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The father of the New South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, said that "Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine and that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation.”

If South Africa is to become truly great, if we are to achieve meaningful redress, and if South Africans are truly to be freed from the cycle of poverty it is essential that education must become great. Mediocrity is not an option.

This government and the Department of Basic Education have a responsibility to ensure that our educational system supports development, social upliftment and the dreams of our children. You can be assured that the DA will support your efforts and continue to pursue educational excellence where we govern.

You can also be assured, however, that the DA will never accept that our country and the future of our country’s children continues to be compromised by what is, currently, a failing system.

In every State of the Nation Address since his inauguration, President Zuma has emphasised the importance of basic education. In 2011, he spoke of the importance of “Triple T”: Teachers, Textbooks and Time, saying that teachers must be at school, in class, on time, teaching for at least seven hours a day.

Both the Annual Performance Plan of the Department for 2012/13 and the department’s performance regarding implementation are weak in terms of all three Ts.

With regard to teachers

We are not recruiting top students from each cohort of school leavers to the teaching profession. The primary tool used by the Department to attract new teachers is the awarding of bursaries – the Funza Lushaka scheme – which has no screening system in place to determine whether those learners studying to become teachers would ever become good, effective teachers.

The 2007 McKinsey report, entitled “How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come out on Top”, confirms that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers”.

Yet, the Department’s strategic plans sets no target for the professional development of teachers.

The situation is simply untenable.

With regard to textbooks

Minister, your Department’s target for learners who have their own textbook for each subject is only 85%. Why is every child not entitled to a textbook ? How are 15% of our learners – or 1.95 million children – supposed to learn effectively without access to a textbook ?

We know that the shortage of textbooks is still much higher.

The Sunday Times reported this week that “while thousands of Eastern Cape pupils struggled through last year without textbooks, three tons of new books – worth millions of rands – were dumped at a warehouse for recycling”. In the Free State, the education system has been described as "chaos", with schools in at least three areas not having received a single book yet this year. In KwaZulu-Natal, poor schools without textbooks are having to spend thousands on photocopying books for learners.

In Limpopo, the national department has the responsibility of ensuring delivery of textbooks. Legal action has been taken against the department because it has not even ordered textbooks for non-section 21 schools in the province, almost halfway through the school year. More than 90 % of the schools in Limpopo are affected.

We were astonished, Minister, that you were opposing this action. Opposing action to ensure ordering and delivery of textbooks? Surely, this goes against the grain of everything that we are trying to achieve.

Regarding time

The last study on teacher absenteeism was carried out in 2009. The average rate of absenteeism was almost three times higher than the acceptable rate and equated to 16 days of teaching lost per educator per year.

Why, then, do we not have a target for the reduction of absenteeism in the Performance Plan?

In conclusion

Minister, we support the Department’s motto that “every child is a national asset” and its vision to deliver education and training which will “contribute towards improving the quality of life and building a peaceful, prosperous and democratic South Africa”.

Every action, every budget and every strategic plan of the Department must bring us closer to that vision.

We are not convinced that this is currently the case.