The Western Cape Education Department replied as follows to a request by the Southern Suburbs Tatler to explain how the department supports education in poor communities:

Key priorities of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) include providing access quality education in our poorest communities. The department devotes huge resources to try and achieve this objective.

The following are some examples:

The WCED allocates up to six times more funding to our poorest schools than our least poor schools for textbooks and general expenses, in line with national norms and standards.

Provincial education departments classify schools in five categories known as quintiles, according to the relative poverty of their surrounding communities. Our poorest schools are in Quintile 1 and our least poor schools in Quintile 5.

The WCED has extended no-fee status to schools in Quintile 3 in the Western Cape, in addition to Quintiles 1 and 2 required by law. This means that about 346 000 learners in poor communities are receiving free education in the Western Cape.

The WCED is implementing the national quality improvement, development, support and upliftment programme (QIDS-UP) in poor schools in the Western Cape. In terms of the programme, the department is investing R389.9 million over three years in 540 primary schools and 113 high schools on equipment, libraries, teaching and learning materials and infrastructure.

The WCED uses a pool of 458 posts to reduce teacher: learner ratios in poor schools, in addition to other measures, including allocating more foundation phase posts to schools in poor communities.

The department has established the Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute to provide inservice training for teachers. Most of these teachers teach at poor schools. About 2000 teachers and 160 principals attended courses at the institute last year.

The WCED is expanding access to Grade R rapidly in poor communities. The project includes building Grade R classrooms, teacher training and providing teaching and learning materials.

The WCED is implementing a major strategy to improve literacy and numeracy in primary schools, mainly in poor communities. Grade 3 literacy results have improved significantly, but learners still struggle with maths.

The department has expanded access to school feeding in poor schools by 129% from 145 596 learners in 2004 to 332 287 by the end of 2008, while also improving the quality of the meals involved. The scheme will feed about 335 000 learners in 2009.

The WCED is implementing a special programme to support schools that achieve matric pass rates of less than 60%. All of these schools are in poor communities.

The WCED provides transport for about 47 700 learners from poor communities every day, to ensure access to education, especially in rural areas. The department invested R125.8 million in learner transport in 2008/09.

The WCED has set up 49 circuit teams to provide multi-disciplinary development support to schools, focusing primarily on poor communities. The disciplines involved include school management, teaching, curriculum advice, remedial intervention and social work.

The WCED is expanding access to information technology via its award-winning Khanya project, which focuses primarily on poor schools. Thanks to Khanya, more than 1 000 schools now have computer laboratories in the Western Cape.

Our FET colleges have bursaries to assist poor learners in obtaining vocational and technical qualifications designed to meet the needs of the Western Cape economy.

We are expanding access to special education, including schools of skills in the Western Cape. The number of adult learners registered for matric subjects at adult education centres increased from 16 574 in 2005 to 21 845 in 2008. About 42 500 adults registered for various courses at these centres in 2008.

The WCED is well aware of the fact that we have to build people to escape poverty and build the future of the country. We are doing what we can to provide opportunities for people to realize their potential. To succeed, we all have to join hands and make the most of these opportunities, especially our learners.