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Date : 03/06/2004
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government
Title: M Matomela: Eastern Cape Education Prov Budget Vote 2004/2005


POLICY & BUDGET SPEECH BY MEC FOR EDUCATION, EASTERN CAPE, M MATOMELA, 3 June 2004

Madam Speaker
The Honourable Premier
Honourable Members
Citizens of the Province of the Eastern Cape
Departmental Officials
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

1. INTRODUCTION

I stand before this house today to deliver, with great humility, the ninth policy speech of the Department of Education.

The year 2004 is a watershed in the history of education in this province, if we consider where we started and what we have achieved to date. We started with six disparate departments of education, all influenced by apartheid mentality and orientation. Today we can claim that we have merged successfully into one Department with visible achievements in the following areas:

1.1 Infrastructure

In 1996, the Schools' Register of Needs recorded a backlog of 22 000 classrooms in our system. Between 1996 and 2004 all districts saw an increase in number of classrooms and a corresponding decrease in learner classroom ratio, particularly in the more rural districts of Lusikiski, Mzimkhulu, Bizana and Mt. Frere. To date we have provided 11000 classrooms across the province. Indeed the adequate provision of classrooms will still remain a challenge in the Department for the next ten years.

1.2. Learner Assessment

The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in our provincial pass rate, from 51.86 % in 2002, a 6% rise from 2001, to 60.14% in 2003,an increase of 8.2%. Concurrent with that has been the smooth conduct and management of examinations, which has given credibility to the results over the last four to five years. In that period there has not been a single report of examination leakages or any impropriety in our Grade 12 examinations.

The accolades received by our ABET level 4 achievement, where our learners surpassed all the provinces, will be strengthened each year. The annual increase in learner numbers from 285 in 2001 to 522 in 2002, and 669 in 2003 indicates the seriousness that learners now attach to ABET in our province.

1.3 The FET College Sector

The successful merger of the Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges from 25 to eight institutions, streamlined to meet the skills needs of the province, was a major achievement.

The importance of this sector lies in its ability to address human resource demands of our economy and a redefinition of labour profile of the province.

After filling the all eight posts of CEO for Colleges, the next step was to advertise for the next level, after all colleges had been allotted their staff establishments. Necessarily this will entail a proper focus on the relevance of staff complement in each of the colleges, seen against the context in communities where Colleges are to be found. For it is that context that will determine the curriculum offerings in each instance.

The learnerships programme, driven from this sector is intended to address skills development as well as create employment opportunities for our youth. So far we have had 84 unemployed youths participating in the following learnerships:

* Food and beverage Processing - NQF level 3
* Wholesale and retail specialization - levels 3 and 4
* Wholesale and retail general - levels 2 and 4
* Animal husbandry - level 1

Our partnership with GTZ has facilitated the secondment of a provincial learnerships coordinator for this sector.

1.4 Opening Access to Learning Opportunities

A meaningful foundation is being offered to our children with the introduction of Grade R in some 1 300 schools impacting on 33 000 learners who previously did not have access to such an offering. Simultaneously our ABET programme has seen skills and jobs offered to our rural people. Lately we have taken over the school nutrition programme that ensures a meal at least for our poorer children. That ladies and gentlemen is our attempt at poverty alleviation, which speaks to our Provincial Growth and Development Programme.

1.5 Institutional Management

Our capacity building efforts at all levels of the system have seen greater stability in the management of our institutions. The improvement in our pass rate over the last few years is indeed a pointer to that stability.

The delivery of Learner Support Material is smoothening each year. Our educators are currently receiving meaningful Professional Development Programmes that will enhance the introduction of the Revised National Curriculum. The stability at school level is strengthened by the tenacity with which our learners stay longer in the system, and the quality of our Grade 12 results.

2. CHALLENGES

Despite the successes listed above, we are still faced with a number of challenges, which centre around service delivery in the main.

Impediments to Service Delivery

First and foremost has been our budget allocation, which, inevitably, results in unending financial constraints.

Second is the age- old concern from both our employees and suppliers regarding our capacity to pay within expected turnaround time standards. This stems from insufficient capacity, which we are currently addressing from a number of fronts, like for example the backlogs' project, on which I shall say more later.

Our record keeping is one serious challenge that we are confronting headlong, with our Registry Project.

We have come to the realisation that one of our main weaknesses lies in our management of procurement processes. That realisation has pushed us to the adoption of a system of monthly and quarterly cycles of procurement monitoring, informed by a composite procurement plan of the Department.

The quality that we produce in the gateway subjects of mathematics, science and technology still leaves much to be desired.

A bigger challenge that we are faced with has to do with the Presidential injunction around infrastructure. In his State of the Nation address, the President made a call for all to ensure that by the end of this financial year no learner will receive tuition under a tree, mud school, or any dangerous conditions that expose learners and teachers to the elements. We are committed to the call. However, our current budgetary constraints will force us to seek additional funding to be able to meet the call.

One other critical area that we need to look into is the matter of sound relations with our social partners. We need to operate in an environment that is conducive to stability within the Department and mutual trust between our social partners and us.

These are but a few of the challenges that my Department is faced with. Informed by these challenges, we proceed to craft our strategic thrusts, guided by the Strategic Plan.

3. OUR STRATEGIC THRUSTS AND PLANS

Madam Speaker, our whole operation in Education is informed by the principles expounded in the Provincial Growth and Development Plan. In the next ten years, we undertake to:

* Ensure Universal Primary Education in our province, between Grades R and 9 in the General Education and Training Band
* Improve literacy rate in the province by 50%, and
* Eliminate disparities in education and employment

We see a need to tap into funding for Skills development, to ensure that we help design a new Provincial Human Resource Strategy that will enable our youth to be economically active and to participate fully in social and economic programmes that will build the concept of self-reliance and independent economic activity among them.

Our sector specific plans will be informed by the following strategic thrusts.

Enhancing our Corporate Support Services

First and foremost our more immediate plan is to address the twelve projects of our turnaround plan.

We have up to now ensured that our Corporate Services Branch does have a plan to address the shortcomings of our Human Resources Section. As we speak, we have set up a "Backlogs Team" to look into all the unnecessary payment blockages that have besmirched our name and image. The Department of education has a bad payment record, not only from teachers' salaries, but also from our creditors. Our turnaround strategy addresses this and we shall have to track its progress.

Addressing moral regeneration in service delivery

The levels of moral decay in our society, generally, are alarmingly high, and range from child abuse at home, the rape of learners at school, to corruption in workplace. We are taking up the call for moral regeneration in a more programmatic and streamlined manner this financial year. The foundation has already been laid by the launch of the Eastern Cape chapter of the moral regeneration campaign spearheaded by the deputy President.

Underpinning all our plans is our resolve to weed out corrupt practices real or perceived within government service. For that purpose, we are setting up an anti-Corruption Unit in my Department. That, when fully operational, will speak to a number of areas of need in the Department, among which are issues of ethical behaviour, a positive work ethic and commitment, honesty and devotion to duty. We are setting up a toll-free line for protected whistle-blowers.

We are making conscious efforts to mobilise and educate our learners and educators on the moral crusade. In doing that we stay conscious of the need for new value systems that accommodate our diversity as a nation.

We remain convinced that the responsibility is a collective one that does not reside in any single sector, be it government, business or communities. Only a collective and collaborative strategy will work to address our moral values, and this is our collective challenge.

The improvement of quality of teaching and learning

The functionality of schools is our principal mandate. We recognise the need to go back to the culture of teaching and learning, and for that we take upon ourselves the responsibility to create a climate at school that is conducive to effective teaching and learning. We recognise that in order to achieve this, we have to put in place strategies for capacity building at school level, particularly leadership capacity for our principals. If we do that then we shall achieve even better results. We are suggesting a social contract here that will include collaboration with everyone, communities, our social partners and all stakeholders.

This financial year we are making a concerted effort to address the quality of product that our system produces. Our system needs to produce graduates who will not sit at home, but will find a niche through the capacity that education system endows them with.

Our Matriculation improvement programmes will now look, not only at quantity in number of absolute passes that we can attain, but also at quality and efficiency, through:

* the number of endorsements that we can produce, and
* how long we can sustain and increase our pass rates.

An increase in the participation of girl children, particularly in mathematics will demand more resources in this area. A particular thrust for us now is to improve the quality of mathematics teaching in our schools, to ensure that more of our students offer mathematics in the higher grade, rather than in the lower. We remain committed to interventionist programmes like the National Dinaledi schools, which focuses on taking our learners out of a "straight-jacketed" educational offering, into avenues that are new, and avenues that speak to economic empowerment.

The promise of a new FET Curriculum statement, to be phased in 2006, seeks to reorganize the delivery of knowledge, skills and values in our institutions, in a way that will address quality in the whole system.

The extension of traditional boundaries of education provisioning

* Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET)

The Department will be stepping up the Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) programme, to ensure that our citizens have access to better employment opportunities by improving their access to education, and making learning opportunities available to them.

The success that this programme has achieved recently went way beyond our expectations. Last year the Department trained more than 51 332 learners in Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs), agriculture, poultry etc. from ABET level 1 through 4. We have to ensure that our ABET programmes empower our people to participate fully in community life, for, those days are gone, when Adult Basic Education was seen as only teaching adults to read and write. Very consciously we want to go beyond that, into the arena of Skills.

To keep the momentum, the Department is allocating R140 million to ABET efforts this financial year. This indicates an increase of R8 million.

* Early Childhood and Development (ECD)

Early Childhood Development is one of the thrusts that have an elementary role to play in shifting the frontiers of poverty. We have expanded our interventions in ECD by even larger margins.

This financial year, to ensure that our children continue to receive even better access to a quality foundation, we are allocating R39 million to Early Childhood Development. A greater percentage of this allocation will be in the form of subsidies that help sustain Early Childhood practitioners, train them and give their governing bodies the necessary capacity to monitor the implementation of the Programme. The end of the ECD Conditional Grant of R16, 8 million last year, has had the effect of a lower budget allocation, which comes from the provincial fiscus only this year.

Allow me Madam Speaker to inform this house that despite the reduction, again this financial year we continue in our effort to provide access to a proper foundation to education by attaching 882 more Grade R classes from community based Early Childhood Development sites, to add a tenth year to our normal public primary school education. This will create employment opportunities for many rural women, who, in addition to getting jobs will receive accredited qualifications.

* Public Special School Education

Past inequities resulted in a highly specialised and costly provision of Special Needs Education and Support Services for a small number of privileged learners. Education White Paper 6 on Inclusive Education and Training ensures that the inadequacy in the provision of these services benefits all our learners, and particularly those in rural and impoverished areas.

We are allocating R252m to this sector, to ensure that learners with disabilities, and those who experience learning difficulties, are provided with decent facilities and services to develop their capacities and potential to the fullest.

* School Nutrition

As a strategy for poverty alleviation we undertake to implement the National Schools Nutrition Programme, provincially, to ensure that 948 574 learners in 5 188 schools in rural, impoverished and farm communities, as well as in informal settlements are reached and fed. In order to give meaning to the concept of "ILIMA" the department will work collaboratively with its partners in the Social Needs, and Economic Development Clusters, Business, NGOs and communities in developing a sustainable community driven school feeding program whose aim is to ensure access to quality education. Whilst doing that we shall strengthen our efforts at the creation of more job opportunities and a culture of self-reliance for our rural people in general, and women in particular. That culture will have been inculcated when we see school and community gardens being part of the School Nutrition programme.

For the main objective of the programme is to contribute to an improved quality of education by enhancing the "active learning capacity" of primary school pupils as well as their attendance and punctually through alleviating hunger, if temporarily. The programme will also not reap success if we do not evolve a monitoring mechanism to keep check on its successes and challenges.

We are allocating an amount of R177 million to this programme from the Conditional Grant.

* Further Education and Training

We are engaged in efforts to create a vibrant education and training system to equip youths and adults to meet the social and economic needs of the 21st century. Our goal is the implementation of a rational, seamless higher education system that grasps the intellectual and professional challenges facing South Africa in this century. The FET colleges will play a significant role in the alleviation of poverty, unemployment and un-employability, as the training they offer prepares the learners to meet the labour profile of our country. As well the Colleges have been given the responsibility to drive our Community Outreach programmes.

2. A large number of the youth in our province between the ages of 19 and 35. are unemployed and lack the required skills. This means that if they do not receive training to re-skill them for the challenges of the globalised economy they will remain trapped in conditions of the "second economy". To address that the department will ensure the following:

* Adequate funding of the Further Education and Training Colleges, particularly to ensure an increase in bursary allocations
* Proper alignment of the courses they offer, in line with the requirements of the economy
* Provision of basic skills for young people and adults so as to enable them to participate actively in the economy
* Designing and implementing a curriculum that is responsive to community needs
* Interacting with provincial Institutions of Higher Learning and FET colleges around issues of community development and partnerships.

In essence our FET colleges must be central in driving "upgrade" as well as cutting edge programmes that respond to the challenge of supplying critically scarce skills needs of our country.

Madam Speaker I am convinced that the success of the above can only come through active partnerships with the business community. Hence in my first interaction with the top management of FET colleges I have encouraged them to identify local businesses that could become partners in what they do. The current discussions at National level between the Business Trust and the Department of Education reinforces the call for this partnership. Necessary also, have been the steps we have taken to strengthen the partnership between our National Department, the Department of Labour and the Premier' Office. Also the role of the Sector Education and Training Authorities cannot be underplayed in this.

The Department has allocated R166 million for the development, sustainability and further improvement of these institutions; a total increase of R18 million from last year's allocation.

The resourcing of teaching and learning

* Physical Infrastructure Development

The importance of habitable classrooms cannot be overemphasised in a province like ours, which comes from a past of dire neglect. We have had, over the last ten years, to consciously address the need for a classroom environment that is conducive to effective teaching and learning, for learners who were taught either in dilapidated and sometimes dangerous classrooms or under the trees.

Infrastructure development is the cornerstone of the socio economic development of any country, and our objective in this regard is crucial to addressing the imbalances of the past and to promoting both social and economic growth and development.

For its physical Infrastructure Provisioning, the Department is allocating an amount of R498 million. This is an increase of R50 million compared with last financial year, and includes R40 million for routine maintenance. In our efforts at accelerating development, our budget focuses on new buildings, renovations and additional facilities, particularly science laboratories and toilet facilities. Incrementally, we shall continue to decrease the number of mud classrooms, a prominent feature of past neglect.

In the last financial year the schools building programme was able to generate employment opportunities, with 7 600 women as direct beneficiaries. A further increase is expected this financial year as we step up our operations.

* Resourcing our Schools

We put well-deserved emphasis on the need for the timeous availability and distribution of Learner Support Material in schools around the Province. To date we have made remarkable progress in this regard.

To continue and even improve on this trend, the Department is allocating a total of R309 million for the provisioning of teaching and learning resources in public schools. An additional amount of R81 million will be ring - fenced for school furniture, which is a significant R25 million increase from last year's allocation of R56 million.

Additional areas of special attention in this budget are:
* Stationery to cater for Grades R to 12
* Consumables such as chalk, dusters, and laboratory consumables
* Technical equipment for the Further Education and Training institutions
* Electricity for schools
* The gradual extension of scholar transport.

* Dealing with the HIV and AIDS scourge

It is my considered opinion that, a more holistic approach is needed to address the pandemic that we have come to know as HIV/AIDS.

Madam Speaker, we must concede though, that humanity is faced with an elusive, yet destructive pandemic whose impact in all spheres of life is unprecedented. The HIV/ AIDS scourge continues to rob us of the most talented and productive citizens.

As a Department we are deploying our resources and embarking on a comprehensive approach to fight the spread of the disease. Our strategy will continue to focus on four intervention areas, which are:

* The allocation of additional resources to the HIV and AIDS unit
* The reorientation of district managers, members of School Management Teams and Curriculum Co-coordinators on the guiding legal and policy frameworks on HIV and AIDS
* Extension and intensification of the Life Skills Programme to schools, parents and the immediate communities
* Piloting of a District Research and Information Management System to monitor the prevalence of the disease, and to intervene at an early stage, in conjunction with sister Departments.

To take our struggle forward we have allocated an amount of R22 million from the Conditional Grant to fight the disease. We are confident that with our dedicated teams we will make a significant impact in our fight against HIV and AIDS and, in the end, we shall emerge victorious. For effective implementation we are setting up a team to beef up the new HIV/AIDS Directorate. In partnership with DFID, we are accelerating the implementation of the programmes that will address the effects of the scourge. We have also established a collaborative effort with the National HIV/AIDS programme that is funded by USAID

A new approach

Madam Speaker, I shall not have completed my task in the house today if I do not include in my plans, an important element of all plans, the monitoring mechanism for what we want to achieve. We are setting up a Support and Monitoring team in the department. Through monitoring, I want to be able to come back to this house to say, of the plans that I presented in June 2004, this is what we have been able to achieve, and this not. I have proposed to my managers, that for me the Strategic plan, does not end with the "Operational" plans designed to report on a quarterly basis. We have agreed that we need to go further, to further divide the quarterly targets into monthly deliverables, on which every single manager will report on a monthly basis. That in my view will indicate whether or not our Plans are realistic and intended to address the problems that we know have plagued the Department for years now. Each manager, on a monthly basis will submit a report that shows incremental progress from the one before, and in that way, slowly, we shall succeed in cleaning out our backlogs. For the danger in failing to monitor, lies in the possibility of addressing backlogs while creating more. And only an effective monitoring mechanism can tell that this time round, we have an obligation to break the negative trends that have beleaguered our department for so long.

4. 2004/2005 BUDGET

Madam Speaker, the budget allocation I am about to present is a detailed reflection of our intentions. It is also an expression of our commitment to the mandate of delivering a quality education system to the people of the Eastern Cape. In addition, it is informed by our desire to push back the frontiers of poverty, to contribute in the expansion of the frontiers of human fulfillment and human resource development, leading to economic growth and prosperity within this financial year and beyond.

This therefore, is presented to the House, Madam. Speaker, for consideration and subsequent approval.

5. PERSONNEL / NON PERSONNEL SPLIT

The allocation for the personnel and non-personnel split is as follows: Of the total budget allocation of R10 857 872, an amount of R9 223 208 is allocated for personnel expenditure, while R1 435 161 will be used for non-personnel expenditure. This indicates that we have achieved the target of the 85:15 budget split.

We have allocated R199 503 for the two remaining conditional grants: R22 244 for HIV and AIDS, and R177 259 for the School Nutrition Programme.

6. PROGRAMME ALLOCATIONS

1. Administration - R752 389 6,93%
2. Public Ordinary School Education - R9 367 426 - 86,27 %
3. Independent Shcool Subsidies - R17 459 - 0,16%
4. Special School Education - R252 485 - 2,33%
5. Further Education and Training - R166 103 - 1,53%
6. Adult Basic Education and Training R140 217 - 1,29%
7. Early Childhood Development - R39 245 - 0,36%
8. Auxilliary and Associated Services - R122 548 - 1,13%
Total - R10 857 872

7. CONCLUSION

These Madam Speaker, are the cornerstones that will inform the operation of the Department of education this year. These are the benchmarks by which we ask to be judged when we come back here in a year's time. This is how we wish to be assessed as an effective Department of Education that operates, not out of a crisis mode, but one that is focused and has a developmental approach in dealing with its challenges.

To meet the glaring need for our department to address the socio economic needs of our society, and in line with our Provincial Growth and Development Strategy, we challenge all our partners and stakeholders, from business, other government departments and our social partners, to join hands with us in our efforts to reach out to the communities. We need more collaboration to address the needs of our poorer communities; to engage, for instance the throngs of graduates who sit among these communities and cannot find employment. These people surely have something else that they can offer to society, than sitting at home and stressing! We cannot reach out single-handedly. Only concerted effort will get us to where we want to go. For if this education that we do is to be meaningful, then it must be seen to have an influence on all spheres of our lives.

As I close I cannot but recall the President's speech in one sitting of Parliament in June 1999 when he said: "Steadily the dark clouds of despair are lifting, giving way to our season of hope. At the dawn of a new life, our practical actions must ensure that none can challenge us when we say: we are nation at work to build a better life".

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Education, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
3 June 2004
Source: SAPA

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