Hon Chairperson, I was intending to read from a prepared speech but, given the important issues that have been raised, I thought it would be best to respond to them. In doing so, I would ask the honourable House to reflect on the five strategic goals of the Action Plan to 2014.
The first certainly responds to the concern of the hon Madisha, who was formerly a member of the union that he, in fact, accuses of not fulfilling its functions. He was the president of that union. Be that as it may, the first element is that of early childhood development, because that is central to the provision of quality education.
What we can share with you is that, not only have we more than doubled the number of learners in Grade R in our schools, but we can also say quite proudly that 85% of the children who attend school today have received some form of early childhood development.
We can say to you today that 1,6 million resource packs are sent to Grade R learners. We can say to you that indeed the choices that we have made with regard to early childhood development, particularly the foundation phase that the hon Madisha refers to, have borne fruit.
In the annual national assessment, for example, learners in Grade 1 achieved more that 70%; learners in Grade 2 achieved approximately 67% to 68%; and then there was a decline. That is clearly linked to the provision of early childhood development. I am more than certain that when the annual testing takes place this year, we will find a marked improvement in the performance of learners in literacy and numeracy in Grade R. Therefore, the choices that we have made are indeed correct.
With regard to the hon Lovemore, who spoke about teacher development, we invite her to look at the Action Plan because one of the pillars of the Action Plan and strategic choices is teacher development. You cannot possibly have quality learning without quality teaching.
In April 2012, for the first time in the history of this country, all the unions agreed to a strategic teacher development plan. Such consensus had never been reached in the past. Today there is consensus among parties, including the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa, Naptosa, and the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie, SAOU, that they will undertake and augment the provision of teacher development in our schools. That is a huge step forward. To pretend that teacher development is not occurring is indeed a lie. [Applause.]
Beyond that, hon Lovemore, ... [Interjections.] Please, I did not disturb you or intervene when you were speaking. Beyond that, we have 144 teacher resource centres, which we are going to use to ensure that we are able to assist educators in regard to using workbooks.
More than 130 000 educators have been trained in Foundation Phase and Grade 10 in regard to the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement. When the hon Madisha says that he cannot understand what is happening or that he was told by some unknown person at some unknown gathering about confusion with regard to the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, I must say to you that that can only be a blatant lie. No single expert, academic, union or political party has accused this government of providing an unimproved version of the National and Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement. [Interjections.] No, no, that's what you said.