movable classrooms and secondly, the continued provision of scholar transport for learners who have to walk 5km or more to the nearest school.

Scholar Transport

In this financial year, we will be transporting, more or less, 33 187 learners on 507 routes. For this service we have planned to allocate R72.96 million. We will continue to provide scholar transport until an appropriate model and formula for provisioning of school construction needs in our rural settlements, in particular farming communities, is arrived at.

Where feasible, we will continue to merge small schools within reasonable proximity in order to consolidate teaching in proper and adequately resourced learning centres; that is, we will be phasing out one-teacher schools and multi-grade teaching, which have proved to be compromising teaching and learning.

Madame Speaker, our sustained efforts to build a quality public education system that truly belongs to all, should not and cannot be divorced from challenges of under-development, unemployment and the resultant poverty, which have proved to be major barriers in creating an effective schooling environment.

National School Nutrition Programme

Believing that children’s rights must be protected by both the state machinery and a caring society, Government has, within the First Decade of Freedom, initiated a social security net in schools, for children whose effective learning has been grossly inhibited by the pains of hunger.

To defend and advance this noble social plan, we shall allocate 70.235 Million Rand which will provide food for 492 687 primary school learners for 156 school days.

We need to improve efforts to provide every poor learner in our public schools with a complete solid nutritional meal every school day. However, lack of coverage of the secondary school learners is still a problem.

In the next three months, we will be finalizing the appointment of 20 monitors based in the Regional Offices to monitor both the quality and quantity of food given to learners.

As part of the inter-governmental synergy, I will ensure that our Department initiates structured working relations with the Department of Agriculture and Land Administration to promote food gardens in schools.

The Department of Education, as part of government, is equally convinced that aggressively fighting against under-development and poverty will neutralize the impact of the HIV and AIDS pandemic that is ravaging all sectors of our economy.

HIV and AIDS

The social disintegration and breakdown of families, exacerbated by HIV and AIDS, is leading to larger numbers of children being orphaned or in distress. The survey conducted by the Department of Social Services in conjunction with the Department of Education, identified a total of 23 442 orphans in 47.33% of the schools that participated in the survey.

Programmes to combat the spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemic include advocacy through the mass media, schools and community organizations.

As a department, we have ensured that through the Conditional Grant Programme 10.317 Million Rand is set aside to develop and implement Life Skills and HIV and AIDS programmes. Learners must be assisted to make wise choices throughout their lives.

2 000 Educators will be capacitated on care and support programmes for orphans and vulnerable children. Focus will also be placed on procurement of first aid kits for schools as an adherence to policy on universal precautionary measures to make our schools places of safety. However, we all know that the promotion of a healthy life style is at the centre- stage of our endeavours.

Learner and Teacher Support Material

Honourable Speaker, one of the critical areas in the provisioning of education is that of non-personnel re-current funding, something that is felt in a very immediate way, such as the Learner and Teacher Support Material (textbooks and stationery).

These allocations represent inputs that, at the margin, can have a considerable impact on learning. In view of the fact that effective learning in the classroom hinges around this input, amongst others, an amount of 381.068 Million Rand is being allocated for the purchase of Learner and Teacher Support Material for close to 920 000 learners from Grade R to 12.

In addition to this amount, 81.817 Million Rand is being allocated as transfer payments to schools as per their quintile poverty ranking to cover other operational costs.

It should be noted that National Norms and Standards for School Funding, tackles issues of re-dress and equity head-on and give provinces the necessary guidance to distribute their scarce resources in the most equitable, affirmative and effective way.

However, while greater levels of funding are now available, there is a need to significantly enhance the capacity for service delivery across all levels in the Department.

Central to our turnaround strategy, will be our Human Resources Development Strategy.

Human Resources Development

In line with the Provincial Economic Growth and Development Strategy , the Department of Education is committed to accelerate Human Resource Development programmes aimed at building capacity in the key areas of service delivery affecting the social transformation agenda. This includes strengthening and expanding learnership Programmes.

The Mpumalanga Department of Education has budgeted 1% of its entire employees total salary bill towards Skills Development as stipulated by the Skills Development Levies Act.

The total budget for Human Resource Development stands at 24 Million Rand. The implementation of Learnerships has just been vigorously started by the intake of 758 learners in our department. The targeted learnerships are commensurate with the economic growth of the province, which include, inter alia, farm management, wood technology, human resources management, project management, and national professional development for the unqualified and under-qualified educators, including Adult Basic Education (ABET) educators.

The fruits of the Department’s concerted efforts and advocacy campaigns are manifested in the increased participation of educators and schools in the National Teaching Awards and the Premier’s Service Excellence Awards.

Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET)

The Department of Education will always ensure that the doors of learning are increasingly opened to all, including learners in the Adult Basic Education and Training Sector – in our ongoing battle to break the back of illiteracy.

The then President of the ANC, O.R. Tambo, addressing the Congress of the MPLA, in Luanda, December 1977 said:

“We ….. visualize a South Africa in which it will be a duty of the people’s state to ensure that the doors of learning and culture are open to the working people.”

In the light of this visionary guidance, I call upon labour to encourage workers to take part in ABET programmes; business to provide facilities and funding at the workplace for ABET, and community structures to support and mobilize people through literacy campaigns.

As the Department of Education, we have planned to support Adult Learners to form co-operatives in Agriculture and Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises.

We are allocating 73.9 Million Rand, which translates into a 44% increase relative to the last financial year. This budget will also enable qualifying ABET educators in our public Adult Learning Centres to earn a monthly salary determined on a pro rata basis, for the first time. This positive step will assist in professionalizing and stabilizing the ABET sector.

Early Childhood Development

Currently, Madam Speaker, 800 Grade R sites are registered and operational. A further 120 sites will be registered in this financial year.

The integrated plan between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Social Services will be unveiled later in the year. This plan will focus on children from 0 to 4 years.

An amount of 57,79 Million Rand has been allocated to provide Early Childhood Development in accordance with White Paper 5 for public schools, independent schools and for the pre-grade R in community centres.

The challenge we are faced with is the poor governance of ECD Centres, unqualified Grade R educators driving the programme, and the lack of awareness among parents about the importance of ECD in the overall development of a child.

Curriculum Development and Implementation

Madame Speaker, curriculum transformation is the soul of the new education system and the heartbeat of our Human Development Strategy.

The apartheid curriculum that forced us to regurgitate the doctrines of Bantu Education and fundamental pedagogics, that relegated the learner to an empty vessel into which knowledge had to be poured, is now liquidated.

That race-based system has been expunged and replaced by the Outcomes-Based Education System embracing the principles of social justice, human rights and inclusivity.

Honourable Speaker, and Members, would be aware that the revision of Curriculum 2005 has resulted in what is called the Revised National Curriculum Statement, which represents the most liberating element of our education system.

This will, indeed, enable all our children, regardless of their background, to fully realize their potential.

The fundamental question, Madame Speaker, should always be how the Department of Education is performing with regard to its core business, namely, the development and implementation of the curriculum through teaching and learning. This House must get an answer and the nation must be answered too.

Madam Speaker and Honourable Members, barring the 2004 Grade 12 Examination debacle, last year’s Grade 12 pass rate improved by 3.8% and Mpumalanga was the most improved province in the country.

This improvement excludes the 14 schools which were investigated by Umalusi (the Quality Assuror of Grade 12 examinations)

However, I wish to remind the house that on the 29th June 2004 when I introduced my budget debate, I cautioned against the narrow euphoria and educationally skewed concern about Grade 12 results only. No matter what the merits are, the concerns and shock, if there has to be any shock, must show interest in all grades.

The continuous assessment criteria seek to measure the learning outcomes at each grade in our schooling system. And these preceding grades should provide us with early warning signs, so that our intervention programmes and spending patterns may, to a larger extent, be informed by what is happening before Grades 9 and 12 as two major exit points of our schooling system.

The Department does not intend to come to this House, year in and year out, to request budget approval for the whole schooling system yet account on outputs of only one grade. This cannot be right.

Madame Speaker, may I have the honour to present to this House, the summarized version of the provincial academic performance on Grades 3, 6 and 9; the exit points for Foundation, Intermediate and Senior Phases respectively.

Summary of Internal Examination Results – 2004

Grade 3: The exit point for the Foundation Phase 76 828 Learners in Grade 3 were assessed, and of these, 69 166 progressed or were found to be competent. This translates to a 90% aggregate pass for Grade 3’s in the Province.
Grade 6: The exit point for the Intermediate Phase 68 482 Learners were assessed, and out of those assessed, 59 577 progressed to the next grade, giving you an 86,9% aggregate pass rate.
Grade 9: The exit point for the Senior Phase and also the exit point for the compulsory education and training band.

61 387 Grade 9 Learners sat for examinations and only 50 127 learners managed to progress to the next grade. This represents an aggregate success rate of 81,6%.

Although the target is to obtain 100% pass rate in all grades, we have however, noted that learners in the General Education and Training (GET) band are still fairing far better than learners in Grades 10 and 11 in the Further Education and Training (FET) band as they obtained an aggregate pass rates of 58.4% and 56.4%, respectively.

These results show us a pyramid shape as you progress from the foundation phase to secondary level. Madame Speaker, this is the picture of outputs borne out of the inputs this House approved in 2004.

Clearly, this shows that the weak link is in our systemic equation and I have directed that, within the next three months, a three-year turn around strategy be developed with great emphasis on Grades 10 and 11.

Madame Speaker, I may have to highlight some intervention programmes, especially those with financial implications.

Winter schools for both educators and learners have proposed budgets of 2.5 Million Rand and 2.3 Million Rand respectively.

From the Conditional Grant, 500 Thousand Rand will be used to manage the writing of common papers for both the half-yearly and preparatory examinations for Grade 12 learners.

To ensure that the quality and standard of teaching and learning is uplifted to the required level, we have appointed cluster leaders in all learning areas for 2005. An amount of 5 Million Rand has been set aside to achieve this endeavour.

Successive colonial regimes from the Dutch, the British, the Batavian and apartheid policies deliberately distorted our history and other heroic achievements of the African people.

Now is the time, to provide to our schools and our libraries history books written by ourselves, about ourselves, for ourselves. A history that will define exactly who we are.

In this financial year, we have planned to allocate 25 Million Rand, that is R3 million more as compared to the past financial year, to bridge the literature divide and ensure that our school libraries expose learners, not just to the culture of reading, but also to the progressive material that will tell the story to this generation and generations to come on how we, as a country and the continent, have contributed to the evolution of knowledge, humanity and human society.

Given these limited resources, we further need to mobilize and invite business and other stakeholders to rally behind this cause and assist in our sustained efforts to build a quality public education system that truly belongs to all.

Public-Private Partnership

Madame Speaker, the compelling need to continuously act as a cohesive force was eloquently expressed by the Honourable Premier of this Province, TSP Makwetla, in his State of the Province address when he said:

“Parents, business, Makgosi/Amakhosi, church leaders and communities are called upon to join hands and make the education enterprise everybody’s business”. This clarion call by the Premier is bearing fruit.

Over and above the other partnership initiatives, we have also joined hands with the business community through the Mpumalanga Education Development Trust, in improving the quality of education and training in the province by focusing on infrastructure and Human Resources Development.

The business patrons involved are, among others, ABSA, Standard Bank, Sasol, BHP Billiton, Eskom, Samancor Foundation, Transnet, Anglo Platinum, Mondi and Zenex.

We also have Multichoice providing training through satellite link and Intranet in Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) implementation.

The National Minister of Education, Cde Naledi Pandor, has made a call; a call I fully support, that educators and parents should encourage learners to take Mathematics and Physical Science at Higher Grade. This is an important entry point to critical fields in the National and Global Economies.

We hereby enjoin the Honourable Members, parents and all persons of influence to demystify Mathematics and Science, because our country and the world need more technologically-schooled citizens.

Old Mutual, Protec and Denel are currently assisting with Mathematics and Physical Science programmes for learners. We thank these companies for their worthy investment.

Let me further mention some international partnerships we have with countries outside our borders, such as Japan, Canada, USA, Germany and within our African continent.

Currently, we are engaging these partners to extend their valued support to FET colleges.

FET Colleges

Our economy requires more technicians in the fields of Information and Computer Technology, Agricultural Product Technology, Environmental Engineering, Project Management, Hospitality and Energy.

Whilst we encourage our learners with reasonable potential to go through universities, we must guard against generating knowledge carriers whose labour market potential is zero.

I needed to paint this picture because I want to emphasis the role of FET colleges in our economy.

FET college programmes must then be aligned to national strategies on Human Resource Development, Skills Development, Provincial Growth and Development Strategy.

Furthermore, we will embark on a vigorous drive to establish relationships between FET colleges, business industries and other critical sectors of our provincial economy.

To this end, we have planned to allocate R114.247 million to this endeavour.

Another exciting development is that the Nkangala FET College is now ISO (International Standards Organization) accredited, which puts it among the first, if not the first, in the whole of South Africa to attain such accreditation. This is an international accreditation recognized worldwide for production excellence. Our Province must take pride in this achievement !

Parallel to FET colleges, we have the Mpumalanga Regional Training Trust as a public entity attached to the Department of Education, to deliver on technical, entrepreneurial, management and leadership skills training and placement of trainees into employment.

An amount of R 21 million has been set aside for this.

Our endeavour to open the doors of learning and culture to all extends to the following categories of schools:

Public Special Schools

An amount of 77.368 Million Rand is to be allocated to provide compulsory public education in accordance with the South African Schools Act, White Paper 6 on Inclusive Education and the Child Justice Bill.

Independent Schools

10.063 million Rand is to be allocated to support registered independent schools catering for communities as a complement to public schooling and to ensure that agreed quality standards are maintained.

Madame Speaker, the cornerstone of every government institution is good governance.

Promotion of Good School Governance

In the past decade we successfully reviewed the operations of school governance. Apartheid governance and funding of public schools, based on illegitimate power relations, has been shredded and replaced by statutory, democratically elected governing bodies with parents playing the leading role with elected Representative Council of Learners being mandatory. We are indeed marching on the road towards self-managing schools.

The norms and standards for school funding, provided by the National Education Policy Act 27 of 1996, becomes a bedrock for us to realize this vision.

As Honourable Members would be aware, all our schools have been declared and gazetted as Section 21 schools. This then places, on us an enormous responsibility in terms of continuous capacity building required. We have allocated R 1 million for this purpose.

Madame Speaker, whilst we celebrate notable gains registered over the past ten years, there are still enormous practical challenges as we usher in the second decade of our democracy and freedom.

Synopsis of Challenges

The fact that only 84.3% of the school-going age learner population between the age of 6 and 18 years attended school in 2004 is a worrying factor, and begs me to ask where the other 15.7% is.

I reiterate that no learner must be denied access to education on the basis of the parents inability to pay school fees, and if the reasons have anything to do with parental negligence, we may have to start exploring an enforcement of a provision of the South African Schools Act, in collaboration with the MEC for Safety and Security, and bring to book parents who deny their children a Constitutional Right to education.

Sithi kini Bazali bonke abantwana abanikezwe ilungelo labo lokufunda !

Batswadi ba rena, bana kamoka abaye sekolong, ke tukelo ya bona !

Secondly, we are aware that there are still some school SGB’s who are all out to abuse the provisions of our statutes to devolve power to the people, by using language and other fly by night technical reasons to exclude other learners. This must stop !

Madame Speaker, I have been entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring the maximum utilization of the state resources to build quality public education that truly belongs to all.

To this end, I will be convening shortly a special meeting, with schools identified to be lacking the courage to support government in its transformation of the education system.

Of further concern, is the high repetition rate, especially in the FET band, leading to unmanageable classrooms. Presently, there is no consistent policy implementation across provinces in this regard.

The national trend, however, is that at the very least, every learner must be given a second chance. I am raising these specific challenges because the number of learners is the principal cost-driver in education.

Madame Speaker, let us always remind ourselves that “a country that does not care for it’s youth does not deserve it’s future”.

Ayihlome Ifunde !