NATIONAL COUNCIL OF PROVINCES
WRITTEN REPLY
QUESTION 46
DATE OF PUBLICATION OF INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER: 01/03/2013
(INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER: 03/2013)
Mr Z Mlenzana (COPE-EC) to ask the Minister of Basic Education:
Whether she has put any measures in place to end the education crisis in
the Eastern Cape; if not, why not; if so, (a) what measures and (b)
what are the further relevant details? CW93E
Reply
Yes. I have put the following measures in place to address the challenges
in the Eastern Cape Education Department:
a) i) A National Intervention Team has been deployed to the Eastern
Cape Education Department. The current Team was deployed in May 2012
and consists of two members, namely a former Superintendant General:
Education in a provincial education department, and a retired Chief
Financial Officer who was also the Deputy Director-General: Corporate
Services in the formernational Department of Education.
ii) The Minister, Mrs AM Motshekga, MP, frequently visits the
province to monitor and support the intervention teams and the
turnaround plans agreed to with the Premier and the MEC of Education
in the Eastern Cape Province.
iii) The following measures have been put in place to stabilise the budget
for 2012/13 and to prioritise the budget for 2013/14:
a) The Team has dealt decisively with the majority of accruals relating
to service providers, which tallied more than R 300 million at the
beginning of the 2012/13 financial year. The Eastern Cape Education
Department may not succeed totally in redeeming all the accruals by 31
March 2013, but the majority of them has been dealt with. The reason
for this is that the Eastern Cape Education Department needs to ensure
that a claim received is indeed a valid claim and that it has not
previously been paid before payment can now be processed. This audit
verification process becomes more complicated when dealing with claims
dating back as far as 2004. The auditing company Price Waterhouse
Coopers is assisting the Eastern Cape Education Department with the
verification process.
b) The budget for 2012/13 with regard to compensation of employees (CoE)
and operations was reprioritised firstly to find funds for the
accruals and secondly, to move funds to the highest priorities where
needed. Thirdly, the Acting Superintendent General, (now officially
appointed) put austerity measures in place to curtail expenditure
within certain parameters for the remainder of the financial year.
These measures have proved successful and the books will balance at
the end of the financial year without any over expenditure. In fact,
an amount just less than 1% saving is envisaged.
c) During the 2013/14 budget prioritisation exercise, it was further
discovered that many services were being duplicated by various
components in the Eastern Cape Education Department. This was a clear
indication of a lack of co-ordination among managers. This matter was
addressed in the budget and will lead to substantial savings and
improved service delivery.
d) The Eastern Cape Provincial Department (ECPD) has implemented an audit
rectification plan (ARP). For the past five years, the Eastern Cape
Education Department has received a Disclaimer Report from the Auditor-
General. The Department received extremely negative publicity for the
continuing situation in this respect. The Auditor-General requested
that a serious attempt be made to improved systems in the Department
that would lead to an improved audit outcome.
e) In this regard, the following has been achieved:
i) Based on the report of the Auditor-General for the 2011/12 financial
year two things were done to bring about change in this crucial area.
Firstly, a complete detailed turn-around plan for all the audit
findings was developed and was agreed on with the Auditor-General, the
Audit Committee and shared with all other stakeholders. Secondly, a
Chartered Accountant was appointed on a contract basis to work
fulltime on the implementation of the plan. The Education Department
has since appointed him as the Audit-Controller for the Department,
and he now interacts with the Auditor-General on all audit matters.
ii) The plan is being implemented systematically and progress is regularly
reported on. The priority areas have been agreed on with the Auditor-
General and are being addressed first. It must be noted however that
it will be impossible for the Eastern Cape Education Department to
achieve an improved audit outcome for the 2012/13 financial year due
to relative slow progress in implementing improved systems in the
Department, as well as the late stage in the financial year that
implementation commenced. 2013/14 is being targeted in that respect.
f) The ECPD is making every effort to manage the Court Order obtained
by the Legal Resource Centre against the Eastern Cape Education
Department for the following:
i) The permanent filling of substantive vacant posts in schools.
ii) The paying of temporary educators appointed at schools.
iii) The refunding of school governing bodies that appointed and paid
temporary educators in substantive vacant posts.
iv) The declaration of the 2013 post basket in line with post
provision norm (PPN) by 30 November 2012.
Good progress has been made in complying with the court order,
although it was found to be impossible to comply with all the set
return dates due to practical difficulties experienced. A team, led
by the Deputy Minister of Basic Education, MrEnverSurty, MP and the
Justice Department, MrNel, with a team comprising legal units of
both DBE and EC Department of Education, has been working full time
on it from the outset.
The Eastern Cape Education Department has kept the Court and the
Legal Resource Centre (LRC) informed of progress made through
regularly submitting affidavits to court after often agreeing on
the content with the LRC. Seven such affidavits, of which one was a
variation order, have submitted. The seventh and last order to date
was signed on 31 January 2013. Besides the good progress that was
made in dealing with the court order, it is an indication of the
improvement of the overall performance of the Department in dealing
with such administrative matters.
g) The Eastern Cape Education Department is also making progress in
managing the following Human Resource matters:
i) Excess Educators
With the announcement of the 2013 Post Provisioning Norms on 30
September 2012 by the Eastern Cape Education Department, a firm
commitment was made to deal decisively with the excess educators.
The post basket for 2013 was distributed to schools.
Notwithstanding desktop exercises conducted by the Eastern Cape
Education Department that estimated a number of 6781 excess
Educators and 8825 vacant posts, the following statistics have been
submitted by the Departmentâs 23 district offices by 18 February
2013:
⢠Excess educators 2 197
⢠Vacant posts 3 265
⢠Excess educators successfully placed 552
ii) Policy on Incapacity leave and Ill-health Retirement (PILIR)
Cases
There are an estimated 8200 PILIR cases in the Eastern Cape
Education Department. The PILIR cases refer to employees (mainly
educators) who have been on extended sick leave for considerable
periods of time. In some cases the employees have been booked off
sick by a medical practitioner for a number of years, without the
cases being brought to conclusion.
To bring the cases to conclusion, it is necessary to intervene with
the assistance of an independent medical practitioner to determine
whether the employee will fully recover and be able to return to
work, and if so by when. If not, the employees may need to be
retired.
To deal with the PILIR cases the Department of Basic Education has
appointed a specialist service provider, namely Fever Tree, to
assist the Eastern Cape Education Department to deal with the
backlog of cases. A first meeting with the company took place on 1
February 2013 and the work is underway.
h) The Eastern Cape Education Department is also making progress in terms
of teaching and learning improvement programmes and initiatives:
i) The Eastern Cape Education Departmentâs teaching and learning
improvement strategies for 2013 are against the backdrop of a
significant performance improvement in their 2012 Annual National
Assessment and Matric results. The Foundation Phase performance
improved greatly with 65% of Grade 1 learners passing Maths, and
72% of those passing at 50% and above. Matric results also showed a
remarkable improvement from 58% to 61%. All Provincial efforts are
aimed at pushing the boundaries to higher levels.
ii) The improvement of teaching and learning has been elevated to a
top priority of the Eastern Cape Education Department. The Chief
Directorate responsible for teaching and learning has been elevated
into a Branch: the Teaching and Learning Branch.
iii) A three year Learner Attainment Improvement Strategy (LAIS)
programme and strategy framework has been adopted by the Eastern
Cape Education Department to focus on the improvement of learner
attainment levels. The LAIS program is founded on a 7 pillar
framework that includes (i) the development of management and
leadership, (ii) a comprehensive teacher development programme,
(iii) resource provisioning, (iv) efficient school support, (v)
enhancing the proficiency of language, (vi) maths and science
improvement, as well as (vii) protecting teaching time. The LAIS
programme focus areas will include (i) literacy and numeracy
strategy, (ii) Grade 12 leaner support, (iii) dealing with GET and
FET underperforming schools, (iv) promoting and stabilising the
functionality of schools, as well as (vii) making special schools
functional.
iv) Underperforming schools have been placed under the spotlight, with
the Eastern Cape Education Department launching a monitoring and
support programme to report on improvement plans for these schools.
The Department will be strictly applying provisions of section 58B
of the South African Schools Act. The Department is further lining
up development and support interventions aimed at strengthening
governance and management of these schools.
I) The deployed National Intervention Team works hand-in-hand with the
MEC for
Education and with the appointed Superintendant-General: Education in
the Province. In addition, the Team has a close working relationship
with the Provincial Treasury, the Provincial Auditor-General staff and
the Provincial Director-General.
J) The Intervention Team is accepted by the Eastern Cape Education
Department as being part of the top management echelon in the
Department. They attend and participate in all management meetings,
assist in the development of improved systems and procedures, and
monitor implementation progress. The successful provision of LTSM to
schools for the 2013 school year is an example of improved systems and
procedures and implementation.
K) A weekly progress report is received from the Intervention Team.
L) The Intervention Team will remain involved in the Eastern Cape
Education Department until the Section 100 (1) (b) resolution has been
satisfied.