Hon Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister of Basic Education, hon members, all guests, and ladies and gentlemen ...
... I nhlekanhi eka hinkwenu na ku mi xeweta. Ndzi ta rhandza ku vulavula hi xiyimo xa dyondzo ya swifundzankulu eka ntirho wa matirhelo ya swikolo eka tidyondzo ta vana va hina.
Ndzi nga si endla tano swi kahle ku hlamula eka switsongo swa leswi nga vuriwa. (Translation of Xitsonga paragraphs follows.)
[... good afternoon to all of you. I would like to debate the state of provincial education in respect of the performance of schools in the teaching and learning of our children.
Before I can do that, it is good to respond to a few things that have been mentioned.]
The hon members on my left have status. They are from the opposition parties. If they cease to oppose, it is very difficult to know what they will become. At times you must be able to oppose exactly what we are doing. It is within your context. [Interjections.]
It is difficult for members to come here and create the impression that there is cadre deployment in government when they have not seen this policy in the government. They cannot give us a copy and say this is how government deploys cadres. Members of opposition parties themselves are working in government. If they consider that, they will perhaps never be employed anywhere.
Every process of teaching and learning is driven by curriculum delivery. In our engagement with the education system, we have found that districts are the catalytic link in curriculum delivery between the national department, provinces and schools. The department has noted that a district office is the management subunit of a provincial education department and, critically, its responsibility is the provision of management and support to schools where the actual delivery of the curriculum takes place. This means that to a great extent a good, functional school is as good as the functionality of the district.
How then does the 2012 Budget Vote respond to the functionality of the districts in order to adequately assist in curriculum delivery? One should be very appreciative of the fact that the department has seen fit to establish district offices across the country, and in some instances circuit offices, in a bid to reduce the distance between a school and the province.
At the beginning we were worried that there seemed to be no consistency in the establishment of such district offices. Some provinces were prioritising circuit offices on the one hand, while on the other hand other provinces were establishing district offices. Furthermore, the establishment of such districts differed from one province to the other, while in some cases different setups were seen even in a single province. This meant that districts were not established on an equal footing and therefore their operations were bound to differ.
Within these districts there are elements that we need to highlight in order to see their optimal functionality. Overall we are concerned that some districts are failing to give proper advice on matters of double- parked teachers, temporary teachers, inclusive education, the kind of support required for teachers and subject choices of the learners. We therefore advise that processes that aim to stabilise districts and schools should be expedited.
We are pleased that the department has published the guidelines for the organisation, roles and responsibilities of education districts. It is good that the guidelines will be able to standardise the establishment and organisation of districts across the country. We have noted that the guidelines are open for public comment until 18 May 2012, but we advise that the speedy finalisation of the process is a priority.
In 2011, when we were in Ntabankulu in the Eastern Cape, the teachers raised the issue that the Lusikisiki District Office is 180 km away from many of the schools it is supposed to serve. Again in the Eastern Cape, in January 2012 we found out that the Libode District Office is situated in another district, far from the schools it is supposed to serve. In Mopani District in Limpopo we noted that the district was further divided into what they called subdistricts, thereby having Giyani and Tzaneen subdistricts with their senior district managers respectively.
The above scenarios raised the following four issues, amongst others: a lack of understanding or no understanding of the concept of a district, which leads to inconsistency in district establishment; an inability to access or difficulty in accessing the district offices; a lack of support, or support not always being available; and inadequate interventions. This raises the issue of what the considerations were that were taken into account when district offices were established in these areas.
If the district office is not accessible, it will obviously not be possible for it to immediately render the required support to schools. In such instances you find that while the districts are far from schools, there are no circuit offices to complement such functions. It is therefore not surprising to see districts like Mopani improvising by further dividing the district into two to correct the ill-conceived initial placement of offices. In Limpopo there are indications that the province wants to further divide some of the districts to make them more accessible. While the move is good, we are, however, worried about whether this is going to be done in terms of the guidelines. If the guidelines are not followed, we will face a situation where there will be further conflict between districts and circuits. We have noted that the guidelines have presented challenges in districts, ranging from support, accountability, boundaries, size, norms and organogram functions to staffing.
Our main concern is the knowledge capacity and understanding of responsibilities of some district officials. This is mainly evident in the district curriculum support teams, which include subject advisors. Hon Minister, in the provinces we visited the subject advisors are viewed as compliance officials who only come to school to check if teachers have complied with continuous assessment guidelines. More worrying is that this creates conflicts between teachers, because throughout the year such advisors never set foot in schools to guide or render support to those teachers. In the Manyeleti area teachers cried foul because of subject advisors who were not even conversant with the issues that teachers need to focus on.
While this may be attributed to lack of content from the subject advisers, issues such as transport also play a role. Some advisors could not even go to visit schools because of a lack of transport. It is important to note that when we establish districts we need to ascertain that we have covered all the ground in regard to subject advisors, capacity and the resources that they will need to render effective support to schools.
While we were in Mpumalanga, we saw district management support teams that did well in assisting the management of schools in developing turnaround strategies.
In the Eastern Cape we saw district officials who were like departmental conduits. Their main duty was to send correspondence to schools. In regard to support, nothing was happening. In one instance they indicated that all their powers had been stripped away by the province and they merely waited for directives from the province.
We have noted that the district governance support teams in Limpopo seem to be doing very well.
We are raising all these issues so that the basic functionality of the districts is prioritised in respect of leadership, resources, the number and utilisation of staff, and curriculum support services to schools.
We are happy that the Minister has embarked on an initiative of having quarterly meetings with the senior district managers. This will bring uniformity in national functions and processes that should guide districts on how various national policy imperatives can be realised.
We still have to assess whether the action plan of the department informs the planning and processes of some of the districts in the country.
What we also need to commend, hon Minister, is the fact that there is a drive to implement intervention strategies based on a specific analysis of performance and contextual factors of particular districts. Our observation has been that the challenges in these districts are indeed different and they must be assisted differently. We are pleased that these interventions will cover all intervention processes, starting with the delegation of responsibilities and explaining what is to be done and when. Furthermore, we are happy that a concerted effort is also being made to focus on poorly performing districts, while further supporting the ones that are performing well.
We keenly await the presentation of the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit Bill, the Needu Bill, to the committee. To us, this Bill is long overdue. We want the unit to get legal standing which will give it space to operate away from the department. This is reinforced mainly by the fact that at one stage the Needu committee gave an outline of its preliminary findings from the schools they had observed.
It will be good to finalise the Bill so that we all understand the scope and mandate of Needu before much of its activities are taken out of context ...
Tanihi ANC hi seketela mpimanyeto lowu leswaku wu ta pfuna swifundzankulu ku tirha kahle swinene. Inkomu. [Va phokotela.] [As the ANC, we support this budget so that it can help provinces to perform very well. Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]]