Department of Basic Education Quarter 3 2022/23 Performance

Meeting report

Opening Remarks by Minister
Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga expressed appreciation for the opportunity to present the report to the Committee. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) will be guided by the Committee on what they need to clarify and explain further. In terms of the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill road shows, DBE is grateful for the leadership of the Committee on the work it is doing on the BELA Bill as it has been a long-time coming. DBE looks forward to the deliberations on the BELA Bill later during this term. The Minister acknowledged the leadership of all the other parties in the Committee.

Department of Basic Education Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 performance 2022/23
Ms Nosipho Mbonambi, DBE Director for Strategic Planning, presented the performance indicators and targets of DBE activities in its five programmes according to the Annual Performance Plan:
Programme 1: Administration
Programme 2: Curriculum Policy, Support and Monitoring
Programme 3: Teachers, Education Human Resources and Institutional Development
Programme 4: Planning, Information and Assessment
Programme 5: Educational Enrichment Services

The Quarter 2 targets unachieved for 2022/23: 6 reports were submitted on 19 August 2022, 4 days later than 45 days. This was due to the late submission of reports by the Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) to DBE.

Major Quarter 3 highlights included improved target achievement of 90% as well as:
• Director-General engaged with provincial and district officials as part of the Second Phase of Annual Virtual Engagements for 2022.
• A total of 920 934 candidates sat for the November 2022 NSC examination.
• The NSC examination was completed without significant irregularities that could have jeopardised its integrity and credibility.
• The reach of the National Deworming Programme in four provinces Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State in 2022 was 1 124 916.
• The 2022/23  Funza Lushaka Bursary Programme (FLBP) recommended award list shows 12 094 FLBP bursaries awarded for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) by 31 December 2022 which is 294 awards more than the target.

Mr Patrick Khunou, DBE CFO, in presenting the Financial Report for Third Quarter Expenditure of 2022/23 said the budget expenditure went higher, and it is expected to still go higher (see presentation for full details).

Discussion
Ms M van Zyl (DA) said that feedback had not been issued on the investigation of the WhatsApp scandal involving learners and teachers from a couple of provinces. This makes the DBE statement that the November 2022 NSC examination did not have significant irregularities of great concern. It jeopardises the examination's integrity if teachers and learners are working together to get examination answers.

Ms van Zyl said the number of schools that do not participate in the End School-Related GBV programme is concerning, considering that GBV is a societal ill affecting many South Africans. GBV cases are starting to appear in big numbers in schools. What is DBE going to do to keep provincial departments accountable and have all schools part take in this programme?

Ms van Zyl noted that 68% (2 954 of 4 348) of eligible Funza Lushaka graduates were placed in vacancies by the end of December 2022. This means that 1 394 graduates remain unplaced. As seen in the Committee oversight of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), there is a shortage of teachers. These graduates are ready to go to schools and there is a shortage of quality educators. What is DBE doing about linking the unplaced graduates and the shortage of quality educators?

Mr B Nodada (DA) noted the good feedback from his party representative who had attended the public hearing held over the weekend. He proposed to the Chairperson that each written submission to the Committee should be treated as an individual submission and not as one group submission from an organisation.

There is a concern from citizens that public hearings announcements are not made easily available to them. Where are the public hearings venue and times being published? Are they reaching the people who are interested to ensure that public hearings on Bills are done in an inclusive manner?

Many challenges are observed during Committee oversight visits of schools in some provinces such as infrastructure, learner materials, non-functional School Governing Bodies (SGBs), and the massive quality teaching gap in classrooms. The learner results in international tests on language and maths have proven that to us. You will find that some schools have challenges when it comes to access to electricity, ICT access or they have computers but lack WiFi access. There is a major issue about safety in schools. About 7 000 schools were reported not to have proper fencing, resulting in learners getting stabbed due to violent behavioural incidents. Despite the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) being trimmed there is still a challenge to the pace of the content being taught.

Mr Nodada raised a concern about the lack of inclusive education. This was raised as a concern during his recent visit to the Beyers Naudé Local Municipality. The targets put in the DBE Annual Performance Plan  have to tangibly work on the ground to improve the challenges found in different district and provinces.

Some schools still do not have their Learning And Teaching Support Material (LTSM). Has DBE done oversight of provinces and districts to ensure that the learning material is present and available? Can DBE give clarity on the budget expenditure for Quarter 4?

Are there vacant posts in the DBE system? Is the moratorium on teacher appointments still in place? Why is there still a shortage of teachers? In some instances such as Nkonka High School in Murchison, KZN had a large number of vacancies in its Provincial Performance Measure (PPM). Is the problem in filling the vacancies due to shortage of teachers or another reason in the system?

In terms of the behavioural challenges in schools when it comes to safety, Mr Nodada had put forward a proposal asking DBE to engage the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) to place social work and psychology graduates for their practical work programme in high-risk areas such as Brakpan. DBE  should place these graduates in high-risk areas to service both the learners and the communities that are faced with behavioural challenges.

On teacher professional development, there is a massive challenge about quality teaching in the classroom. Is there a strategic mechanism in place beyond the South African School Administration and Management System (SA-SAMS) that is going to help with the professional development of teachers in line with the three-stream curriculum model? He believed this had been lack lustre.

There seems to be no accountability mechanism in place for principals and teachers that perform poorly at their schools.

Mr T Letsie (ANC) said DBE did extremely well by taking initiative to improve on its prior shortfalls in Quarter 2 and 3. The SRGBV target in Programme 5 was not achieved as five school districts did not submit their reports on time to provinces. DBE should identify the SRGBV programme as a challenge and engage the districts that made late submissions. What are the strategies to mitigate this shortfall?

Generally, small businesses with government contracts complain about late payments. He asked for reassurance from the CFO about the challenge in payments to service providers within the stipulated 30-day period. What can be done to avoid this challenge of late payment in DBE?

Minister and DBE response
Minister Angie Motshekga explained that DBE can only give the status report of a criminal investigation once it gets handed over to the South African Police Service (SAPS). It is not that there were no irregularities in the November 2022 NSC examination but the results showed insignificant irregularities. It was identified where there had been serious breaches that could give challenges to the credibility of results. DBE will give the truth as it has no reason to sugar-coat matters. In addition, Umalusi gave an independent report that certified the release of the DBE results.

With education being an intensely human resource endeavour, people constantly are moving in and out which means employment is on an ongoing base. Placement goes according to the vacancy and the budget allocated by the Minister of Finance. Thus it is not only the Funza Lushaka students that are out of the system. The unemployment of graduates is a bitter-sweet situation. KZN teachers have been allocated special funds and the Education MEC and her team have started with placements for the vacancies.

The Minister agreed with Mr Nodada that DBE should look at creative ways of ensuring that schools are a safe environment and conducive to learning. Different provinces do different things. At the national level, a framework is developed as a guideline, but the implementation at the provincial level is not uniform. This can bring creativity that DBE can use in identifying learners with behavioural challenges by working with SAPS and social workers to interact with learners outside the boundaries of school. DBE should work with universities and the Social Development mandate to ensure that schools are youth-friendly and safe environments.

Mr Mathanzima Mweli, DBE Director-General, replied about SRGBV that DBE monitors provinces and it obtained insufficient evidence on this Programme 5 indicator to indicate its achievement. Dr Whittle and the team are working closely with provinces to get the requisite evidence that would indicate if the matter has been successfully dealt with.

DHET experts say there is no absolute shortage of teachers. The shortage is in certain subjects such as gateway subjects. Funza Lushaka has responded to that shortage. DBE monitors the placement of teachers throughout the year and vacancies are not to exceed 10% as the system is not able to replace teachers quickly. Mr Padayachee’s branch (Teachers, HR and Institutional Development) is responsible for monitoring the system’s placement of teachers through Funza Lushaka. Graduates are not placed where there is no need for their placement.

Experts say that the improvement seen in the NSC from 2020 to 2022 is due to the help in trimming the curriculum content to rather focus on the fundamentals of learning. The trimmed curriculum has helped DBE focus on the depth of the curriculum rather than the width.

White Paper 6 on Special Needs is under review and DBE has made good progress in providing quality education to these learners. Inclusive education has been included in the results and there is still a lot to be done here.

LTSM is monitored and covered. The shortages that exist are the result of learners losing LTSM. Quarter 4 deals with workbooks, which are provided to all learners. The is no oversight visit that came back with the report stating that learners have not received workbooks.

Delivery happens from Volume One up to Volume Four. Payments are done for the delivery of Volume Four at the end of Quarter 4. DBE has never failed to make full payments to the textbook service providers. Workbooks are monitored in terms of delivery. He can put his head on the block that DBE has not received complaints about the delivery of textbooks.

The moratorium does not apply to all provinces as the compensation of employees varies from one province to the other. The moratorium to fill vacancies by a provincial education department depends on the cash flow and financial situation of the provincial treasury.

DBE social and psychological services work with DHET. DBE has a multi-disciplinary team of social workers and psychologists and therapists placed at district level and other strategic points through the Learners With Severe Intellectual Disability (LSID) grant. It is the provinces and districts that decide on the placements in high-risk areas.

The report on the professional development activities of teachers can be provided per province.

Among the accountability mechanisms in place for school principals, DBE uses the South African Schools Act to deal with the underperformance of school principals. DBE has introduced a performance management system called the Quality Management System (QMS) for school-based educators to improve learning outcomes. School principals are accountable for the QMS. The QMS is improving because the accountability bar has been raised.

On payments to service providers, it is usually under 1% of service providers that are affected by the glitches in the system. Therefore, there are not many challenges to paying service providers within 30 days.

Dr Granville Whittle, Deputy Director-General: Educational Enrichment Services, agreed that it is a technical matter DBE is facing when it comes to service provider payments and there are teams in the provinces tasked to remedy the evidence problem that has been identified.

On the question about social workers, there are about 3 500 learner support agents who are allocated to schools located in high-risk areas. DBE is currently finalizing a short course they collaborated on with the University of Johannesburg to provide high level training to the young people who support at-risk learners in high-risk areas.

Mr Khunou, DBE CFO, replied that Slide 14 shows that for Quarters 1 to 3 DBE paid 100% of invoices to service providers.

The Minister said that the Committee’s voices are appreciated as it raises the concerns people have about the sector and their input adds value that moves the DBE forward.

The Minister and the DBE delegation were thanked and dismissed from the meeting.

Committee Programme
Mr Lionel Brown, Committee Secretary, confirmed the receipt of correspondence from Mr Nodada  on the matters he has raised. The matter is receiving attention and a response is being formulated for the Chairperson before it is submitted to Mr Nodada.

The Committee has the necessary parliamentary units that are involved in the public participation hearings. They are out in the field. They are on the ground for at least two to three weeks before the Portfolio Committee holds hearings. There are quite a few platforms used to send alerts to the public about public hearings such as social media.

Ms Portia Mbude-Mutshekwane, Committee Content Advisor, replied that Mr Nodada's letter was received and responses are being processed about publicity of the public hearings and the treatment of public submissions. Mr Nodada will receive the response before the seven-day due date. To date, media alerts from parliamentary communication services have informed the public about the public hearings. She is awaiting the radio broadcast list that will be attached as evidence of the information to the public about the public hearings. [Her comments about the clubbing together of submissions as a group submission could not be heard due to network difficulties.]

Ms N Adoons confirmed that a balance of venues in the rural and urban areas was achieved.

The Committee minutes of 7 and 21 February 2023 meetings were adopted.

The Committee Report on its Oversight Visit to KZN (29 Jan - 3 Feb 2023) was adopted.

The Chairperson adjourned the meeting.