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16 July 2008

It is with mixed emotions that today I present to you the progress and challenges that we have faced since coming into the education office back in 2004. In my first budget vote speech, I indicated then that education is my passion, and today I still proudly state that it is still my passion. I have known nothing else but education in my professional career.

And so I believe that it is nowhere more appropriate for me to talk about what this government is trying to do, and will try to do in future, to unlock the potential of every child and young person and help every young person in this country to make the most of their talents for the future.

Over the last 13 years, education in this province has experienced tremendous increases in service delivery to cover more learners than ever before and that has resulted in enormous improvement in quality and efficiency of service delivery. We have reduced dropout and repetition rates resulting in improved retention rates across the schooling system.

Despite these successes, we are still faced with the situation that the quality of education, especially in the historically disadvantaged sectors of society, remains a major challenge.

We have put into place services and resourcing strategies that were skewed to advantage those historically marginalised communities to address their needs in a comprehensive package from government that covered education, health and social services, including access to grants where needed.

It is within this context that we have reviewed our education delivery over the last few years and now position ourselves and our strategies to improve the quality of education through improved service delivery characterised by service excellence.

It is imperative to note that the Department has established a single administration of education in provinces but have also done so under a single national education policy framework that aims to transform education governance and education provisioning including the curriculum frameworks. Furthermore, we have achieved an access rate in education that equals many developed countries and surpasses most developing countries.

We have put into place a social security package that ensures access to learning in the classroom. In the light of this, we are providing social grants, nutrition programmes, scholar transport, preferential education funding that is both pro poor and equitable, and the recently passed legislation introducing free schooling in the neediest communities. In addition, we are progressively increasing access to Grade R.

We have improved school infrastructure including renovations to school buildings, facilitating electrification and the provision of telephone lines to schools, and most notable is the introduction and rollout of Gauteng online to schools in the province with the aim of having functioning computer laboratories in all schools.

The increased investment in personnel, and specifically in increasing the number of educators in the system, have ensured more manageable class sizes across all communities than was seen prior to 1994. We now deploy educators in an equitable way and in a pro poor manner.

The curriculum redress policies, including the introduction of outcomes-based education, and the national curriculum statements have ensured that schools that provided learning opportunities, that simply resulted in adding to the marginalisation of our youth by creating post schooling barriers, have since introduced appropriate subjects and learning areas that will ensure that learners leave school with more opportunities than ever before. We have invested substantial funds over the last few years to institutionalise the governance and school management system and most developed and developing countries are marvelling at these developments as being among the most progressive innovations in educational management and governance.

Despite all these successes, one must reflect and ask the question "Has the quality of education improved over the last twelve years?" The answer to this, however, cannot be a simplistic 'yes' or 'no'. Despite the improved resourcing levels and the need to continue and intensify the adequate resourcing of learning we have seen marginal gains in the quality of learning.

The general performance of the system in respect of the senior certificate examinations, testing of learner achievement and the review of internal school assessment outcomes shows gains in the quality of learning but these have not been sufficient to ensure a sustainable improvement in the quality of learning across the system.

While the flow-through rates are increasing in all phases across schools, the quality of education has not opened the doors to a life of enhanced quality for most of our citizens. In support of the national thrust for quality in education, and also in support of the national and provincial initiatives, we have put in place a number of provincial programmes to address the quality of teaching and learning.

Finally, the fast growing economy and rapidly changing social environment threaten to marginalise more of our youth if we do not act rapidly and ensure that quality education is a permanent feature of the education terrain in South Africa. It is against this social pressure that we unreservedly support the Minister's thrust for quality education.

We are committed to tackle quality through intensive and directed initiatives and programmes over the next Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) period, which are detailed in this Annual Performance Plan. On the whole, these priorities strongly emphasise education's role in transforming society, bringing about social equity, and contributing to the country's growth and development.

The plan sets out to address the challenges facing education by deepening education delivery, developing common mechanisms for the monitoring and implementation of education and developing a clear programme of action that will ensure that education programmes and interventions are guided by effective and sustainable policy choices and will realise our 2009 vision.

The provincial strategic thrust "developing healthy, skilled and productive people" makes a clear and direct demand on education. The demand is that education must become relevant to the people of Gauteng so that they are not only literate and numerate but that they are the best skilled people who are employable within the economy, who are productive within society; who are entrepreneurial, who are self-employable and who are committed to lifelong learning.

The five year plan of the Gauteng Provincial Government sets forth key provincial goals that the MTEF plans to address.
These are
* enabling faster economic growth and job creation
* fighting poverty and building safe, secure and sustainable communities
* developing healthy, skilled and productive people
* deepening democracy and promoting constitutional rights and
* building an effective and caring government.

While all the goals have a bearing on education, the goal of developing healthy, skilled and productive people set the following five year targets for education and early childhood development.

* Consolidation of democratic participation in all forms of governance through strengthening the participation of our people in forums such as school governing bodies.
* Building patriotism, national identity and civic pride, including deepening appreciation of the right and responsibilities of citizenship, particularly through ensuring civic education in schools.
* Ensuring the most poor have access to a package of services including free primary and secondary education, school feeding, and scholar transport.
* Contributing to the comprehensive HIV and AIDS programme particularly through life skills education at schools.
* Working in partnerships with communities and police to ensure safe schools.

In addition, the education sector identified a number of priority areas that intervene to address policy compliance and quality education. The key national and provincial priorities include:
* extension of the implementation of the new curriculum statement to grades 10 to 12
* implementation of the revised norms and standards for school funding
* the expansion of Early Childhood Development, in particular grade R
* the recapitalisation of further education and training (FET) colleges
* the expansion of Adult Based Education and Training (ABET) and its alignment to job creation programmes
* The development of transversal education information systems to support decision-making and accountability
* reduce backlogs in school equipment.
* provide for teacher development and human resource management systems
* strengthen special schools
* systemic evaluation.

For more information:
Panyaza Lesufi
Cell: 083 256 7933

Issued by: Gauteng Provincial Government
16 July 2008