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Date : 11/03/2004
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: K Asmal: Most Improved Schools Awards ceremony


ADDRESS BY MINISTER OF EDUCATION, PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, AT THE MOST IMPROVED SCHOOLS AWARDS CEREMONY, PRESIDENTIAL GUEST HOUSE, PRETORIA, 11 March 2004

Deputy President, Mr Jacob Zuma
Deputy Minister of Education, Mr Mosibudi Mangena
MECs for Education, DGs and Senior Managers in the Departments of Education
Sponsors and funders
Members of the Adjudication Panel
Principals and teachers
Representatives of the School Governing Bodies
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

It is a pleasure to welcome you to this occasion as we honour our most improved schools. I regard this event as a highlight in a year of highlights. During this year, as we celebrate our ten years of freedom, it is right that we should acknowledge our freedom in education. Ten years ago, education was a source of our despair. Today, education is the repository of our hope.

Our hope is not based on some airy idealism. We have good reasons for investing our hope in education. We celebrate some of our many good reasons for hope tonight. In this fourth national ceremony for the Most Improved Schools Awards, we recognise schools that have justified our trust. Their achievements stand as tangible and solid proof that our hope is well grounded.

By working together, we see that education can actually work. Teaching and learning can actually work.

How does teaching work? The great Irish poet, the Nobel Laureate William Butler Yeats, captured how teaching works in an often-cited formula: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

Good teachers do not stuff learners' heads with facts, trying to fill up the buckets of their heads, expecting that their students will simply pour out all of that information on demand. No, good teachers transmit the spark; they pass the flame; they light the fire of learning among their students so their students can carry their own torches out into the world.

How does learning work? Learning requires work, the hard work of dedication and application. But that discipline can be liberating. Another great Irish poet, the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, recalled how he learned as a child about the liberating work of learning. Heaney grew up in a poor farming community. The farmers, digging in their fields, would see him carrying his books home from school and would call out to him, "Seamus, don't forget: Learning is a light load to carry."

As places of teaching and learning, our schools work because of the dedication of teachers, students, administrators, parents, school governing bodies, and people of the local community. They work as a public trust, supported by departments of education, and they work as a private-public partnership, supported by social investments from the private sector.

We often find that our schools work best when all the stakeholders in education work together. Clearly, everyone is a stakeholder. Everyone has an interest in the improvement of our schools.

Tonight I welcome on board our new sponsors. We are very grateful for your generous contributions to education. The Trustees of the Anglo American Chairman's Fund, a vehicle through which Anglo American makes it social investments, have committed themselves to sponsor an award for excellence in Mathematics and Science, specifically for marginalized and disadvantaged schools, to the value of R3 million over a period of three years. This new award advances the National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education.

I had the pleasure and privilege of launching this new category of the Most Improved Schools Awards on 26 January 2004. Known as the Dinaledi-meaning "stars" in SeSotho-Awards, the Dinaledi Awards recognise schools that are reaching for the stars in Mathematics, Science and Technology. As in the other categories, the Dinaledi Awards were adjudicated according to an independent and rigorous process of selection. Under to leadership of Professor Crain Soudien, the selection panel found what they described as the best quality winners since the launch of the Most Improved Schools Awards four years ago.

Interestingly, the winners in the new Mathematics and Science category come from the Dinaledi Dedicated Schools. We celebrate their success, which was achieved by overcoming poverty and deprivation. As if that was not enough, the Dinaledi Dedicated Schools also performed well in other categories, such as the mathematics and science category funded by Siemens and the consistency awards funded by Naspers. Some of these schools won in more than one category of the Most Improved Schools Awards. All in all, the Dinaledi Dedicated Schools represent one-third of the winners at this year's Most Improved Schools Awards ceremony. These achievements must be regarded as a phenomenal success story for schools that were historically relegated to the proverbial dustbin.

I am also pleased to inform you of the support that Edu Management Solutions has committed to the Most Improved Schools Awards by supplying three unique Audio Visual Monitoring and Evaluation Systems, which include a notebook, loaded software and training for two members of staff in three schools for the total value of R120 000. TMFC, Total Facilities Management Company, another new sponsor, has provided R5 000 worth of renovations to one school from each province. And SITA, also a new sponsor, joins Phambili Information Technologies in supporting the Special Consistency Award.

While welcoming our new sponsors, let me express my profound appreciation for all of our sponsors-Anglo American, Edu Management Solutions, Siemens, SITA, Phambili, Naspers, Telkom, and Multi-Choice. Your support has made it possible for us to make substantial advances in achieving quality education for all of our people. But your support also stands as a model of corporate responsibility. On this occasion, I hope I will not be accused of fundraising if I appeal to everyone in the world of business to follow your example of good corporate citizenship by getting involved in supporting public education.

As I look back over my past five years as Minister of Education, I believe that we have faithfully tended the fire of learning in our country. For teachers and learners, our Revised National Curriculum Statement, with its clear outcomes, is dedicated to setting minds and hearts alight.

Abandoning the rote learning of the past, in which pupils' heads were filled like buckets, our curriculum is designed for lighting the fires of critical thinking and creative imagination. It is designed for unleashing the energy of new skills and new human capacity. It is designed to advance human freedom and human fulfilment. Let us keep those fires burning.

Our annual newspaper controversy over the matric exam, which generates more heat than light, should not distract us from our real accomplishments in improving academic performance. The integrity of the Senior Certificate examination has been ensured by the dedicated work of so many educators, examiners, and the statutory body, Umalusi, that we can trust that the statistics-an improvement from a 49% pass rate in 1999 to 73.3% in 2003-reflect an actual improvement in the quality of performance throughout our country.

But tonight's occasion-The Most Improved Schools Awards-is particularly important because we do not have to rely on statistics. We have with us real, living and breathing human beings, the heart and soul of their schools, who have worked together to improve their school's performance and achieve greatness. They are carrying the torch of learning.

During my time as Minister of Education, I know that we have worked hard to lighten the burden of education. Parents bear many of the costs of education, often with great difficulty and heroic sacrifices, while our entire country benefits from their investment in our future.

We have worked to lighten the burden through a funding model in which the poorest learners receive seven times more resources than the least poor; through setting school fees at annual general meetings of school communities in which parents can participate; through partial or complete exemptions from fees; through school feeding programmes; through the National Student Financial Scheme, which this year is assisting 110 000 deserving students to enter higher education; and through many other efforts to lighten the burden of education.

Let us continue working to lighten this burden so that parents can say to their children: "Learning is a light load to carry."

During my years as Minister of Education, I have been particularly proud of our efforts to instil values in education. As a committed defender of public education, I have always believed education is a value in its own right, a public good that everyone can enjoy and no one can be denied.

Our Values in Education Initiative has been dedicated to realising that central value of education as a public good. Like a diamond, that central value has many different facets. So we have been identifying values, nurturing life-skills, addressing racism, revitalising history, promoting multi-lingualism, removing barriers to learning, and understanding the role of religion-all in the interest of making our schools vital centres for the public good.

As the winners of tonight's awards prove, our schools can also be centres of excellence. We recognise excellence in different categories that range from our ability to live together, as reflected in the awards for "Racial Integration," to our capacity to reach for the stars in the fields of mathematics, science and technology. These are the signs of greatness that we recognise each year in the Most Improved Schools Awards. So, as I have said, this is a special occasion, a highlight among highlights, especially during this year in which we celebrate how far we have come as a nation during our first decade of freedom.

We regard tonight's awards as the first in a series of events celebrating our ten years of freedom. On the 31st of March, we will be holding another major event in Cape Town-"Keeping Memory Alive, Shaping Our Future"-where we will be celebrating our work in revitalising teaching and learning about our history. On Freedom Day we will be reflecting on how we have recovered from apartheid education. Other events are planned during the year, all celebrating, like tonight's occasion, how far we have come together in such a short time.

It is now my honour and privilege to call upon the Deputy President, Mr Jacob Zuma, to present the keynote address for the Most Improved Schools Awards.

Mr Deputy President.

Issued by: Ministry of Education
11 March 2004

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