Keynote address by Western Cape Education MEC Cameron Dugmore, 22nd Annual Convention of the Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants of Southern Africa (AABASA), Cape Town

Victor Sekese, National President
Sipho Phakathi, General Secretary
Nicolette Jacobs, Western Cape Chairperson of AABASA
Other senior members and officials of AABASA
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

Thank you for the honour to address your 22nd Annual Convention, thank you for choosing Cape Town. I trust that those delegates, who have not yet fully experience the beauty of Cape Town, will get an opportunity to do so in the next day or two. I am sure my Premier (Ebrahim Rasool) has this morning welcomed you, but I want to welcome you, again, nevertheless.

In 1953, Hendrik Verwoerd, chief architect of apartheid, stood up in Parliament and posed the question: "What is the point of teaching a bantu child mathematics when he cannot use it in practice? I will reform education so that natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them."

At that time Verwoerd was minister of education in the nationalist government and his view was that as blacks were never going to be allowed to compete economically with whites, their education need fit them only for menial jobs. Thus, as we were on the brink of the 1990 liberation breakthrough, according to the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, of the 163 800 professionals working in the field of science and technology then, only one percent were black, which is no surprise of course.

Like all the other sector of the economy, the chartered accounting (CA) profession is growing strongly and its business is becoming increasingly complex, but the industry experiences shortage of high-level skills, especially from among black South Africans. Our own provincial micro economic analyses confirm that there is a dire shortage of engineers, chartered accountants, financial and technical skills that pose a serious threat to growth expectations in this province.

According to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the rapid increase in the demand for CAs was found to extend beyond the financial-services industry. Employers in various sectors have realised that the high-level skills of CAs could be used in a diverse range of functions, including strategic planning and the monitoring of productivity. This realisation has contributed to chartered accounting being classified as a super-growth occupation (HSRC 1999:52).

About one-tenth of organisations surveyed, referred to difficulties experienced in recruiting black managers and professionals. The researchers came to the conclusion that the earlier exclusion of blacks from professional and managerial positions was having a serious effect on the availability of skills. Not only are policies on affirmative action forcing employers into unhealthy competition for these skills, but the total pool of experienced high-level human resources also appears to be too small to fulfil the current need of the country (HSRC 1999:118-120).

From figures provided to my office from leading members of the industry (SA Instituted of Chartered Accountants) there is a total of 26 389 Chartered Accountants in South Africa, of which 3 262 are black, including African, Coloured and Indian. Of these 6 389 (24%) are women, and specifically 299 African women, 645 Indian women and 209 Coloured women. Compare this to 5 225 white women CAs and 17 866 white males.

The low female representation also has a lot to do with perceptions at school level, where female learners are not encouraged to study mathematics, science, accountancy or technology related subjects. I am sure you know the figures by now, and clearly it tells us that the legacies of Verwoerd still run deep. The Premier has probably already addressed you on the vision of this provincial government to make the Western Cape a Home for All. To arrive at this vision, we have adopted an economic development strategy, Ikapa Elihlumayo to grow and share the Cape.

As one of the lead strategies, which underpin Ikapa Elihlumayo, we as education have been tasked with the Human Capital Development Strategy, with a focus on youth. When former United States of America (USA) President Bill Clinton was campaigning for the Presidency, he remarked about a question put to him: "it's about the economy, stupid!" Similarly, for us it's about the curriculum.

Therefore, one of the key objectives of our Human Capital Development Strategy is to increase participation and success rates of our youth in Further Education Training (FET) colleges and higher education institutions, especially for learners from poor families. And in this regard we have to do a lot of hard work to improve on the quality of the passes of our matric learners.

The challenge that we faced prior to 1990 still remains and that is to create an education and training system that ensures learners are able to realise their full potential and participate meaningfully in the economy, locally and globally. The Senior Certificate (SC) examination, or matric as it is popularly known, plays a crucial role in the South African education system at the moment. It marks the culmination of twelve years of schooling, and it is the main exit point from the schooling system.

The Senior Certificate is the most popular determinant of access to Higher Education and increasingly, though to a lesser extent, to the world of work. As a result of its 'high stakes' nature, the Senior Certificate examinations attract a great deal of public interests. Therefore, in terms of our analyses of the Western Cape matric results in the last few years; just above 50% of ex-CED school learners received endorsements; whereas for ex- House of Representatives (HOR) learner it was about 13%; and ex- Department of Education and Training (DET) learners almost five percent!

Of the 10 144 African learners who wrote the matric certificate in 2005 only 2,8% passed Accountancy on the higher grade that means 240 learners! For Mathematics on the higher grade 3,9% passed, which is 395 learners and 4,3% passed Physical Science on the higher grade, which is 436 learners!

The same applies for coloured learners in these subjects. Of the 18 772 who wrote the Senior Certificate Examinations, passed Accountancy on the higher grade (1,126 learners), 4,9% passed Mathematics on the higher grade (919 learners) and 4,7% passed Physical Science on the higher grade that is 882 learners!

On the other hand, the results of white learners in this regard are quite extraordinary when one does comparative analyses. Of the 8 795 white learners who wrote, 21,3% passed Accountancy on the higher grade, 30,2% passed Maths on the higher grade and 26,7% passed Physical Science on the higher grade.

There had been some marginal increases in the quality of the 2006 matric results though: 79 more learners sat Maths Higher Grade last year and of the 4 741 candidates who wrote Science on the Higher Grade,4 053 passed: this is 688 more learners than in 2005.

However, white candidates continue to exceed African and Coloured candidates substantially and the location of success of even black candidates is in the former model-C schools environment. These statistics raise serious questions about how we deploy our resources and the progress of our policies.

I also want to share with you some key findings of the latest study of Grade 3 performances in the reading, writing and comprehension skills of our learners, undertaken by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) in October and November last year. The pass rate for Grade 3 learners in literacy has improved from 39,5% in 2004 to 47,7% in 2006, an increase of 8,2%. This is an improvement of 12,2% over the three testing periods. But whilst there has been a significant improvement in the levels of literacy, the findings show our children are still struggling with mathematics. The results of the numeracy study reflects a decline of 6,5% from 37,3% to 31% and we are not happy with this. Out of a total of 82 879 learners at 1 086 schools, the overall performance is not yet satisfactory, the improvement is encouraging, and shows that special interventions to improve results can work. However, 47,7% is still too low.

This research forms part of our strategy to improve literacy and numeracy in our schools. The results are enabling us to identify challenges and ways in which to meet these challenges. In the long term, we will only improve the throughput rate in our schools if we build a solid foundation in literacy and numeracy in primary schools.

Schools in poor areas continue to struggle, although there are many examples of schools that have improved results, mainly in literacy. Some have improved results in both literacy and numeracy. We are studying examples of success closely, to find out what they did to improve results, despite poor circumstances. These examples of improvement in schools in poor communities indicate that effective teaching and learning depends not only on available resources, but more importantly, also a great deal on school management and leadership.

Our number one priority in education is to ensure that our learners can read, write and calculate at levels required by the curriculum, especially in primary school. If we can get this right, then the rest will largely take care of itself. The WCED has therefore launched a major literacy and numeracy strategy that seeks to build learner performance in these fields, focusing essentially on the Foundation and Intermediate phases.

The strategy is based on six programmes, namely Teacher Support and Development, Changes to classroom practice, Early Childhood Development, Advocacy, Family and Community Learning, Research, Monitoring and Support and Co-ordination and Sustainability.

The strategy has three co-dependent features, namely, support for school-based teaching and learning, with special attention to the language of teaching and learning support for family literacy and attention to various critical success factors. Just in this week we have announced details of our Language Transformation Plan. This plan will promote six years of mother-tongue-based bilingual education and envisages that all learners in the Western Cape will by the end of Grade 9 have some basic conversational trilingualism.

Research has indicated clear evidence that learners need a minimum of six years of tuition in their mother tongue in order to achieve enough language skills to cope with the linguistic challenge of learning through the medium of a second language. We have set up 16 project schools, which have enthusiastically adopted this policy and which are already reporting obvious changes in classroom behaviour. They report that the learners are far livelier in class and their academic performance is improving. Evaluators have also noted not just an increase in learner self-esteem, but also an increase in educator self-esteem.

All eyes will be on these schools later in the year when they will write, for the first time, the WCED Grade 6 Assessment Tests in isiXhosa. Schools are reportedly looking forward to improved scores on the Numeracy tests and to demonstrating that their problem has not been with Numeracy as such, but with the language of assessment.

Another outstanding feature of our Literacy-Numeracy Strategy is the employment of 510 Teaching Assistants at 160 schools, to help improve the reading and mathematics skills of children in the Foundation Phase. Due to its initial reports indicating that the Teaching Assistants were making a difference, the department decided to continue with the project. Taking into consideration that the piloting was only from March to November last year, the intervention period was too short to see a huge increase in the literacy and numeracy levels in the 2006 Grade 3 assessment results.

Criteria for allocating TAs included schools in disadvantage areas in nodal development zones, schools generally in poor areas, under-performance in literacy and numeracy, schools where learners are not learning in their home languages and schools that actively help learners with learning difficulties. So successful and popular has the Teaching Assistant project been, that National has now included it formally included it in the overall career path of the teaching profession. I believe this was an exciting project, and we have learned about how best to provide support where it is needed most.

Some other interventions to increase our mathematical intellectual capital include expanding the number of Dinaledi schools to 45, and we are now even planning to increase this number again. The Dinaledi schools form part of a national programme to improve the performance of high school learners in poor communities in maths, science and technology, and have as its primary focus areas the development of teachers, learner support and the provision of resources.

In addition to the national Dinaledi schools initiative, we in the province have also established eight Focus Schools, specialising in Maths, Science and Technology (MST), to further improve access to these subjects for learners from poor communities with aptitudes in these fields. Besides the establishment of focus and special schools, the WCED has also been actively promoting Mathematics in both primary and secondary schools by annually having a Mathematics focus week. Schools are encouraged to plan activities to celebrate Mathematics Week.

Primary and High schools are involved in activities such as:

* Mathematics games afternoons
* Association for Mathematics Education of South Africa (AMESA) provides a * Mathematics Challenge for Grade 4 to 7 and Soduku Competitions
* Mathematics model building
* Mathematics Quizzes and Olympiads, etc.

Dinaledi and MST schools are given special support and encouraged to participate in Mathematics Olympiads organised by University of Cape Town (UCT). Learners in these schools are further supported by extending them the opportunity to participate in extra Mathematics tuition over weekends, winter and spring schools. Special projects are co-ordinated within Dinaledi schools to ensure greater participation and success in mathematics, such as the Mathematics Tutorial Programme that supports underachieving and "at risk" learners.

The Numeracy Consolidation Project focuses on GET and is aimed at ensuring that learners entering high schools are properly prepared for high schools mathematics. The programme is based on a thorough baseline assessment of learners and a strategy to ensure that learners possess the mathematical concepts and skills that are required. Many learners have a fear of Mathematics, hence a project aimed at addressing the Mathematics phobia within young primary learners.

In addition to the Dinaledi and MST Focus Schools, there are also schools that form part of our general focus school programme, with 28 focus schools altogether the other focus areas being engineering and technology, Arts and Culture and Business, Commerce and Management (BCM).

We have been, and continue to provide mathematics, science and technology kits, supported by teaching materials and lesson plans for teachers across all the grades in all our schools. The WCED has increased the number of bursaries for student teachers progressively in recent years to 96 this year, for those intending to teach mathematics and science.

More than 100 schools are participating in the WCED's Khanya's Maths Schools Project, which is using technology to support teaching and learning in mathematics. Two interventions, which we are particularly proud of, are the two special schools, focusing on mathematics, science and technology, mainly for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds.

They are the Centre of Science and Technology (COSAT) in Khayelitsha and the Cape Academy of Mathematics, Science and Technology in Constantia. Both achieved excellent matric results in 2006. Our Cape Academy's first cohort of matrics (of 2006) has produced no less than eight students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, who have enrolled as chartered accountants or in other financial services related courses, of which one, in fact just this morning, has left to study financial mathematics at the Wesley College in the United States of America.

Our efforts at improving learner performance in maths, science and technology have taken on an even greater sense of urgency now that maths is a compulsory subject in both General Education and Training (GET) and Further Education and Training (FET) in schools. We have also made maths a key element of our new programmes in FET colleges.

The implementation of the National Curriculum Statement in the Foundation Phase in 1997 has seen the introduction of a new Learning Area, namely Economic and Management Sciences (EMS), with the main focus on entrepreneurial knowledge skills, but also management, including financial skills, which all learners in the GET phase do.

A practical, hands-on approach in establishing an elementary Entrepreneurial Literacy in the foundation phase focuses on instilling an entrepreneurial spirit, attitudes and abilities and the practical, very basic implementation of entrepreneurship in the local environment, and the development of personal entrepreneurial habits and talents. This culminates in the Foundation phase (Grade 3) when the learners apply their different entrepreneurial, financial and management functions in the context of a classroom business.

Market days in the primary school, for example, include selling of home-made products, products made from recycled materials, staging of art and music performances have now become an integral part of all primary schools. In the Intermediate phase the curriculum focuses, amongst others on the management of classroom projects, the management of production and basic consumer and financial skills.

At the senior phase level (Grade 7 to 9) the curriculum further develops the focus on Entrepreneurship within learners regarding the role of the entrepreneur, market research and feasibility studies, including financial feasibility, before starting a business. At this stage experience has shown that quite number learners have started their own, viable businesses, and are keen to participate at the regular school Market days held at most schools.

The WCED has provided Entrepreneurship Learner workbooks and teacher guides to all the EMS teachers schools, providing hands-on step by step guidance ("My Business") and practical opportunities to be able to do creative market research, idea generation, strength, weakness, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, an the writing of business plans for them to start feasible businesses, individually or collaboratively.

At the FET level (Grade 10 to 12) the subject formerly known as Business Economics has been transformed in the new subject Business Studies, and implemented as part of the NCS in Grade 10 in 2006 and currently implemented in Grade 11. This subject is 75% new and is being experienced as totally enjoyable and useful by the new cohort of learners.

Entrepreneurship is the sole focus of this new subject, which aims to ensure that learners:

* acquire an apply essential business knowledge, skills and principles to productively and profitably conduct business in changing business environments* create business opportunities, creatively solve problems and take risks, respecting the rights of others and environmental sustainability
* apply basic leadership and management skills and principles while working with others to accomplish business goals
* be committed to developing themselves and others through creating real business opportunities and ventures.

A number of partnerships have been forged between the National Department of Education, the WCED and business institutions to provide exciting competitions for learners to exhibit their business plans and business ventures. For example, the annual WCED/Cape Regional Chamber of Commerce Technopreneur competition has already provided the springboard for new innovations of learners to put them on the road of financial independence.

Similarly there are many other joint initiatives with Santam, the City of Cape Town, Department of Economic Development and Tourism, Afrikaanse Handels Instituut and many other partners. Schools are also rewarded for excellent performance in Senior Certificate Exams for Mathematics. Schools such COSAT and Cape Academy have benefited tremendously from these and other interventions which enabled them to maintain Mathematics High Grade pass rates of well over 75 %. Overall promotion of Mathematics in the province takes the form of annual conferences held with the specific aim of promoting effective teaching of Mathematics.

In the last number of years the Western Cape has consistently been performing well in its matric results, achieving above the national average. However, it has masked some of the deep-seated skewed outcomes as seen by the maths, science and accountancy results of black learners that I have illustrated earlier.

We can and must do better. I have therefore insisted on schools setting targets for 2007. Schools had to define the targeted outcomes, and then conduct the steps needed to convert these targets into realities. It's no good setting impossible targets, and it's no good setting targets that are window-dressing. The targets are for overall pass rate, endorsements, increased maths and science passes, reduced drop-out rate, as well as improved literacy and numeracy performances. These targets have been formally signed off by the school governing bodies, the Representative Councils of Learners (RCLs) and principals.

With regards to the targets for Dinaledi and MST schools, the number of Maths and Science HG passes between 2004 and 2006 has shown a trend that translates into an increase of HG passes of between five percent and eight percent.

Last year we enrolled a total of 894 maths higher grade matric learners in our Dinaledi and MST Focus Schools alone, of which 585 passed. This year we have enrolled 1 055 higher grade matric learners and we project a pass rate of 757, which represents an increase of 164 enrolments and a targeted increase of 172 passes. For Science we have enrolled 903 higher grade matric learners in 2006 compared to this year's 1 075, which is an increase of 172 learners. Whereas last year we recorded 670 passes, our target for this year is 855, which is 185 more learners.

Clearly these numbers are small, but not insignificant. They represent a silent determination on the part of government to steadily ensure that the intellectual and skills gap is increasingly narrowed. But the challenges in the provisioning of education and skills are huge. As government and as a nation, our response to this challenge has to include mobilising partnerships in fighting poverty and creating work, which for us in the Western Cape is a key component of our Human Capital Development Strategy.

Socially responsible corporate citizens and the commitment of business can contribute enormously to sustainable social and economic development. The involvement of business in education, training and skills development creates opportunities for business to transfer and recruit skills. These networks provide a platform for business and government to talk and strategise together.

I therefore want to conclude by issuing a challenge to each one of you on two matters. One, I want to challenge you to adopt as many as possible of our focus schools � either Dinaledi, Maths, Science and Technology (MST) or Business, Commerce and Management (BMC) school. With this I want to formally hand over to the President of the AABASA Minister Naledi Pandor's Framework for Adoption of Dinaledi Schools by Private Donors. I believe by adopting and networking with these focus schools, it can actually contribute to fast-tracking talent into the industry.

Secondly, it was with surprise and pleasantly so that I have learnt that Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu was the first black South African to qualify as a Chartered Accountant in the country. Perhaps the AABASA can think of a bursary fund named in his honour and dispense bursaries to students from historically disadvantaged black communities who wish to further their careers in this profession.

On that note I wish to thank you once again for the opportunity to interact with you, thank you for your sustained commitment to the future generation of professionals, I'm wishing you well in your deliberations over the next two days and trust that this will be the most productive convention ever, which will lead to more of our black children taking up the challenge of this profession.

Thank you.

For enquiries contact:
Gert Witbooi
Media Liaison Officer
Tel: 021 467 2523
Fax: 021 425 5689
Cell: 082 550 3938
E-mail: gwitbooi@pgwc.gov.za.

Issued by: Department of Education, Western Cape Provincial Government
23 August 2007