Date: 06/09/2005
Source: Department of Education
Title:Pandor: Cape Times Breakfast Club
Address by the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, MP at the Cape Times Breakfast Club, Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town
South Africa’s celebration of 10 years of democracy has been accompanied by a vigorous reflection on our progress. Government has agreed that concerted attention must be given to areas of action that form key parts of our national strategy.
All of you are aware that expanding and accelerating economic growth is one of our key challenges. A second is giving concrete expression to the concept of a caring government and society committed to creating a base for full realization of our developmental goals. A third is strengthening our efforts at promoting social cohesion and thus supporting the emergence of a South African nation imbued with a sense of unity, of belonging, within a context that celebrates our diversity. A fourth is to provide institutions and opportunities that prepare the human resource base that will allow these objectives to be realised. As the Deputy President often says when we discuss these objectives: education, education, skills, skills.
Each of these keys objectives is linked to our nation of a developmental state and to the positive values that we wish to promote as the foundation for our social renewal. Education is obviously one of the most critical areas for realising these objectives. In the past 10 years we have achieved welcome success in several areas of educational provision. Access to educational opportunity has been significantly expanded. In 2004 enrolment statistics were 104% at primary level and 89% at the secondary level. Thousands of young people who are first generation entrants to higher education enjoy state funded support for study at this level; and positive growth has begun in increasing graduation rates in critical fields of study.
Effort has also been directed at modernising our curriculum so that it responds to skills and knowledge gaps identified in assessment evaluations.
Despite these and several other positive achievements there are still far too many troubling features in education that confound policy makers practitioners and commentators. Given the absence of time for detailed exploration of all the critical features I shall focus on some that we have determined as part of our core focus in the short to medium term. Each is regarded as relevant to the objectives of growth and development.
First, there is worrying evidence of inequality and underachievement that we must attend if we are to expand success. Thousands of learners school under trees, over 25% of our schools (over 7000) do not have water facilities, 12% of schools do not have sanitation facilities and tragically over 50% of our schools do not have libraries. We have agreed an accelerated infrastructure programme with our sister departments and have begun to see some positive progress. The provision of libraries will be addressed through the development of a library policy that will clearly allocate responsibility for the provision of these important facilities.
The worrying levels of poor quality learning and underachievement are also being attended to. The Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) is being implemented for the first time. We will now have evidence from school assessment of teacher performance, teacher development needs and learner achievement. Beyond this we have begun to address concerns about assessment overload and have developed an agreed protocol of assessment that puts a coherent and manageable set of requirements while also reinserting flexibility that allows teachers to innovate.
We are also moving towards the completion of the phasing of the new curriculum and I believe the interactions we have had with educators, stakeholders, and universities; has allowed the development of a qualification that can hold its own in ay environment. Beyond these systemic measures we are also working on a quality promotion programme that will target quality in the most disadvantaged schools in order to ensure that all young people have a real possibility of success.
Furthermore we will be intensifying our efforts in improving outcomes in maths and science. Schools that produce A to D results in standard grade maths have been analysed and several will become our 400 focus schools for science and maths excellence. We will closely work with these schools to support achievement in these subjects and will create the basis for all schools to seek to become schools of excellence.
Further Education and Training (FET) colleges are critical to South Africa’s growth plans. They will provide us with the artisinal and intermediate technical skills that our economic strategy has clearly identified financial services, tourism, industrial engineering and other technical skills. The exciting aspect of this development is that colleges will not just produce aspiring employees; they will prepare skilled entrepreneurs for South Africa. Higher Education also has an important role to play. A great deal has been said in the past year about the low throughput rates at university level. This concern does not mean we want all to pass, it means if many fail to succeed we need to identify the reason and to respond adequately. One of the responses the ministry has called for is more careful planning of enrolments.
In addition more attention should be given to academic development programmes; perhaps relationships should be built with FET colleges to draw students from this sector into higher education. We believe that a stronger more focused FET college sector will assist us in addressing these concerns. Planning at higher education level also implies greater attention to the skills needs of South Africa, we have said greater growth in research degrees is clearly necessary as well as increased expansion in critical fields such as engineering technology and so on. Such growth does not imply mandatory closing of philosophy departments. Rather, universities should be defining a more diversified curriculum so that we produce competent knowledgeable graduates rather than single discipline boffins.
Finally, Social Cohesion demands that we attend to issues of inclusion and exclusion be it on grounds of ability or disability, on grounds of race and gender, on grounds of citizenship and non-citizenship. South Africa cannot pretend that the election of 1994 concretised our respect for diversity and our rejection of race gender discrimination.
These aspects we must still work on. Our proposals for allowing for the development of a multilingual learner are part of our contribution to this aspect of nation building. Our proposals for allowing governing bodies in all schools in all communities to firmly attend to giving our children to a diverse group of teachers are part of this nation-building project.
Policy makers and stakeholders in education have constantly told me they believe these aspirations are credible and achievable; I hold the firm view that with these and many other developments we will through education firmly build on the positive foundation that has been laid since 1994.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Education
6 September 2005
Source: Department of Education
Title:Pandor: Cape Times Breakfast Club
Address by the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, MP at the Cape Times Breakfast Club, Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town
South Africa’s celebration of 10 years of democracy has been accompanied by a vigorous reflection on our progress. Government has agreed that concerted attention must be given to areas of action that form key parts of our national strategy.
All of you are aware that expanding and accelerating economic growth is one of our key challenges. A second is giving concrete expression to the concept of a caring government and society committed to creating a base for full realization of our developmental goals. A third is strengthening our efforts at promoting social cohesion and thus supporting the emergence of a South African nation imbued with a sense of unity, of belonging, within a context that celebrates our diversity. A fourth is to provide institutions and opportunities that prepare the human resource base that will allow these objectives to be realised. As the Deputy President often says when we discuss these objectives: education, education, skills, skills.
Each of these keys objectives is linked to our nation of a developmental state and to the positive values that we wish to promote as the foundation for our social renewal. Education is obviously one of the most critical areas for realising these objectives. In the past 10 years we have achieved welcome success in several areas of educational provision. Access to educational opportunity has been significantly expanded. In 2004 enrolment statistics were 104% at primary level and 89% at the secondary level. Thousands of young people who are first generation entrants to higher education enjoy state funded support for study at this level; and positive growth has begun in increasing graduation rates in critical fields of study.
Effort has also been directed at modernising our curriculum so that it responds to skills and knowledge gaps identified in assessment evaluations.
Despite these and several other positive achievements there are still far too many troubling features in education that confound policy makers practitioners and commentators. Given the absence of time for detailed exploration of all the critical features I shall focus on some that we have determined as part of our core focus in the short to medium term. Each is regarded as relevant to the objectives of growth and development.
First, there is worrying evidence of inequality and underachievement that we must attend if we are to expand success. Thousands of learners school under trees, over 25% of our schools (over 7000) do not have water facilities, 12% of schools do not have sanitation facilities and tragically over 50% of our schools do not have libraries. We have agreed an accelerated infrastructure programme with our sister departments and have begun to see some positive progress. The provision of libraries will be addressed through the development of a library policy that will clearly allocate responsibility for the provision of these important facilities.
The worrying levels of poor quality learning and underachievement are also being attended to. The Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) is being implemented for the first time. We will now have evidence from school assessment of teacher performance, teacher development needs and learner achievement. Beyond this we have begun to address concerns about assessment overload and have developed an agreed protocol of assessment that puts a coherent and manageable set of requirements while also reinserting flexibility that allows teachers to innovate.
We are also moving towards the completion of the phasing of the new curriculum and I believe the interactions we have had with educators, stakeholders, and universities; has allowed the development of a qualification that can hold its own in ay environment. Beyond these systemic measures we are also working on a quality promotion programme that will target quality in the most disadvantaged schools in order to ensure that all young people have a real possibility of success.
Furthermore we will be intensifying our efforts in improving outcomes in maths and science. Schools that produce A to D results in standard grade maths have been analysed and several will become our 400 focus schools for science and maths excellence. We will closely work with these schools to support achievement in these subjects and will create the basis for all schools to seek to become schools of excellence.
Further Education and Training (FET) colleges are critical to South Africa’s growth plans. They will provide us with the artisinal and intermediate technical skills that our economic strategy has clearly identified financial services, tourism, industrial engineering and other technical skills. The exciting aspect of this development is that colleges will not just produce aspiring employees; they will prepare skilled entrepreneurs for South Africa. Higher Education also has an important role to play. A great deal has been said in the past year about the low throughput rates at university level. This concern does not mean we want all to pass, it means if many fail to succeed we need to identify the reason and to respond adequately. One of the responses the ministry has called for is more careful planning of enrolments.
In addition more attention should be given to academic development programmes; perhaps relationships should be built with FET colleges to draw students from this sector into higher education. We believe that a stronger more focused FET college sector will assist us in addressing these concerns. Planning at higher education level also implies greater attention to the skills needs of South Africa, we have said greater growth in research degrees is clearly necessary as well as increased expansion in critical fields such as engineering technology and so on. Such growth does not imply mandatory closing of philosophy departments. Rather, universities should be defining a more diversified curriculum so that we produce competent knowledgeable graduates rather than single discipline boffins.
Finally, Social Cohesion demands that we attend to issues of inclusion and exclusion be it on grounds of ability or disability, on grounds of race and gender, on grounds of citizenship and non-citizenship. South Africa cannot pretend that the election of 1994 concretised our respect for diversity and our rejection of race gender discrimination.
These aspects we must still work on. Our proposals for allowing for the development of a multilingual learner are part of our contribution to this aspect of nation building. Our proposals for allowing governing bodies in all schools in all communities to firmly attend to giving our children to a diverse group of teachers are part of this nation-building project.
Policy makers and stakeholders in education have constantly told me they believe these aspirations are credible and achievable; I hold the firm view that with these and many other developments we will through education firmly build on the positive foundation that has been laid since 1994.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Education
6 September 2005
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