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13 January 2009

Good morning to you all and compliments for the New Year and best wishes to you and your families for 2009!

Thank you very much for accepting our invitation and coming this morning. The purpose of this interaction is to provide you with an in-depth report of the state of the department's readiness to provide quality education to learners in Gauteng and also accept in our system the youngest citizens of the province.

Admissions

Every year, our admission team engages in a massive advocacy programme that seeks to mobilise our communities to register learners in public schools before end of September. This exercise involves adverts in both newspapers and radio, announcements in community meetings, council meeting, ward meetings, etc, yet after all these efforts, we still have parents who register their learners as late as when we will be re-opening schools tomorrow,14 January. This puts tremendous pressure on our schools as they would have planned for learners that our already registered last year by end of September.

Preliminary figures show that there will be a one percent growth in learner enrolment for this academic year. They will be placed. No learner will not be afforded learning space in Gauteng and we will be working with our schools and school governing bodies (SGBs) to ensure that this happens.

We will place officials from head office and districts in schools to ensure that there is smooth first day of schooling and to deal with any eventualities. There are pressure areas which have been identified (see attached report) and in providing relief to the schools in the areas, once again the department will provide mobile classrooms.

The opening of 13 schools in the following areas will provide further relief: Bramfischerville, Buhlepark, Daveyton, Vereeniging, Hammanskraal, Soshanguve South, Roodekop, Tamboville, Pretoria Inner-city, Diepsloot, Phumula Gardens, Ebony Park and Vlakfontein.

Learner teacher support material (LTSM)

To date, + 99 % schools have received their LTSM and this includes the 13 new schools that will be opening their doors this month. There were some delays but
I must commend the schools as they placed their orders well on time. There has been a great improvement in the prosecution of this function over years. The department has spent a total of R 424 million for this academic year.

Also of note is that there will be educators in front of learners as our post provision ensured that schools filled up their posts well on time, this illustrate that co-operation between school management, unions, and school governing bodies for the benefit of our children.

Learner support

The department will continue to supply meals to our learners. The schools nutrition programme has been one of our successful ways of ensuring that our learners do not go hungry whilst learning and that they should not be distracted by hunger while being taught. A total of 542 171 learners will benefit from the programme and an additional number of learners are expected on the as it is extended to secondary schools.

The department will provide scholar transport to learners who stay more than
five (5) kilometres from their nearest school. 42 000 learners will be on our scholar transport this academic year.

The No Fee School Policy is beginning to be well understood by our schools and SGBs. We are still rolling on the quintile three as we have covered all the quintile one and two schools.

Intervention on underperforming schools

Of the 139 schools that underperformed in 2007, I am proud that 100 of them managed to get out of the danger zone. This indicates that our intervention programme really works. This year, we will again work with the unfortunate schools who found themselves performing well under the provincial norms. The 26% schools will have to be subjected to a more rigorous and school specific intervention programme that will look at the management, governance and curriculum delivery.

We will be working and consulting with key Stakeholders in managing and refining some of the proposed intervention proposals. During 2008, we conducted universal testing of learner attainment in grade three and Grade six. We are currently dealing with validation and analysis using the performance of learners in schools.

We will intervene to improve the literacy and numeracy competence of learners in the foundation and intermediate phase. We will continue to intensify our literacy programme by it into our district programmes. During 2009, we will expand and intensify our numeracy strategy and challenge.

Conclusion

I am satisfied that the Gauteng Department of Education is ready to roll out a red carpet for our young citizens tomorrow as we open the 2009 academic year.
The education environment is intact and my officials have undertaken to ensure that the first day is as smooth as possible. I will be visiting a number of schools and my office will provide details of the visits and you are most welcome as always to come along and witness the good work done by our schools and educators.

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Education, Gauteng Provincial Government
13 January 2009
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government (http://www.education.gpg.gov.za)