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Madam Speaker

On International Women's Day, I am proud to express the solidarity of the Minister of Education with the world-wide cause of women's empowerment. We rejoice in the profound contribution of women, as educators of the nation. We re-commit ourselves to the cause of gender equity, and to the struggle against male chauvinism and abuse of women and girls, especially in our institutions of learning.

Introduction

This is a time for celebration, for taking stock, and for re-dedication.

We celebrate the achievements of all those who have contributed to the transformation of our national education and training system.

We take stock of the condition of the system, and some of our most urgent challenges.

We re-dedicate ourselves to the vision of a learning nation, which I first offered to the National Assembly in 1994.

But first, Madam Speaker, I must speak about the Education budget.

The Education budget

Budget priorities

This government has kept faith with the goals and strategies of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. Even in a period of severe fiscal pressure and international financial turbulence, Education has been in the forefront of the government's priorities, as part of its programme for sustained social development.

In the Education budget, both national and provincial, we target sustained, and sustainable, growth.

The principle of equity and redress guide our spending policy, to correct historic distortions and protect the poorest and most vulnerable.

We have adopted the rigorous discipline of prioritisation.

We have taken aim against corruption, waste, inefficiency, indiscipline, and low productivity in the education system, which siphon off scarce resources and drag down performance.

Vote 10

Madam Speaker, the allocations for the three years of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework indicate a modest but steady increase in provision for Vote 10.

In 1999/2000, the university and technikon system will receive R6,6 billion or 94 per cent, out of the total of R7 billion.

I am delighted to announce that we have again maintained the average national subsidy level to the university and technikon system. Moreover, redress funding (at R60 million) and funding for NSFAS (at R390 million) are substantially higher. These sums will provide special assistance to institutions that carry historic deficits in equipment or capacity, and will enable many more poor students to complete their studies.

Although Vote 10 does not finance provincial education expenditure, it again includes provision for a Policy reserve Fund to improve the delivery of education services, through co-operative action among the national and provincial education departments. This conditional grant increases to R211 million in 1999/2000, and will increase further thereafter.

The allocation of R169 million for operational costs in the Department of Education is adequate, but very tight. We will need to spend carefully and well.

I am proud to say that this Department, under Dr Chabani Manganyi's committed leadership, has maintained an excellent record of financial discipline throughout the past five years.

Celebrating our achievements

Creating a national system

In May 1994, the most obvious priority for the Minister of Education was to create a national system of education and training where there was none. Five years later, we can say with conviction that we have succeeded.

Through a massive co-operative effort, we have created the organisation, mission, values, policy, legislation, governance structures, curriculum framework, pedagogical theory, labour relation environment, planning and budget frameworks for an effective single, national, non-racial system.

While this creative work has been going on, enrolments have increased by 1,5 million, over
10 000 classrooms have been added to the national stock, and average learner-educator ratios have fallen from 41:1 to 34:1.

Compared with five years ago, the educational environment, and the dominant education discourse, has changed beyond recognition.

Madam Speaker, five years ago, the creation of a unified national education system was considered to be the single most difficult task of post-apartheid reconstruction.

And yet, together, we have done it.

A new national learning system has been created, and the new National Qualifications Framework is binding the system of education and skills development together, from the base to the top, and across all economic and occupational sectors.

We have been passionately committed to the principle that all South African should take ownership of and accept responsibility for the public education and training system.

We therefore pledged ourselves to achieve the highest level of principled consensus on education policy and legislation among all parties and stakeholders.

This meant persevering with consultation and negotiation with our allies, our opponents, and those who are neither, even in the face of provocation and insult.

But when necessary, I have had to draw the line and say, "This is the position of the elected government. We must go forward".

Despite serious strain and some leakage to the independent sector, public education, in a unified system, serves the educational interests of at least 95 per cent of our citizens.

Taking stock and moving forward

Delivery and performance

Our system continues to inspire eager and hard-working learners, it retains able, committed and patriotic educators and officials, creative research scholars and productive intellectuate of the highest standing. Our policies and flagship programmes like Curriculum 2005 have won both local international respect. While our major policy and legislative programme in education and training is nearing completion, our attention has focused increasingly on the need to ensure that the performance of the system improves beyond recognition.

The education system is home to almost a third of our total population. It mirrors our community life in all respects, both its vibrant optimism and diversity, and its moral confusion and social pathologies.

Educational institutions bear the brunt of the turmoil of young people who have grown up in violent, racist or uncaring homes, who have themselves suffered abuse and exploitation, and whose moral bearings are haywire.

The education system harbours adults who have chosen to duck their professional responsibilities, or whose understanding of their leadership role is woefully inadequate.

Education has a responsibility to lead

Madam Speaker, it is unreasonable to expect the education system to bear the full burden of society's ills. But the moral crisis in our nation will overwhelm us if the education system is not in the frontline of our struggle to reclaim communities from the ravages of a brutal past and a despairing present.

Yizo Yizo is unveiling these realities on our television screens week by week. This fine series, co-sponsored by our Culture of Learning, Teaching and Service Campaign and SABC Education, is only one of the ways in which we in education, with our partners, are attempting to confront the evidence of serious disorder and poor performance in education institutions, and turn the situation around.

Educators, at every level of learning, backed up by concerned parents and community leaders, must help provide the leadership our society expects of them.

Restoring confidence in public education

The education authorities and the public alike want to see schools that work, that start and end on time, conduct their business in a disciplined manner, and produce results.

The theme of my Ministry's 1999/2000 action programme is "to mobilise the South Africa African public to enter into a social compact with us, to restore the confidence of the public education".

At the school level, it means redoubling our efforts to put teaching and learning at the top of the agenda.

The current right-sizing and redeployment exercise, in co-operation with the teachers' unions, provides the opportunity to stabilise teacher supply to the schools, and bring an end to a protracted period of uncertainty and insecurity.

Our provincial colleagues and the national Department will focus this year on empowering the school leadership team, in particular the office of principal and the school governing body.

School communities, led by their principals and governing bodies, will be expected to plan their own school development, with the support of their provincial education departments.

With encouragement from Deputy president Mbeki, discussions are under way to harness the professional and managerial resources of the strongest parts of the independent and public school sectors, to forge partnerships for development between functioning schools and non-functioning schools.

Religious organisations have been invited to mobilise their own moral and organisational resources in support of this effort. Organised business has rallied to the same cause through the Business Trust.

Accountability is the name of the game. All role-players in the public system - officials, principals, educators, parents, learners - must accept their responsibilities and act on them.

Educators and officials who do not perform have no entitlement to continued employment, and the appropriate disciplinary processes must be applied.

Strengthening provincial capacity

Madam Speaker, the leadership and the administrative competence of provincial education departments are pre-requisites for improved performance by education departments and institutions alike.

Our ongoing capacity-building and development programmes will be intensified, with the help of this year's enhanced Policy Reserve Fund, and bi-lateral aid.

The management of last year's senior Certificate examination showed what provincial departments can achieve, by careful co-operative planning in association with the National Department. Evidence of a disgraceful alleged fraud perpetrated by reckless persons in one province cannot obliterate the devoted work of hundreds of officials and educators throughout the country.

Higher education transformation

The higher education system is my Ministry's direct responsibility. It is assured of a steady increase in resources under the MTEF, with enhanced allocations for redress and NSFAS.

The transformation of the system is accelerating, now that the Higher Education Act and White Paper are being implemented at national and institutional levels.

The Department of Education is giving particular attention to five major strategic tasks.

The first is the development of a national plan for the system, linked to the institutional planning process which is already under way, and the new management information and funding systems which are on the drawing board.

The second is the establishment of the Higher Education Quality Committee by the Council of Higher Education. The HEQC will have statutory powers for quality assurance and quality promotion in the system.

Thirdly, the system will be incorporating a slimmed-down network of colleges of education during the next twelve months, after an intensive planning process.

Fourthly, private higher education institutions will be incorporated in the system through a strict accreditation and registration process. This is designed to protect the public from exploitation, and the integrity of the system from contamination by opportunists.

Fifthly, using the tools available to us, we are working to stabilise a troubling situation on several campuses where there is a crisis of leadership and institutional confidence.

I have appointed independent Assessors to investigate serious breakdown on three campuses.

At the request of the Director-General, the Auditor-General is conducting searching audits on six campuses, including forensic audits where necessary to help us get to the bottom of their financial malaise.

The Departments of Education and Finance are undertaking a review of higher education finance under the Medium Term Expenditure Framework. This work will guide us in achieving a sustainable funding system to drive the new institutional plans.

These diagnostic and remedial measures will be buttressed by an important programme of leadership development, for chief executives, councils and student leaders respectively.

Re-dedication

Madam Speaker, it has been my great privilege to lead the Ministry of Education and the Council of Education Ministers for the past five, momentous years.

We are managing the transformation of a massive national system, within a society that is struggling for stability and order, in the face of poverty, unemployment and grave social inequality.

Some of my ambitions, especially for ABET, Early Childhood Development, and ELSEN, and the elimination of infrastructure backlogs, may realise only when economic growth permits an even greater level of investment in our system.

Meanwhile, the watchword must be to manage well what we have been given.

I prepare to take my leave of this great task with no regrets - only immense gratitude for the support I have been given by so many. Words are inadequate to express my thanks:
* to the President, Deputy President and my Cabinet colleagues
* to Dr Blade Nzimande, the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee and Ma Winkie Direko, the Chairperson of the NCOP Select Committee
* to the MECs and Heads of Education in the provinces
* to the Chairpersons and members of statutory bodies
* to the Chairpersons of Councils and Chief Executives of universities and technikons
* the executives of the educator unions, and other employee bodies, and finally
* to Deputy Minister Smangaliso Mkhatswa, my companion in office, and
* to the Director-General, Dr Chabani Manganyi, and his fine team in the Department of Education.

Our system is what it has become because of them.

My Ministry rededicates itself to the vision of a society where the gates of learning are open to all, where the halls of learning are sanctuaries of the human spirit, and the intellectual resources of our beloved South Africa are nurtured and deployed for the public good.

I have lived a full life in education. I re-dedicate my remaining time to its service, for the benefit of all South Africans and our posterity.

I thank you.

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