GCIS PARLIAMENTARY MEDIA BRIEFING
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
10 September 2001
Document Handed Out: Minister’s Media Briefing September 10, 2001 [See Appendix below]
Questions by the media and replies from the Minister, Prof Kader Asmal
(Q) In certain schools the teacher to pupil ratio is 1:50 or 60. In terms of the National Education Policy Act the prescribed ratio is much lower. What is your comment?
(A) This question was answered by one of the Directors General in the Department of Education. He said that the problem was not shortage of teachers but a shortage of classrooms. There are more teachers than classrooms. There are instances were 2 classes use 1 classroom.
(Q) What specific constitutional devices can be used to achieve the aims of the Government?
(A) The principle of corporate governance must be used. All institutions must report through the Council of Education Ministers (CEM). Another mechanism is S100 of the Constitution. If there is a breakdown in executive function then national government must exercise some of the executive functions. Executive powers vests in the premier and the MECs but if the execution of policy is not taking place then S100 must be used. The Minister of Finance has used this for section for financial matters and there is no reason why it cannot be used to ensure education policy is implemented. There is also a quarterly report that is given to the President on the functioning of provinces. Until now we have been accepting the word of provinces. From now on we will send investigators to see what is happening.
(Q) You placed an emphasis on history education. There are many strands of writing. There is also very little taught about African History. How is the teaching of history going to wok in practice?
(A) Those who write textbooks must write it on their version of what the truth is. Apartheid books are still being used. Textbooks will not reflect the lowest common denominator but they will have to reflect the core values of the Constitution. The Democracy fund was established to capture the history of the freedom struggle. They do this by listening to accounts and writing it down. No part of our history must be left out. It is the job of the professional historians to extract from all the versions what they think is the truth.
(Q) Are you on track in respect of meeting your deadlines for the amendments to the Higher Education Act?
(A) By December we will have the finalised amendments for implementation. We want a functioning higher education system that meets the district and regional needs of South Africa. We want institutions to have 2 or 3 niche areas and the government will fund theses niche areas. The government will provide funds for research and niche areas not yet in existence. In KZN two music schools were to be closed. This is unacceptable so the government stepped in to ensure that one of the schools stays open. We cannot look at each faculty independently. It was cheaper to teach law students so they should subsidise other students were the costs to educate them are higher. The recommendations from the working group will first go to cabinet.
(Q) There is gossip that neither Stellenbosch nor UCT are willing to close their medical schools.
(A) There has been voluntary collaborative activity between RAU and Wits tech but there has been no evidence of collaboration in the Western Cape. What Government will do is give more money if there is increased collaboration. One must also remember that these institutions are autonomous. At the same time we cannot have universities 10km from each other having the same high cost subjects. We have to wait for the recommendations from the working group that will become available at the end of January.
Between questions the Minister said that 42% of whites and Indians went to University but only about 15% of Africans & coloureds. This was something that needs to be addressed.
(Q) Can you give us a sense of what the working group is doing?
(A) It is looking at the arrangements that are needed to meet the needs of the regions and of South Africa as a whole. They are seeing if there is any duplication. They are looking at the national interest. They are using their own criteria to look at questions of effectiveness, viability, non-repetition and the spread of subjects.
(Q) In the past year you set a goal of having an improvement in matric results by 5% points. Do you have the same goal for this year?
(A) The goal is focussed on the lower end of the matric results. There were 900 schools with a pass rate of between 0 –30 %. Last year this was almost halved to 500 schools. We want the same progress to be made this year. If a school has a rate of between 0 – 30% then this school is non-functional therefore it is better to concentrate on the lower end and make more schools functional.
(Q) To what extent do you agree that national government, and especially with the three new pieces of legislation, is centralising education.
(A) Apart from higher education the constitution lists education as a concurrent function. The provinces take part of the education budget to use elsewhere. When the constitution was drafted we never envisaged that this would happen. There are no centralisation tendencies. All government wants to do is bring about order and financial control.
During the briefing the Minister said that the Renewal of Africa was important to national government. In this regard government wanted 10% of the university population to be from SADEC countries. The Minister was asked 1 question on this point.
(Q) How is the admission of these students going to be controlled?
(A) A Central Application Office is in the process of being set up. Each SADEC country will provide 10% of the university places.
There were no further questions and the briefing was closed.
Appendix: GCIS PARLIAMENTARY MEDIA BRIEFING
Ministry of Education
10 September 2001
INTRODUCTION In his State of the Nation address in February this year President Mbeki referred to the many challenges that South Africa still faces in relation to the creation, not only of an environment that is conducive to development and the elimination of poverty, but one that also speaks to the restoration of human dignity. The President then made a call "on all our people across the colour line to dedicate this year to building unity in action for change".
The work of the Ministry of Education this year has been driven by this call by the President for us to ensure that our people are united in action to transform our education system into a vibrant system for the 21st century. As you know, our rallying cry remains "Tirisano", Working together, for change. The Ministry's programme is driven by: a) The need to overcome the devastation of apartheid, and provide a system of education that builds democracy, human dignity, equality and social justice, and b) A commitment to establishing a system of lifelong learning to enable South Africa to respond to the enormous economic and social challenges of the 21st century.
In our efforts to respond to these challenges, the Ministry of Education has had to think laterally and approach its work in creative ways, some of which have either never been thought of, or indeed never found necessary by either developing or developed countries. We have had to not only strengthen the policy and legal framework that makes it possible for us to continue with the transformation of the education system but, focus on deepening systemic reform through our Tirisano programme where key policy goals are under girded by a set of targeted and prioritised interventions aimed at ensuring stronger accountability for performance and delivery across the system.
This morning I want to touch briefly on progress so far with regard to those matters that were addressed by the President early this year.
Values in Education One of the ways in which we in education have headed the President's call to "dedicate this year to building unity in action for change" has been through our project on Values in Education. It is our belief that it is through education that we can lay a firm foundation for such unity, by inculcating democratic values among our young people.
In pursuit of this objective, last month I launched the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy - a call to all to embrace the spirit of a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa. This was the culmination of a process that began with a discussion document entitled Values, Education and Democracy which we put for public debate mid-2000. This process was taken forward in February this year at a momentous national conference on values in education. The President's call to all of us to work towards a South Africa that seeks to restore the human dignity of the majority of our people strengthened my resolve to take this forward - hence the launch of the Manifesto.
Education is fundamentally a character forming and development activity and therefore the development of values is an inevitable part of schooling. For a nation emerging from apartheid, South Africa cannot think of values in education independently of the deep racism embedded in the apartheid curricula and school system. The habits and underlying values inculcated through that absolutely brutal system of education need to be reversed, promoting instead anti-racism, inclusivity, human dignity, equity and democracy. We have identified four cornerstones as central strategies to 'seed' these democratic values: critical thinking, creative expression through art, a critical understanding of history, and multilingualism.
Work on instilling these new values has already started and our revised National Curriculum Statement on which we are currently consulting widely is being used to great effect in this regard. a) The Statement for Grades 9 - 10 proposes that what was formerly known as "civics" and is now called "education for citizenship be infused throughout the curriculum in such a way that young people learn basic political literacy, peace education, environmental education, democracy education and anti-discrimination education b) Educator training will focus attention on how to conduct human rights and inclusivity education. This will be mandatory, ongoing and cumulative rather than limited to occasional anti-racism or anti-sexism seminars, which has been the pattern to date. (Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy; August 2000) c) The National Curriculum Statement has also mandated that Arts and Culture is to be a specific and examinable learning area within the General Education and Training curriculum. Although arts and culture will be firmly part of the curriculum, we have already started working to ensure that extracurricular activities are introduced in many of our schools to reinforce the classroom activity. This we hope will provide a vehicle for teamwork as well a medium for cross-cultural activity through which students will not only learn about one another's different cultural traditions, but practise them too. d) We have put History back in the curriculum in a manner that will ensure that we liberate the people of this country 'from our ignorance of what makes up this country and its peoples'' and ensure that all the lost voices in our history take their rightful place. On the 17th of August I launched the National History Project, which the Carnegie Foundation kindly agreed to sponsor, to take our work in this regard forward. e) To make multilingualism happen we have put together a working group to work out how to ensure that our language policy is implemented in the spirit in which it was declared. The revised National Curriculum Statement also makes recommendations that will ensure that we truly become a multilingual society.
The extent of participation of our people from different backgrounds and perspectives in the development of this curriculum statement, and the responses we are getting from different sectors of our country, reflects the President's desire to see all our people, from across the colour line participating in action for change, and we are very pleased with the response we have got so far.
Our recent launch of our programme to promote the understanding and the correct use of our national symbols was also aimed at creating that unity in action for change. These symbols signify our unity as a nation, and all our people should unite around them. As a Ministry we have therefore committed ourselves to promoting these symbols, and to teaching our children about them and their significance. In this regard we have issued a booklet that explains each one of these symbols, and we are busy distributing these to schools. Our campaign to ensure that all schools raise the national flag and sing the national anthem, correctly, from time to time is also progressing well.
You may all be aware that our country hosted the World conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and related intolerances, until yesterday. In the draft programme of action of that conference there was a call on all States to ensure that they devise curricula and programmes to combat racism and to promotes values of human dignity, including human rights education. Our participation at this conference enabled us to showcase our work in this regard, and to share with other nations what we as a country are busy doing to achieve these noble aims. We are therefore very proud to be counted among those nations that have taken the initiative to address these concerns, and in some senses to be pioneers in the manner in which we have approached this challenge, as acknowledged by many at the conference.
I am also pleased to report that our provinces continue to work hard to find solutions to problems emanating from racism in schools. Provinces like Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape have held successful Indabas aimed at finding solutions to these problems, and the Gauteng province continues to work with a number of NGO's to assist schools to meet this challenge. Other provinces are also on board around this matter. I have no doubt that the holding of the world conference on Racism in our country will inspire all of us to do more to combat racism in our schools.
Human Resource Development In his State of the Nation Address , the President also announced the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa, a project driven jointly by the Department of Education and the Development of Labour. The overarching goal of the strategy is: "To maximise the potential of people in South Africa, through the acquisition of knowledge and skills, to work productively and competitively in order to achieve a rising quality of life for all, and to set in place an operational plan, together with the necessary institutional arrangements, to achieve this." To accomplish these goals we have to have effective co-ordination between four key HRD pillars, two of which have significant implications for the Ministry of Education. These two are * Building a solid foundation, which includes Early Childhood Development (ECD), general education, and adult education and training, all of which are key priorities of my Ministry * Ensuring a supply of skills from the further and higher education bands of the NQF, which anticipate and respond to specific needs in society.
1. Early Childhood Development In relation to Early Childhood Development the following are some of the targets we set ourselves for the coming three years: * To ensure the creation of 335 000 new places for learners in Grade R by 2004 * To ensure participation of children from the poorest 40% of the nation * To provide further development of ECD practitioners - 4500 practitioners to obtain at least the level 4 qualification * To ensure quality assurance of programmes in community based sites * To put in place an effective and efficient monitoring system for these community-based sites
On all of these we have already made progress. The necessary policy framework has been established in terms of our policy on Early Childhood Development, which Cabinet approved early this year. This document was released on the 28 May. The policy commits us to an extension of sites for ECD, targeting schools and communities particularly in the identified nodal areas of the Sustainable Rural Development and Urban Renewal Strategies. This is to ensure that we address at the very foundations of education the pervasive demoralisation and fatalism experienced by many of our people who will continue to view our freedom as a mirage because of the abject misery and lack of basic resources they continue to live under.
By January 2002 we are also anticipating that approximately 3000 practitioners will be enrolled for an NQF level 4 qualification.
2. Adult Basic Education (ABET) and Literacy programmes In relation to Literacy and ABET the Ministry committed itself to increasing access to ABET and to mobilising 3 million participants in literacy programmes.
There are currently 180 000 learners in state supported ABET programmes, of which 100 000 are women.
The South African National Literacy Initiative (SANLI) has also been established to mobilise support and resources around literacy. SANLI is targeting 2.5 million learners by 2004, which will be addressed by the recruitment and training of approximately 160 000 volunteer literacy workers.
Improvements in Mathematics and Science The President also spoke about improvements in Maths and Science. In this regard I am pleased to report that we have finalised the selection of the 100 schools that will be turned into centres of excellence for Mathematics and Science teaching. This project, which is led by our deputy Minister is supported by business and a number of NGOs working in these two areas. We are also about to finalise arrangements for the arrival fo the Cuban trainers. Next month a team will go to Cuba to finalise the selection of these trainers.
Legislation for this session of Parliament Let me take this opportunity to inform you briefly about what legislation we are taking to this sitting. The main bill we are introducing seeks to establish a quality assurance body within the general and further education bands, which will replace the South African Certification Council (SAFCERT), in line with our SAQA Act. We are also introducing amendments to existing legislation in order to strengthen our laws and to address some gaps in them. For example we are amending the Schools Act to make it possible for schools to open other investment accounts with the approval of the MEC, to ban the development of Trusts, and to ensure that Learner Representative Councils are the only bodies representing students, among others. We are also amending the Higher Education Act to allow for the appointment of interim councils in the event of mergers.
Co-operative Governance As part of our effort to ensure accelerated change we are looking very closely at how we can make provinces more accountable in line with our National Education Policy Act. We are going to work closely with the provinces and take a closer look at what they are doing, particularly when it comes to the implementation of national policy. Where necessary we will intervene to make sure that provinces deliver on their commitments, and that we avoid under-expenditure
Conclusion The challenges facing us in education are huge, but as the President said we are gradually moving away from our terrible past, and "Tirisano" has become more than just a call to action. "Tirisano" has become a way of doing things, the only approach to change in education. The Ministry of Education is determined to accelerate that change to achieve a better life for all.