Chairperson, hon Minister of Basic Education, Deputy Minister, director-general, members of the portfolio committee, Members of Parliament, and ladies and gentlemen in the gallery, I greet you all. [Interjections.]
Do I look nervous? I might look nervous because of what I'm hearing when people come here and say things that are not a true reflection of what is happening out there.
I hear hon Smiles coming here to boast and say that the Western Cape has the highest number of special schools. It is not true, hon Smiles and your party. The Eastern Cape has the highest number of special schools. You can go to the documents; it is well documented.
Hon Smiles, as members of the portfolio committee we had a serious complaint from the Western Cape schools saying that what is being offered by those schools is not what is needed by them. We had a delegation of members coming from those schools to the committee, because the department of education in the Western Cape is not taking care of those schools.
In most of those special schools, black people are suffering and they are vulnerable. Therefore the hon member cannot boast about something they cannot take care of. [Interjections.]
Let me go back to my speech, hon Chairperson - I was angry about what had been said.
In this fourth democratic government the ANC has noted that skills and education are important for every member of the society in order for him or her to realise his or her potential and to participate in social and economic life.
While this observation acknowledges that education plays a crucial role in emancipating our people socially and economically on the one hand, on the other the reality is that there are social and economic burdens that are obstacles to our people's attaining skills and education. It therefore becomes difficult for our people, particularly children from poor communities, to get the required opportunities and preparation to participate meaningfully, socially and economically. This is due to the socioeconomic burdens.
Noting this, it is imperative for our government to address these socioeconomic burdens if our children are to have access to quality education in order to be able to participate fully, and in a meaningful way, in the socioeconomic landscape of our country.
The high prevalence of socioeconomic challenges includes burdens relating to poverty, wellness, health, nutrition, barriers to learning, inclusivity, safety and lack of care and support for our learners. These issues have the strong potential to tamper with access to education and to compromise the quality of our education.
Dealing with poverty should continue to be a priority for our government, specifically the Department of Basic Education. This will go a long way in giving effect to the principle of the right to education and to the realisation of quality education.
The most worrying factor is that these challenges have a strong potential for eroding gains in learner retention and also have a strong potential to increase an already high drop-out rate. Therefore there cannot be a better vehicle than education and our schools to increase our efforts to bring about poverty alleviation and improve the health of our children.
The ANC-led government has waged war on poverty - and the gains are visible - since our attainment of democracy in 1994. The commitment by the department to take the war on poverty further in its Action Plan 2014, is a good indicator.
The department has made a huge contribution in resources and allocations to the educational enrichment services and programmes in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF. In the 2012-13 financial year, programmes received R5,4 billion, an increase from the R5,1 billion of the 2011-12 financial year. We are proud to attest to the huge impact these programmes have on our children and the poor communities they come from.
Our findings indicate that it is not only that the learners benefit, but there are also good economic spin-offs created by these programmes for the families and communities. Our children are being fed; they are screened for basic health problems; they are receiving workbooks; they are transported to schools; and they are not paying school fees. As of now 69,3% of schools are no-fee schools. The parents and communities are meaningfully taking part in some of these projects, thus making them economically active. How wonderful it is to see basic projects contributing to the stimulation of economic growth in a small but profound way.
Great progress is being made in the expansion of school nutrition to secondary schools. The department needs to be commended for the R4,9 billion grant for the National School Nutrition Programme. This programme continually feeds over 8,8 million learners. We have noted the impact of the programme where children are kept at school and are able to take part effectively in the learning processes, while their parents and communities benefit either through supplying food and other needs, or by being food handlers.
The health and wellbeing of our learners is also impacted upon by poverty and scarcity. Some of the villages and communities are situated far from clinics and health centres. Let me cite one example. In my constituency I heard of a learner who had an interaction with a nurse for the first time during the school health screening programme of the Department of Basic Education.
Although one does not necessarily wish to generalise with regard to how widespread the challenge is, the fact that some children are far from these health facilities poses health hazards that can either affect the child's learning or lead to their dropping out.
As the ANC government, we are happy that the department has set a target of 150 000 learners to undergo health screening in different schools. This is a great improvement on the target of 100 000 initially set for the 2010-11 financial year. We applaud the department for doing that. This, indeed, is providing interventions to address health barriers to learning, barriers that have the potential to negatively affect learning.
The expansion of this basket of educational support services to learners in poor communities is making a difference and assists in keeping them at school. It offers them learning opportunities that will further equip them to break the cycle of poverty in their households.
We also note with satisfaction that out of 25 000 schools in our country, by the end of this year over 18 000 schools will have been linked to the local police stations to enhance safety in our schools. When well co- ordinated, these projects will address the increase in violence and substance abuse in schools.
Hon Minister, we can do still better if we finalise the realignment of the quintile system. More children will benefit if Quintiles 1, 2 and 3 are grouped together and Quintile 4 falls in one category.
However, aggressive and significant investment in the war against poverty in our basic education is still needed. Through the process of oversight and constituency work, one still finds numerous incidents and challenges in regard to access to and the provision of quality education. These challenges have a strong bearing on poverty. It is no secret that we still have obstacles preventing access to quality education as well as the completion of the schooling programme.
We warmly welcome the fact that from Grade R to Grade 9 all learners at least have a workbook and a book in front of them. However, we note that most of the learners in the further education and training, FET, band still do not have textbooks. Some assertions indicate that we are still below 50% coverage of learner-teacher support material in the FET band. While three or four learners are still sharing one textbook, we want to note that all of us need to play our role.
We also notice that our schools make it worse by failing to retrieve the few available textbooks from learners at the end of each year. During our oversight visit to Mpumalanga we noted that some schools thought that the provision of textbooks is a yearly process where schools would be given new sets altogether, instead of a top-up when the need arose.
Coupled with this, provinces do not know the language profiles of their learners. We were dismayed that some learners in Sekhukhune District were still waiting for the arrival of a supply of IsiZulu setwork books, which had not happened since 2010. There is a need to complement the supplying of textbooks with making an effort to help our school managers understand that a textbook is a commodity that must be jealously protected.
The spectre of teenage pregnancies still haunts our education system. The 2009 Department of Basic Education report on teenage pregnancy acknowledged that unprotected sex, teenage pregnancy and HIV/Aids are threats against keeping a girl-child in school. According to the report, they have a serious impact on women's health, as well as the socioeconomic status and general wellbeing of the population. We commend the initiative to commission that report, because it revealed that education is central to addressing the teenage pregnancy challenge, particularly at secondary- school level.
The report documented interventions that include school-based sex education; peer education programmes; adolescent-friendly clinic initiatives; mass media interventions; and programmes implemented at community level.
The department's 2012-16 Draft Integrated Strategy on HIV and Aids highlighted the eight imperatives that underpin the strategy. This strategy, coupled with the R2,7 million for the life skills education grant, constitutes a concerted effort to confront the matter head-on.
However, recently one began to feel that sexual and reproductive health programmes for our learners need to be intensified. It seems like it is becoming a reality that "our teens are swapping books for babies", as reported in one of the Sunday papers in April. The paper's assertion was that between July 2008 and July 2010, 160 754 schoolgirls fell pregnant. The article in the paper just confirmed the shock we had during our oversight visit to Mopani District, where the Giyani region of that district had noted approximately 300 learner pregnancies for 2011. At Mavalane High School the learner pregnancy figure stood at 27 learners.
The Gauteng department of social development indicated that between 2009 and 2010, Gauteng schools recorded over 4 000 learner pregnancies, with Ekurhuleni South District recording 530 learner pregnancies from 56 schools. This increases the drop-out rate.
Recently the SA Institute of Race Relations, SAIRR, indicated that in 2010 some 32 150 schoolgirls aged between seven years and 18 years were pregnant. In addition, 52 370 had babies, making the average number of babies born to schoolgirls 144 every day. My observation is that something is seriously wrong here, Minister. We need to roll up our sleeves and make sure that we tackle this problem head-on.
While there are policies on rural education and there have been visible strides in the conclusion of section 14 agreements on farm schools, the situation out there is disheartening, Minister. Towards the end of last year I visited a school called Grootkraal in Oudtshoorn here in the Western Cape - I might not have pronounced it correctly. It was disheartening to find that the farm owner could close the school when he liked - in the middle of a year! The children there were suffering. What is more disheartening is that those children who were suffering came from very poor families, whereas the farm owner's children were accommodated in a private school. So, they don't care what happens to black people's children!
Another example is from my own constituency in Melmoth. I visited one of the farm schools and found a situation in which five grades were crammed into two dilapidated rooms. Hon Minister, something must really be done about the issue of schools under section 14. Those schools continue receiving subsidies from the department, but the situation in them does not reflect what they are getting.
The most worrying factor at present is expediting the improvement of the physical infrastructure and environments of our schools, particularly those in a bad state. We derive no comfort from the fact that while some learners enjoy the benefits of a good space for learning, others in rural areas do not. Some have a good learning space but they still lack basic needs.
While noting the complexities of the problem, we believe that the R5,8 billion allocated to education infrastructure and the conditional grant of R2,3 billion for school infrastructure backlogs should make a difference. The ANC supports the Budget Vote. Thank you very much! [Time expired.] [Applause.]