Statement by Cameron Dugmore, MEC for Education in the Western Cape

The Western Cape provincial budget tabled today is good news for education in the province and builds on the positive allocations made by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, says Education MEC Cameron Dugmore.

Finance MEC Lynne Brown today unveiled in the provincial budget that education has been aollocated the biggest share of 37% of the total budget, with an emphasis on skills development, teacher development, remuneration for teachers and administrative personnel, and infrastructure provisioning.

MEC Dugmore commented as follows: "The focus on Early Childhood Development (ECD), Further Education and Training (FET) colleges, and general education through the Quids-Up project*, builds quality throughout the system.

"The additional funds for teacher development, incentives, school principals, administrative capacity, and extra resources to strengthen our district management capacity, gives real hope to parents, teachers and schools.

"We will use this injection of funds to build human capital in the province and take further steps to entrench quality education.

"Infrastructure remains a challenge but we are exploring a number of options to supplement this allocation. When one considers allocations to sister departements, which will also assist education generally, for example social development funds to fight substance abuse, and allocations for promoting school sport, safety and skills development, it means even more good news."

*Note to Editors: The Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Programme (Quids-Up) is a national initiative, led by Minister Naledia Pandor, which aims to allocate new learning resources to schools, especially in poor and disadvantaged communities.

The programme includes all primary schools in quintiles one and two. Many of these primary schools are feeder schools to secondary schools that have poor results. It also includes about 80 high schools with poor Senior Certificate results.

On the basis of findings of an initial audit, the WCED will develop a strategic plan to intervene over three years by providing human resources, physical resources and material resources to schools eg. management training, teacher training, laboratories, libraries.

For enquiries, contact Gert Witbooi:  082 550 3938, or gwitbooi@pgwc.gov.za.

Visit our website: http://wced.wcape.gov.za

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