Date: 21/08/2004
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: N Pandor: Mpumalanga Education Indaba
ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, NALEDI PANDOR, MP, AT THE MPUMALANGA EDUCATION INDABA, Tshwane University of Technology, Witbank, 21 August 2004
Premier Thabang Makwetla
MEC Siphosezwe Masango
Programme Director Dr MT Mashinini
Stakeholders and others
Congratulations are due to MEC Masango and Premier Makwetla for spearheading this gathering of stakeholders in education.
The ministry welcomes this opportunity to address you and interact with you. As many of you are aware government at all spheres has agreed to pursue the creation of active partnerships in all areas of policy in South Africa.
Partnerships are regarded as vital because they cement a relationship. They also establish the means for determining an agreed set of priorities in any sector. They also signify an important acknowledgement by government that the practical and visible commitment of society is a strong guarantor of success in socio-economic change.
Education is a sector that can and should benefit from active partnerships. It is a people driven social policy area and each of the social actors - parents, educators, learners, local government, provincial government and national government - contribute to success in education.
Co-operative governance
The constitution of South Africa places education in the schedule four functions. Education is a concurrent function shared between provinces and the national department. It is also important to record that education is a right enshrined in the Bill of Rights, thus placing a greater Constitutional burden on provinces and national government. The challenge we face in such a framework is how do we partner and co-operate. What role does policy formulation mandate and what role does implementation mandate. Firstly, provinces and national must develop concrete and effective ways of working together and executing their joint responsibility. National cannot be solely hands-off, and provinces must not regard national as a printing machine only useful for producing policy on paper. This is an area that merits careful attention because at this point we have communication but I am not certain that we have fully developed the opportunities for co-operation and mutual support.
In developing models and activities in this area of governance we will seek to ensure that we strengthen co-operation and co-ordination between ourselves and also ensure that we improve our ability to monitor implementation and to speedily respond to issues that require attention.
One of the important aspects of co-operation is the funding of education. I would like to compliment Mpumalanga on its allocations to education - it is one of the few provinces that have seen a consistent increase in education spending, especially on issues like Early Childhood Development and Inclusive Education.
Our national priorities
The beginning of a new term of government is a good place to give attention to national priorities in education policy.
As with all-important reflections on policy, it is most useful to identify a starting point and then to progress to a determination of the future.
Our challenges start with the task of effectively overcoming the legacy of apartheid.
The legacy we confront in education is a set of imperatives that cannot be ignored when we consider our future direction.
One of the challenges we must confront is to develop a successful response to the deficiencies in school science and mathematics for the disadvantaged majority.
None of you here need to be reminded that this is one of the most difficult of the apartheid education legacy problems we face. To go forward we must pursue quality education for all learners and students.
Your knowledge of the education sector does not require me to provide a new set of reasons for our difficulties in increasing success rates in Science and Mathematics. A few facts give a useful basis for beginning to understand our challenges and for devising responses.
Firstly, it seems there is a strong lack of confidence in mathematics and numeracy. Even teachers who are qualified view the subject with suspicion. Research indicates that educators discourage learners from pursuing mathematics in order to keep numbers low and so deny us the opportunity to improve our success rates.
Poor performance in Science and Mathematics leads to many negative scenarios.
Learners cannot proceed to any post school programmes that draw on Mathematics skills. This means fewer doctors, fewer doctors, fewer accountants, and fewer mathematics educators. These are statistics South Africa cannot afford.
If we are to succeed in changing this profile we will have to ensure the extension of quality provision to all our schools and tertiary institutions. This quality must mean positive outcomes in knowledge and skills acquisition in both traditional core-learning areas and specifically in non-traditional disciplines.
The discussions that we should have nationally should really centre on how we will reach the objectives that I have placed before you as our partners. A search for workable practical solutions is what our discussions should be about.
We have had sufficient discussions about what is not being done; we now must focus on how to change for the better. I am hoping that our schools will begin to become centres of quality promotion. They will do this by looking as a school community at strategies for improved performance. Minimum targets must be agreed. A school, which had one higher-grade maths pass, must undertake to produce 5 quality passes in two years and must work as a school at achieving that. Where there is need for training and support we will have to provide for those needs.
The time for lamenting our status has long ended we now need to act to change things. I hold the view that you can all help us to increase success and achievement. Teachers who are not attending to their duties know themselves; young people who make no effort know themselves. We as communities now need to expect and demand quality outcomes, quality performance and real change through education. We need to make doing well a popular objective.
That is not so much a vision as a set of priorities on which there is already a great deal of agreement in the country. What remains is the effective development of workable strategies for practical implementation.
Our minds have been concentrated by the presidential priorities announced in the State of the Nation Address and now supplemented by additional targets that have been agreed by government. Both sets of targets have been placed on the web for all to see and monitor. We are under performance scrutiny by the people of our country.
The targets for education are, simply put, skills for development, school improvement (in all its facets - infrastructure, the quality of teaching and learning, and resources), and better health for our learners.
But overarching these targets is our commitment to improving all schools, in particular those schools that serve poor and disadvantaged communities.
Skills for development in the modern world
The development of skills, which are critical in the attainment of our social and economic development goals, is a challenge that we will meet through the development of a number of initiatives.
First, we must improve the number of Grade 12 learners passing Mathematics and Science. In this regard, the Department plans to strengthen the successes achieved through its Maths and Science Strategy by deepening and widening its reach to more schools, teachers and learners.
Second, the effective implementation of the OBE curriculum in Grade 10 to 12 will be a major boost to the quality of teaching and learning in all learning areas.
The Revised National Curriculum Statement for GET is already in our schools - the foundation phase this year and a rollout in subsequent years. I think teachers and parents have received this very well and preparations have indeed been adequate for its successful introduction.
The Statements have been prepared in all official languages and in Braille, and we have ensured that every teacher has received a complete set (which is a new thing for many teachers), as well as a Teachers Guide, which assists in turning the outcomes into an appropriate learning programme, at a cost of some R60 million.
The special value of the revised National Curriculum Statement is the attention it has given to the purpose of the curriculum and the kind of learner that we envisage. The constitutional values of social justice, a healthy environment, human rights and inclusivity have been made explicit in all the outcomes.
Moreover, mother tongue instruction is an integral part of the curriculum statement. Schools are required by law (SASA) to ask learners to indicate the language of instruction of their choice on application for admission.
If a school is unable to meet that need, it must inform the district office that will then ensure that learners are placed in a school that will cater for their needs.
An area of focus in the short to medium-term in this regard will be on ensuring that indigenous languages receive greater attention and use. The previously neglected and ignored languages of our country must receive greater support and development. We need to provide for the teaching and learning of all our languages by all the children of our country so that we enhance language development and innovation while also promoting diversity and respect for all. The current tendency is which schools simply offer English and Afrikaans as part of their curriculum limits our ability to promote the values and principles of diversity and dignity that are highlighted in our Constitution.
Third, participation and retention rates in ABET programmes remain a challenge that we are committed to meeting. This week is the launch of the adult learners awareness week that kicks of with an international conference in South Africa in September this year. Provinces must work with partners in the NGO sector, business and communities to give effect to this challenge of breaking the wall of illiteracy in our society.
Fourth, over the next five years the Department will focus on strengthening the capacity of FET Colleges and Universities of Technology to enable them to increase participation rates, improve success rates, and ensure that their programmes are relevant to the needs of our economy.
The partnerships between the Department, the Department of Labour and SETAs in establishing industry partnership will be strengthened to improve placement rates of graduates from FET Colleges and Universities of Technology.
Amalgamated FET colleges require a lot of support in managing the mega institutions that they have become and in preparing for the implementation of the programme-funding policy framework.
School improvement
I come now to our second priority, school improvement. Our immediate task is to ensure that no pupil is forced to attend a school without a classroom, that is, no pupil is forced to learn under trees or in a mud-wall structure.
We are also committed to improving infrastructure that is clearly inadequate. This also includes the adequate provision of sanitation and water and I am extremely pleased to see the attention that has been given to this in most of the provincial education budget speeches, not all of which have yet taken place.
We are well on the way to ensuring that this is case over the current MTEF period. Schools cannot be built overnight, and careful planning is needed to ensure we invest in the best possible way.
Dealing with poverty and its effects on the ability of learners to exercise their right to basic education is our fundamental challenge. In this regard the Department and the provinces are working on the recommendations of the study on financing education with a view to eliminating compulsory fees from at least the poorest schools, starting next year. Initial indications from provinces suggest that this may indeed be possible.
If we can guarantee a basic level of funding, there should be no reason for a school that serves a poor community to collect fees. We will have to ensure that policy in this area does not lead to the emergence of ghetto schools, but it is no longer possible to neglect that need to ensure that alongside a more effective exemption strategy we also address the plight of learners who are excluded even though they clearly have no means to pay user fees.
Provincial education departments do their best in difficult circumstances. Their share of provincial budgets has declined in the past three years, as mandatory social grants have made their claim on budgets. Their room for budgetary manoeuvre is limited by the percentages wrapped up in personnel costs, although these have seen an improvement nationally.
Rural education, a special issue in this province, will also receive high priority to ensure that learners in rural areas are not denied access to good quality education because of their circumstances. The report of the Parker ministerial committee on rural education will be very useful in this regard.
The health of learners
The third priority is that of improving the health of learners.
Our first concern is preventing the spread of the AIDS pandemic.
Mitigating the spread of HIV and the impact of HIV and AIDS in the system has been integrated into a comprehensive strategy focusing on health and education in general. Included in the plan are the issues of reproductive health and life skills that will assist in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies, substance abuse, as well as the abuse of children in general.
In addition, as you know the Department has now taken responsibility for the national school nutrition programme. This scheme is currently reaching nearly 5 million children in 17,000 schools, and it has the potential to overcome one of the worst effects of poverty, which is the inability and lack of motivation to learn. We are determined to turn the programme into a real community building initiative, with local people benefiting from the R800 million we spend by growing, supplying and preparing the food. The sooner we can stop the practice of a truck from town dropping off poor quality bread and peanut butter the better.
Close
In closing, the whole system depends on the quality of our teachers. We now have better qualified teachers than ever before, with less than 30 000 now unqualified or under-qualified. But improving their ability to teach well has to be matched by a new drive to recruit teachers. We are not short of teachers yet, but we have to plan for the future.
The teaching profession used to be revered in a number of communities in our country. The status of our teachers has declined, and we must correct this if we are to avoid a teacher shortage in the future. We want teaching to be a first choice career - a career that attracts the brightest and the best of our matriculants.
Finally, we need the support and participation of every educator. Educators are the front line in meeting these challenges; we must provide them with the necessary support to produce the quality outcomes that are vital for the future prospects of South Africa. I am convinced that we can make a difference together, the legacy of apartheid can be overcome and education focused on quality is the means to achieve this great prize.
Thank you
Issued by: Ministry of Education
21 August 2004
Source: Department of Education (http://education.pwv.gov.za)
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: N Pandor: Mpumalanga Education Indaba
ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, NALEDI PANDOR, MP, AT THE MPUMALANGA EDUCATION INDABA, Tshwane University of Technology, Witbank, 21 August 2004
Premier Thabang Makwetla
MEC Siphosezwe Masango
Programme Director Dr MT Mashinini
Stakeholders and others
Congratulations are due to MEC Masango and Premier Makwetla for spearheading this gathering of stakeholders in education.
The ministry welcomes this opportunity to address you and interact with you. As many of you are aware government at all spheres has agreed to pursue the creation of active partnerships in all areas of policy in South Africa.
Partnerships are regarded as vital because they cement a relationship. They also establish the means for determining an agreed set of priorities in any sector. They also signify an important acknowledgement by government that the practical and visible commitment of society is a strong guarantor of success in socio-economic change.
Education is a sector that can and should benefit from active partnerships. It is a people driven social policy area and each of the social actors - parents, educators, learners, local government, provincial government and national government - contribute to success in education.
Co-operative governance
The constitution of South Africa places education in the schedule four functions. Education is a concurrent function shared between provinces and the national department. It is also important to record that education is a right enshrined in the Bill of Rights, thus placing a greater Constitutional burden on provinces and national government. The challenge we face in such a framework is how do we partner and co-operate. What role does policy formulation mandate and what role does implementation mandate. Firstly, provinces and national must develop concrete and effective ways of working together and executing their joint responsibility. National cannot be solely hands-off, and provinces must not regard national as a printing machine only useful for producing policy on paper. This is an area that merits careful attention because at this point we have communication but I am not certain that we have fully developed the opportunities for co-operation and mutual support.
In developing models and activities in this area of governance we will seek to ensure that we strengthen co-operation and co-ordination between ourselves and also ensure that we improve our ability to monitor implementation and to speedily respond to issues that require attention.
One of the important aspects of co-operation is the funding of education. I would like to compliment Mpumalanga on its allocations to education - it is one of the few provinces that have seen a consistent increase in education spending, especially on issues like Early Childhood Development and Inclusive Education.
Our national priorities
The beginning of a new term of government is a good place to give attention to national priorities in education policy.
As with all-important reflections on policy, it is most useful to identify a starting point and then to progress to a determination of the future.
Our challenges start with the task of effectively overcoming the legacy of apartheid.
The legacy we confront in education is a set of imperatives that cannot be ignored when we consider our future direction.
One of the challenges we must confront is to develop a successful response to the deficiencies in school science and mathematics for the disadvantaged majority.
None of you here need to be reminded that this is one of the most difficult of the apartheid education legacy problems we face. To go forward we must pursue quality education for all learners and students.
Your knowledge of the education sector does not require me to provide a new set of reasons for our difficulties in increasing success rates in Science and Mathematics. A few facts give a useful basis for beginning to understand our challenges and for devising responses.
Firstly, it seems there is a strong lack of confidence in mathematics and numeracy. Even teachers who are qualified view the subject with suspicion. Research indicates that educators discourage learners from pursuing mathematics in order to keep numbers low and so deny us the opportunity to improve our success rates.
Poor performance in Science and Mathematics leads to many negative scenarios.
Learners cannot proceed to any post school programmes that draw on Mathematics skills. This means fewer doctors, fewer doctors, fewer accountants, and fewer mathematics educators. These are statistics South Africa cannot afford.
If we are to succeed in changing this profile we will have to ensure the extension of quality provision to all our schools and tertiary institutions. This quality must mean positive outcomes in knowledge and skills acquisition in both traditional core-learning areas and specifically in non-traditional disciplines.
The discussions that we should have nationally should really centre on how we will reach the objectives that I have placed before you as our partners. A search for workable practical solutions is what our discussions should be about.
We have had sufficient discussions about what is not being done; we now must focus on how to change for the better. I am hoping that our schools will begin to become centres of quality promotion. They will do this by looking as a school community at strategies for improved performance. Minimum targets must be agreed. A school, which had one higher-grade maths pass, must undertake to produce 5 quality passes in two years and must work as a school at achieving that. Where there is need for training and support we will have to provide for those needs.
The time for lamenting our status has long ended we now need to act to change things. I hold the view that you can all help us to increase success and achievement. Teachers who are not attending to their duties know themselves; young people who make no effort know themselves. We as communities now need to expect and demand quality outcomes, quality performance and real change through education. We need to make doing well a popular objective.
That is not so much a vision as a set of priorities on which there is already a great deal of agreement in the country. What remains is the effective development of workable strategies for practical implementation.
Our minds have been concentrated by the presidential priorities announced in the State of the Nation Address and now supplemented by additional targets that have been agreed by government. Both sets of targets have been placed on the web for all to see and monitor. We are under performance scrutiny by the people of our country.
The targets for education are, simply put, skills for development, school improvement (in all its facets - infrastructure, the quality of teaching and learning, and resources), and better health for our learners.
But overarching these targets is our commitment to improving all schools, in particular those schools that serve poor and disadvantaged communities.
Skills for development in the modern world
The development of skills, which are critical in the attainment of our social and economic development goals, is a challenge that we will meet through the development of a number of initiatives.
First, we must improve the number of Grade 12 learners passing Mathematics and Science. In this regard, the Department plans to strengthen the successes achieved through its Maths and Science Strategy by deepening and widening its reach to more schools, teachers and learners.
Second, the effective implementation of the OBE curriculum in Grade 10 to 12 will be a major boost to the quality of teaching and learning in all learning areas.
The Revised National Curriculum Statement for GET is already in our schools - the foundation phase this year and a rollout in subsequent years. I think teachers and parents have received this very well and preparations have indeed been adequate for its successful introduction.
The Statements have been prepared in all official languages and in Braille, and we have ensured that every teacher has received a complete set (which is a new thing for many teachers), as well as a Teachers Guide, which assists in turning the outcomes into an appropriate learning programme, at a cost of some R60 million.
The special value of the revised National Curriculum Statement is the attention it has given to the purpose of the curriculum and the kind of learner that we envisage. The constitutional values of social justice, a healthy environment, human rights and inclusivity have been made explicit in all the outcomes.
Moreover, mother tongue instruction is an integral part of the curriculum statement. Schools are required by law (SASA) to ask learners to indicate the language of instruction of their choice on application for admission.
If a school is unable to meet that need, it must inform the district office that will then ensure that learners are placed in a school that will cater for their needs.
An area of focus in the short to medium-term in this regard will be on ensuring that indigenous languages receive greater attention and use. The previously neglected and ignored languages of our country must receive greater support and development. We need to provide for the teaching and learning of all our languages by all the children of our country so that we enhance language development and innovation while also promoting diversity and respect for all. The current tendency is which schools simply offer English and Afrikaans as part of their curriculum limits our ability to promote the values and principles of diversity and dignity that are highlighted in our Constitution.
Third, participation and retention rates in ABET programmes remain a challenge that we are committed to meeting. This week is the launch of the adult learners awareness week that kicks of with an international conference in South Africa in September this year. Provinces must work with partners in the NGO sector, business and communities to give effect to this challenge of breaking the wall of illiteracy in our society.
Fourth, over the next five years the Department will focus on strengthening the capacity of FET Colleges and Universities of Technology to enable them to increase participation rates, improve success rates, and ensure that their programmes are relevant to the needs of our economy.
The partnerships between the Department, the Department of Labour and SETAs in establishing industry partnership will be strengthened to improve placement rates of graduates from FET Colleges and Universities of Technology.
Amalgamated FET colleges require a lot of support in managing the mega institutions that they have become and in preparing for the implementation of the programme-funding policy framework.
School improvement
I come now to our second priority, school improvement. Our immediate task is to ensure that no pupil is forced to attend a school without a classroom, that is, no pupil is forced to learn under trees or in a mud-wall structure.
We are also committed to improving infrastructure that is clearly inadequate. This also includes the adequate provision of sanitation and water and I am extremely pleased to see the attention that has been given to this in most of the provincial education budget speeches, not all of which have yet taken place.
We are well on the way to ensuring that this is case over the current MTEF period. Schools cannot be built overnight, and careful planning is needed to ensure we invest in the best possible way.
Dealing with poverty and its effects on the ability of learners to exercise their right to basic education is our fundamental challenge. In this regard the Department and the provinces are working on the recommendations of the study on financing education with a view to eliminating compulsory fees from at least the poorest schools, starting next year. Initial indications from provinces suggest that this may indeed be possible.
If we can guarantee a basic level of funding, there should be no reason for a school that serves a poor community to collect fees. We will have to ensure that policy in this area does not lead to the emergence of ghetto schools, but it is no longer possible to neglect that need to ensure that alongside a more effective exemption strategy we also address the plight of learners who are excluded even though they clearly have no means to pay user fees.
Provincial education departments do their best in difficult circumstances. Their share of provincial budgets has declined in the past three years, as mandatory social grants have made their claim on budgets. Their room for budgetary manoeuvre is limited by the percentages wrapped up in personnel costs, although these have seen an improvement nationally.
Rural education, a special issue in this province, will also receive high priority to ensure that learners in rural areas are not denied access to good quality education because of their circumstances. The report of the Parker ministerial committee on rural education will be very useful in this regard.
The health of learners
The third priority is that of improving the health of learners.
Our first concern is preventing the spread of the AIDS pandemic.
Mitigating the spread of HIV and the impact of HIV and AIDS in the system has been integrated into a comprehensive strategy focusing on health and education in general. Included in the plan are the issues of reproductive health and life skills that will assist in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies, substance abuse, as well as the abuse of children in general.
In addition, as you know the Department has now taken responsibility for the national school nutrition programme. This scheme is currently reaching nearly 5 million children in 17,000 schools, and it has the potential to overcome one of the worst effects of poverty, which is the inability and lack of motivation to learn. We are determined to turn the programme into a real community building initiative, with local people benefiting from the R800 million we spend by growing, supplying and preparing the food. The sooner we can stop the practice of a truck from town dropping off poor quality bread and peanut butter the better.
Close
In closing, the whole system depends on the quality of our teachers. We now have better qualified teachers than ever before, with less than 30 000 now unqualified or under-qualified. But improving their ability to teach well has to be matched by a new drive to recruit teachers. We are not short of teachers yet, but we have to plan for the future.
The teaching profession used to be revered in a number of communities in our country. The status of our teachers has declined, and we must correct this if we are to avoid a teacher shortage in the future. We want teaching to be a first choice career - a career that attracts the brightest and the best of our matriculants.
Finally, we need the support and participation of every educator. Educators are the front line in meeting these challenges; we must provide them with the necessary support to produce the quality outcomes that are vital for the future prospects of South Africa. I am convinced that we can make a difference together, the legacy of apartheid can be overcome and education focused on quality is the means to achieve this great prize.
Thank you
Issued by: Ministry of Education
21 August 2004
Source: Department of Education (http://education.pwv.gov.za)
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