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

The R9 billion education budget will see massive investment in the foundation phase to improve matric results, with over half of the programme’s budget allocated to primary schools for the 2008/09 financial year.

The budget of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has, since 2004, grown by R1.3 billion (17.4%) year-on-year to over R9 billion in 2008/09, and will total R29.9 billion over the next three years. Education has been allocated the bulk of the total Provincial Budget at 36.2% - up from 29.21% in 2004.

Public ordinary school education continues to be the main focus of the department’s funding (80.6%), of which 56.8% of the programme’s budget is allocated to primary schools and 37.9% to secondary schools.

ECD and Grade R

Funding for Early Childhood Development (ECD) including Grade R increases by 37.6% to R226.792 million in order to expand enrolment and improve quality. This includes R91,372 million to ensure universal enrolment of all 5-year-olds by 2010. As part of the expansion plans, 111 Grade R classrooms are being built onto existing primary schools and will be supplied with equipment.

I am also happy to announce that we are investigating routes, contracts and feasibilities in order to adapt our Learner Transport Policy and expand it to include Grade R learners from January 2009.

R66,143 million is allocated for supplying resource kits to ECD community sites and payment of stipends and class fees for ECD practitioners as part of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).

Literacy and Numeracy

The ongoing, province-wide, improvement in Literacy results - of just over 12% over three testing cycles - is very pleasing. The Numeracy results are proving harder to shift and we are intensifying efforts in that regard.

There will be ongoing intensive literacy and numeracy support in schools where results are below par, with 100 officials and 450 Learning Support Teachers deployed since 2007.

There is continued deployment of 510 Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the Foundation Phase. There is a strong Family Literacy pilot where our TAs are working with 280 families. We will launch a major Family Literacy radio campaign next month to reach parents in poor communities.

The Language Transformation Plan was awarded the Pan SA Language Board (Pansalb) “Multilingualism and Nation-building Provincial Government Department of the Decade” in February 2008.

The Project schools, which wrote their Grade 6 WCED tests through the medium of isiXhosa have multiplied their literacy scores by between three-fold and five-fold, and shown signs of progress in almost all Numeracy topics too. Since this was the first year of inception of the plan, such progress is remarkably encouraging.

The WCED has allocated R1.905m for 107 bursaries to teacher education students in the priority areas of Mathematics and Science to support and strengthen our Numeracy turnaround.

Infrastructure provisioning

We have built 42 new schools and added 1,509 new classrooms over the last four years to existing schools. We put in 1,333 new toilets or ablution facilities and built 39 halls. For this current year, four schools are under construction, six schools have been advertised, and five are in the planning stage. The planning of a further six schools will start shortly for 2009/10. The 11 schools in planning will be completed over the next five years.

It is clear that, in order to maintain the momentum of infrastructure delivery, we will have to approach the Provincial Treasury to advance a portion of next year’s allocation for utilisation in this financial year.

Our province needs over R5 billion to make up its infrastructure backlog. If current funding patterns continue it will take us 30 years to eradicate this backlog.

I would therefor like to open a debate by suggesting that the best way to decisively deal with these backlogs is for our national government to introduce a once-off education levy, similar to a transition levy, on taxpayers, to raise the monies needed, countrywide, to provide all schools with halls, to eradicate prefabricated buildings, to supply laboratories, and conducive learning spaces.

We need better facilities and I pledge myself to doing all I can to sensitise decision-makers to this kind of option. I am sure that the majority of South Africans would support such a levy.

Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Programme

Through the Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Programme (QIDS-UP) schools in the two poorest categories will receive R154,246 million for libraries, books, extra materials, jungle gyms, computer laboratories and upgrading and maintenance.

The QIDS-UP investment in 405 schools will be expanded to 653 this year, bringing quality improvements to 159,000 primary school learners and 37,263 high school learners.

The budget has more than doubled since last year and will now also make provision for whole school evaluation; teacher training in Library Administration and the use of science equipment. Already 190 teachers have been trained in Library Management and Administration.

National School Nutrition Programme

Additions of R82.8 million over the MTEF go to the National School Nutrition Programme Grant to ensure that 233,420 vulnerable learners in 992 schools receive a quality meal every school day. This is up from 145,596 learners in 2004.

We are very excited to announce two significant new Centres of Excellence. False Bay College is to open an “Academy of Boatbuilding” at a cost of R3m to further develop its profile in this field.

And in another ground breaking step, the Cape Town College is to become a Centre of Excellence for the Creative Arts. An initial investment of R3m in a computer platform towards design and animation will put this college in an ideal place to help fill the gap in the skills’ network.

In direct response to this Integrated Creative Arts Development Initiative, the province is to host all interested FET colleges from around the country next week with a view to formalise the Creative Arts qualifications.

Adult Education and Training

A very joyful announcement! WCED will be opening two pilot full-time Adult Education Centres in this year - one in Elsies River and one in Khayelitsha, at a cost of R1.565m.

Intensified Safe Schools Project

We announce a focused and intensified Safe Schools Project to introduce a set of deliberate measures in targeted high-risk schools in the province [109 schools] with a budget of R14.9 million.

This will include CCTV Installations at 60 high risk schools; 75 Safety Resource Officers/ Learner Support Officers deployed to identified circuits; a pilot search and seizure communication and training plan, implemented in collaboration with SAPS; the initiation of the drug testing communication plan and targeted interventions at schools in support of drug testing. Bambanani volunteers will be deployed to 165 schools in all.

All of these will come on top of existing holistic programmes and be linked to the special Education Plan for the 21 priority areas identified by the Premier. Our approach continues to be informed by our view that schools need to be nodes of care and the hub of our communities - centres of excellence which every community values and protects. Schools need to be used morning, noon and night and over weekends.

Fighting HIV-Aids

Through our HIV-Aids programme we have trained 22,099 teachers and are supported in 138 high schools by the 9,529 peer-educators (trained over three years) and in 200 primary schools by Soul Buddz clubs.

The most profound indicator of the impact of our work in schools in this regard is that the annual percentage HIV prevalence levels amongst youths 15 -19 years in this province is moving down, in contrast to indicators elsewhere, from 7.2% in 2005 to 6.6% in 2006 and to 5.3% in 2007.

Building Social Capital

R1.2m is set aside for the development of Representative Councils of Learners, which will lead towards a representative conference for RCLs later in the year.

Part of social transformation is nation-building. In the context of Africa Day, the terrible outburst of violence in Gauteng and incidents of racism in our schools in the last year, we have to redouble efforts around being a caring society, around values and around our initiative “Schools as Nodes of Care”, which has been playing a lead role in the provincial jamboree process.

We will be providing schools with a lesson plan resource pack to support language and life orientation teachers in tackling issues of xenophobia, racism and bullying as a high-priority, short-term intervention.

A serious contribution to nation-building and language development is the publication of the Western Cape School Songbook. This multilingual compilation of songs will help in the development of cultural awareness, the sharing of indigenous knowledge and in uniting people through song.

The outreach intention of the songbook is complemented by the inception of the next nation-building phase of our Language Transformation Plan to encourage all learners in the province to be trilingual.

A working team of teachers has helped develop the publication of a unique booklet with an isiXhosa Second Additional Language Learning Programme for the GET Band. A similar process for a learning programme in Afrikaans will take place in this financial year.

Business Unusual - ten high impact deliverables for 2008/09

As this administration enters its final year we are determined to pool and converge efforts to accelerate outputs and outcomes. This administration has matured and must invest its accumulated wisdom into the system.

We have identified ten high-impact “business unusual” deliverables to address major aspects of access, redress, efficiency and quality. They have been signed off by cabinet as key outputs for this department in 2008/9 and beyond.

In keeping with “business unusual” I announce today the inception of “Project Quality Turnaround”. Under this banner we are bringing together our Grade 12 intervention programme for struggling schools and our Literacy and Numeracy Intervention programme into one single high-intensity, high-impact programme for school turnaround.

The Project Quality Turnaround initiative will work with the 54 underperforming high schools and 30% of the worst-performing schools on the Literacy and Numeracy diagnostic tests. We will keep close track on the impact of all interventions.

Against the background of all of the above, and informed by the drive for access, redress, equity, efficiency, quality and outputs, the WCED commits itself to shaping and managing improved achievement of learning outcomes through target-setting and accountability.

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

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

The Western Cape - A Home for All
INtshona Koloni - iKhaya loMntu wonke
Die Wes-Kaap - 'n Tuiste vir Almal