15 August 2002
Introduction
It is now six months since the President put the question to the nation as to "whether what we are doing as the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, as well as the fourth state, is helping to lift from the shoulders of our people, the intolerable burden of poverty and underdevelopment" In his speech the President asked us to "answer this question in a frank, honest, and forthright manner. Since all of you will agree education sits at the top among those critical instruments to achieve the goal of releasing our people from the jaws of poverty, we in education must then be much more sharper and even more frank in our assessment of progress or lack thereof in this regard, as any attempt at hiding things under the carpet, or sharply reviewing our policies and programmes against this goal, may do much more harm to our people and nation then in any other area in my view. It is with this understanding that I want to brief you on where we are, six months after the President spoke.
While I do want to build on the view I expressed during my budget debate earlier this year, captured in those famous words by the black American poet, Melvin Tolson, that "out of the abysses of illiteracy, through the labyrinths of Lies, across waste lands of Disease' we advance", I want to spend a little more time on our assessment of the difficulties we face, and how we are confronting them head on, as we respond to the challenge of the President. Details on the progress we are making on the matters in our own strategic plan and the President's programme as announced in the speech we have referred to are provided in a separate document we have distributed. I will however touch on a few.
Human Resource Development
I begin with the challenge of human resource development for two reasons. Firstly because I want to make a connection between my briefing and the briefing that preceded this one from the Minister of Labour. As you know, both of us are leading the government's HRD strategy. Secondly, and much more importantly I want to expand on the report given to you after the recent Cabinet Lekgotla.
We are making a lot of progress in implementing our strategy. I am not going to spend much time on details around this. I just want highlight two matters, namely scarce skills, and the ICT university as referred to in the President's address. With regard to scarce skills, a contract with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has been finalised, since they have been given the responsibility to manage scholarships to deal with scarce skills. This will result in a disbursement of R22 million to under-graduate students that are enrolled in certain key programmes that are targeting scarce skills. The scarce skills were identified using the results of commissioned research as well as data from the 25 Sector Skills Plans from SETAs. Immigration officials can also use the list to inform decisions about the issuing of work and residence permits and the inclusion of the Department of Home Affairs to the HRD CC will facilitate the sharing of informing regarding scarce skills with immigration officials.
The President also referred to the establishment of an ICT University. Officials from the Departments of Education, Communication, Arts and Culture, Trade and Industry, and Labour, took the task into their hands immediately after the President's announcement, and with the assistance of the CSIR collected information about various models of similar institutions that exist in other countries. They then worked on a proposal for consideration by the Ministers of the above mentioned departments, using an assessment of what capacity already exists in the Universities and Technikons in this country. What they have come up with is a model, which has been consulted on with higher education institutions, and business representatives in the ICT industry, which proposes an establishment of an Advanced Institute, as this will allow maximum co-operation between university and technikon type advanced training, and business, including possibilities of incubators and workbased solutions research and inventions. Details of what this institute will look like, and a business plan for its implementation are now being worked out, and should be in place by the time of the next Cabinet Lekgotla.
But if we contextualise our HRD challenges within the context of the President's question on poverty, then our strategy needs to be felt much more strongly at the level of the thousands of our people who are unemployed, and are currently judged to be unemployable because of their skills levels and types, including the thousands of young people who are just out of Matric but are not at higher education institutions. While building our system through the transformation of our institutions such as FET colleges, and University is critical to addressing our capacity to deliver better quality human resources for the economy and for citizenship, we have to accelerate our programme delivery mechanisms to address the needs of our people. Our poverty eradication drive therefore, which is based on our fundaental belief that people must be enabled to participate in changing their own situation, rests on our ability to address the skills needs of our people. It is this challenge that we are now addressing as we try to link our employment strategy, our rural and urban development strategy, and our social services and infrastructure delivery strategies to our human resource development strategy targeting this sector of our society. We believe we can do this through better management of our resources which are currently available through the setas, better and integrated planning, and targeted programmes for skills development in partnership with various stakeholders, including business.This is a challenge we want to face head on for the next six months.
Attacking poverty through school development and infrastructure delivery
In addressing the issue of poverty the President made specific reference to the phenomenon of children learning under trees, which we have interpreted as meaning under dangerous conditions. The Provinces and ourselves have begun the process of planning to ensure that in the provincial MTEF budgets these schools are prioritised. At this stage all provinces have now tabled their plans with the national department, and we are busy analysing them to ensure that they are credible and achievable. In the meantime work on infrastructure delivery is still continuing, as evinced in both the increase in the capital budgets from R1,27 billion in 2001/2002 to R2,01 billion in 2002/2003. On the expenditure side there is also great improvement in the provinces with an expenditure level of 87%.
However the biggest challenge we have identified as a Department is the one of effecting change in the schools that serve the poorest of the poor. We are concerned that our funding model may not help us address the quality of service delivery in poor areas. Our sense is that our policies on funding are not wrong, per se, but what we need to look at much more closely is whether we can find new mechanism for funding schools in these areas, which are not capable of raising income themselves from parents and donors, as happens in schools in well endowed areas. For us therefore the President's question translates into whether education in previously disadvantaged areas is improving or the situation is worsening.
This matter is complex, as it requires careful consideration of all possibilities at our disposal, which do not in the end have unintended consequences of creating an escalation of fees in schools in well endowed areas, as they try to close the gap for our redistributive models that we may come up with.
We also face the challenge of examining how we can ensure provincial equity in learner per-capita expenditure so as to ensure that the poor learners are getting proper access to quality education across the board. At the same time we are addressing the matter of seeing how we can improve actual budgets in real terms, so as to create breathing space for non-personnel components of the budgets to enable equitable distribution of those resources in accordance with the existing norms and standards, which favour the poorest of the poor.
But at the end of the day all these measures may not deal with the challenge of poverty, unless we take the radical step of reviewing our funding regime as a whole. At a joint MinMec between education and finance, I gave notice that I intend calling for such a review to happen soon. We must find a way we can fund education such that the state is able to make proper interventions to deal with schools and the effects of poverty among children. It is inconceivable that a democratic state like ours can continue in this way. I am therefore soon to commission an analysis of the funding regime, to determine what we can do to make a difference for the poor. This matter is receiving priority in the department, and we shall provide information on the subject as we finalise it.
Creating the proper legal framework for addressing poverty: the education laws amendment bill.
One of the ways in which resources can be redistributed to impact on the plight of poor schools is the proper distribution of educators. I will not dwell much on the issues that arise in this regard, save to address the question of how we are trying to address one aspect of this through the bill we are introducing during the session.
There are a number of very important elements in the Bill, some of which are being lost amid the noise about other aspects, which are probably less consequential in affecting the nature of our schools.
These elements include:
The public focus has however been on two aspects of the Bill -both of which were captured in a poorly researched article and a dramatic headline this past weekend. This article claimed that teachers will be instructed where to teach, even against their will. This is nonsense, and to claim that such a thing would happen under the labour regime of this country is appalling.
The simple truth is that first time applicants (to whom the provision is limited), like employees of any other large organisation, will be offered posts at particular schools, which they are free to accept or decline. If they choose to decline, they will have to wait until a more suitable vacancy occurs and another offer is made. No employer can offer a job, and then ask where you would like to work. Appointments are made against vacancies, which in terms of the legislation may now be offered to new graduates.
This will simplify the recruitment process for schools, which will not have to wait for a gazette, advertising and interviews. It will also make it much simpler for the prospective teacher, who will in future make only one application to the Department, instead of the twenty or so that they must complete at present, all with cvs and certificates attached, and then wait for and attend numerous interviews - sometimes with rather hostile governing bodies. This new approach will increase the chances of early employment, and send a very positive message to student teachers.
The second aspect that has drawn comment is the provision for a national curriculum, which would apply to public and independent schools. I regret to say that many personal and sinister interpretations have been placed on this, which is a sad reflection of the state of our democracy. And there really is no need for the independent schools to start threatening to go to the Constitutional Court, as they are reported to have done. All we are doing is to deal with the implications of the court ruling in the Harris Case, where the judge ruled that policy cannot be binding to the provinces and independent schools, unless it is expressed in law This was already policy, and all we are doing is to give it legislative expression. Curriculum policy is an important instrument to ensure that the constitutional responsibility for independent schools to provide education which is of an equivalent standard to that of public schools or better. We cannot benchmark this unless we are comparing similar approaches and similar outcomes. Therefore anybody who wants to suggest that a matter of establishing norms and standards on the curriculum through an instrument directed by the courts of this country is a violation of their Constitutional rights, needs to examine the facts carefully, and study the bill much more closely.
In regard to assessment, the same applies. We have said that we value innovation in respect of assessment instruments and procedures, for the sake of system development, and see no value in a standardised one-off examination. Various agencies, including provincial departments and accredited independent bodies, have a role to play, but this must be exercised within a co-ordinated framework, and in terms of prescribed standards. These will enable us to reliably compare results internally, and for our assessments to be internationally benchmarked.
The National Curriculum Statement
The revision of Curriculum 2005 is nearing completion, in accordance with the recommendations of the Review Committee.
For General Education, the statements have been completed and approved for implementation from 2004 up until 2008. These are being distributed to schools, and relevant stakeholders. We have translated the statements into all 11 languages, to ensure access and promote home language use.
During the course of 2003 we will be focused on three areas to build capacity for implementation:
In Further Education, a draft revised statements have been completed, which are currently under review, and which will be implemented in Grade 10 in 2004. In 2003, Grade 10 pupils will continue with the Senior Certificates syllabus, which will be taught using outcomes based approaches, and associated means of assessment. A Guide for Grade 10 teachers has been distributed to assist them with the transition and the phasing in of OBE.
Conclusion
I began my statement by making reference to the President statement. I want to end with his words in answering the question he posed himself, when he said, " ..our country has , in real terms, and within its means, moved further forward towards a society free of poverty and underdevelopment. This I will also say that we are nowhere near liberating millions of our people from these scourges." As I have suggested so far, in education our answer is not very far from the same answer the President gave. But we are determined to make a dent on poverty and its effects on our people, and we believe we can do it in the spirit of Tirisano.
Baie Dankie
Ke a leboga
Thank you