South Africa: Envision a Province where teaching and learning have been leveraged to greater heights, where standards of teaching and learning are second to none.
According to Madame Speaker, True to the saying that the wise came from the East and as wise people of the province of the rising sun, we wish to pioneer an education dispensation of the greatest quality, which would be a game-changer in bringing about social and economic emancipation.
Our envisioned education dispensation will also add great impetus to the government’s efforts to break the cycle of inequality, marginalization and poverty.
We are doing this inspired by the magnitude of support from all our stakeholders, social partners and from the business community in keeping to the government’s mantra, which says:
Let’s Grow South Africa Together- Leave NO One Behind. In essence, we are saying – Babize Bonke!
We are on a drive to rally everyone, an adult on a pension, a young graduate, a pastor, a nurse, a CEO of any company, an engineer, a pilot, a businesswoman, a soccer player, a medical doctor, a unionist, a mine worker, a police officer, a religious leader, traditional healer, an inmate and a street vendor.
This is a social call to all, as in the words of Karl Marx;
“If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all.”
This statement accentuates the power of working together in unison for a common purpose and common good. We only stand to succeed if we all hold hands and work together.
Everyone and every institution are invited to actively partake in this journey to reawaken the culture of teaching and learning in ways that have not been seen before. It is the right thing to do, and I am certain that we are succeeding in this course.
We are truly confident, Madame Speaker, that we are changing the landscape of teaching and learning in the province for the better, judging by the gains we are recording every day.
Working together with our stakeholders, we overcame the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, reorganized schools to cover lost ground, operationalized new schools, launched the e-learning programme and successfully integrated the Early Childhood Development Programme.
We have successfully launched the Rhandza Xikolo Xa Wena Campaign, rekindled Sports and Recreation through the Departmental Curriculum Enrichment Programme, and the list goes on and on.
I was very much fascinated last week to attend the occasion of the ABC Motsepe South African School Choral Eissteddd at Emalahleni Local Municipality.
We are driven to achieve our targets as we are informed by the fact that Education is fundamentally pivotal for a country’s development and growth.
We are fully cognisant of the fact that for our nation to develop, we need to establish an educated social order where every citizen has an active role to play, as Education is not just for government but is a societal business.
It is for that reason, Madame Speaker, that the Mpumalanga Department of Education solicits the cooperation of all communities and stakeholders in Education to work hand in hand in promoting teaching and learning programmes in the Place of the Rising Sun.
Early Childhood Development
Madame Speaker, Early Childhood Development (ECD) shapes the future and forges a path to the learning of skills and the ability that children need for their success in future learning.
The Department has successfully managed the migration and management of the 0 to 4 years ECD component from the Department of Social Development.
As of 01 April 2022, the Department of Education has taken full responsibility and accountability for the learning and development of children in this age group.
Currently, there are 58 000 children that are subsidized and are accessing ECD Programmes in 1540 fully registered centres which comply with the norms and standards.
I wish to take this opportunity to extend our sincere appreciation to the leadership of the Department of Social Development under the stewardship of MEC Ntshalintshali for the level of professionalism and spirit of collaboration they applied during the transfer period.
The Department is on a drive to expand Early Childhood Development and to improve the quality of programmes on offer by ensuring that all five-year-old children have access to quality early childhood development and care and are ready for primary school by 2025.
This programme has four sub-programmes which are to provide specific public ordinary schools with resources required for Grade R, support Grade R and Early Childhood Development centres, provide training and ensure payment of stipends to Pre-Grade R practitioners and provide departmental services for the development of practitioners and educators and non-educators in Grade R.
There are 63 906 Grade R learners that are registered in public schools within the Province.
To support Early Childhood Development programmes and to benefit children up to the age of 5 for this financial year, the Department has budgeted a sum of R774 million.
Learner Performance Improvement Plan
Over the past two years, the education sector came to be characterized by unsatisfactory learner performance due to a myriad of issues as well as the effects aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The endeavour to improve learner outcomes has been taken back by the teaching and learning losses recorded due to the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, which was meant to save lives.
Research by DBE (S. Taylor; 2021) highlighted the losses experienced in Home Language reading proficiency when Grade 3 learners were compared to the Grade 4 learners.
That trend has also been confirmed by international studies such as the Southern and East Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS), and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).
To this end, the 2022 Learner Performance Improvement Plan helps to identify the barriers experienced and to put measures in place to address them effectively through an inter-sectoral and integrated approach.
The interventions focus on improving learner performance in Grades 3, 6, 9 and Grade 12.
The Department has categorized schools according to their performance for differentiated support to uplift those that are lagging behind with regard to learner attainment.
The differentiated support will be determined by conducting a Whole School Evaluation of primary and secondary schools.
The outcome of this provides valuable information to direct the support accordingly.
The Department intends to improve the Grade 12 results to 83% and to ensure that 41% of the current cohort of Grade 12 learners achieve bachelor pass requirements.
Furthermore, the Department intends to ensure that 60% of the current Grade 12 learners pass mathematics and 33% pass Physical Sciences. This is very critical for the growth and development of our Province.
The current cohort of learners must get inspiration from the class of 2021, who, against all odds, worked around the clock and obtained very impressive results.
Madame Speaker, in the gallery, there is Kgothatso Angela Gugu Mphaka, who was the overall best learner following the announcement of the 2021 Grade 12 National Senior Certificate Examination Results.
I request that this house recognize her, for she is truly the pride of our Province.
The Department has set aside R54 million to improve learner performance throughout the Province.
E-Learning Roll-out and Support
The 21st Century learner needs relevant, mobile, self-paced, and personalized content and this need is fulfilled with the online mode of learning; here, learners can learn at their own time, pace, comfort and requirement.
The uBuhle-Buzile e-learning Programme, which was launched on 05 April 2022 by the Honourable Premier, Mrs Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane, in Piet Retief, resonates well with the above quest and constitutes part of the game changer of we spoke about earlier on.
The launch coincided with a rollout of more than 55 000 tablets for Grade 12 learners in Quintile 1-3 and 6700 laptops for teachers.
All these devices are loaded with core and supplementary curriculum resources education core resources which include e-textbooks, literature set works, supplementary resources, study guides and previous question papers and memoranda.
Madame Speaker, The Principal of Ubuhlebuzile Secondary School, Mr Nsizwa Hlatshwayo, has graced this occasion. Working together with Telkom and other partners, his school is going to be the first in the Province to implement e-learning on a full scale that is from Grade 8-to 12. I request that he takes a bow.
Also present in the gallery Madame Speaker is the first recipient of the 55 000 tablets which were rolled out to Grade 12 learners in the Province.
He is Andile Thwala, the President of the Representative Council of learners at Ubuhlebuzile Secondary School. I also request the house to recognize him.
The investment in e-learning aligns very well with the vision and mission of the Department. Our target is to place a tablet in the hands of every learner and a laptop in the hands of every teacher in the province and to create virtual online learning classrooms through a credible Learner Management System.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will have an impact in the near future on the skills programmes relevant to what the economy needs, and these would have to be in the fields such as artificial intelligence, coding and robotics.
Thus, the Department would embark on extensive research to establish how it can improve its service and curriculum delivery aligned to the futuristic changing trajectory.
The Department will train teachers on e-learning, ICT
integration and on how to conduct virtual lessons for learners.
An amount of R 266 million has been allocated to pioneer this programme in the current financial year.
National School Nutrition Programme
According to Statistics South Africa in its General Household Survey 2019, 85.1% of children attending public schools in Mpumalanga benefitted from the school nutrition programme 2019.
This was higher than the national average (75.2%), and Mpumalanga ranked third highest among the nine provinces.
In the 2022/23 financial year, the Department will continue to provide meals to 924 015 learners and has allocated R806 million towards the success of this programme.
Infrastructure Development
Madame Speaker, the Department has a serious backlog in the improvement and delivery of school infrastructure, which may require billions and billions of rands to address.
This backlog is worsened by a myriad of developments, some of which the Department is working very hard to address.
The unfavourable weather resulting in heavy storms has inflicted a lot of damage and havoc by destroying some of our school infrastructures.
The constant break-ins in schools are a serious impediment which we implore our communities to help us to curb as a matter of urgency. In the past two years, more than 200 schools have been broken into.
Poor day-to-day maintenance of schools by School Governing Bodies is another hurdle that the Department has to overcome.
Community interference and, at times, unreasonable demands stall some of the projects.
The Department further institutes creative ways to work with the corporate sector, including our communities, to sustain, maintain and improve school infrastructure within the Province.
To this end, an amount of R 1. 2 billion has been allocated to achieve the above objectives.
Mpumalanga Regional Training Trust (MRTT)
The Department will continue to foster partnerships through the Trust to bolster the basic renovations of schools and to instil the requisite skills in the out-of-school youth.
The MRTT is essential in our efforts to bolster skills development necessary for our economy. The training trust is our bedrock in the offering of technical skills, and we envisage a good working relationship with the technical schools the Department is rolling out.
A budget of R52 million has been made available for the Trust to fulfil its mandate.
Rhandza Xikolo Xa Wena Campaign
The Mpumalanga Regional and Training Trust, as well as the Department of Justice and Correctional Services and SASOL, are amongst the key partners in the re-launched 2022 Rhandza Xikolo Xa Wena Campaign, which seeks to resuscitate a sense of ownership and pride in parents, learners and school communities.
The Department has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Justice and Correctional Services to utilize parolees to help with the cleaning of school surroundings as well as the rehabilitation of broken school furniture.
The Mpumalanga Regional Training Trust is also a partner in the utilization of technical students of the institution in the renovation of schools as part of their vocational training.
The Department also appreciates the involvement of other partners and the entire community of Mpumalanga in this campaign.
We must not fold our arms until all our schools are clean, well painted, have planted trees, flowers, and food gardens and have broken windows and ceilings fixed.
Human Resource Capacity
Madame Speaker, we fully concede that Human Resource provisioning and capacity constitute a fundamental pillar in our quest to deliver quality education.
To this end, the Department is providing training in numeracy content and methodology to 1500 teachers as well as 3000 teachers in literacy content and methodology.
Madame Speaker, the Department advertised 1104 School-Based Promotional Posts in November 2021. These consisted of 265 principals posts, 215 Deputy Principals posts and 624 Departmental Head Posts.
This year there are 32 591 educators’ posts approved by the Department in our schools in terms of PPN. Of these posts, 31 826 are filled, which constitutes 97.65%.
Added to this, the Department further advertised 53 office Based Educators Posts, which are planned to be occupied on or before the end of September 2022.
We are very much grateful that working together, the Department was able to place all 506 teachers who were in excess. As such, it was easy to translate 2804 of the temporary and contract teachers to permanent positions in the 2021 school year.
The Department further extended the contracts of ECD practitioners who are still furthering their studies. This is to enable them to complete their studies so that they can be translated into permanent teaching posts.
To this end, there are 1353 Grade R Practitioners that have already been translated into RQV 13 posts as of 31 March 2022 within the Province.
2 068 Grade R practitioners are employed in Public Ordinary Schools within the Province.
There are 311 students who are currently furthering their studies in the Federal Republic of Russia. Given the developments in that space, the Department saw it befitting to increase the stipend of the students from 4000 to 5000 per month.
The Department, working side by side with the Department of International Relations and Corporations, are closely monitoring the developments there.
There are 1360 students who are furthering their studies in various local universities, with 116 expected to graduate this year.
The Department is doing everything humanly possible to ensure that these students are fully supported in keeping to the Mpumalanga Human Resource Development Imperatives.
The Department has allocated R50 million to retain, recruit and capacitate the Human Resource within the Province.
Special Schools
Madame Speaker, the Department is pulling all stops to ensure that learners with special education needs are properly accommodated in our schools and those that require moderate to high care and support are also catered for in the 18 Special Schools within the province.
The 18 Special Schools cater for 3 855 learners with 475 educators, and the Department has been able to provide 45 therapists for learning support.
Seven (07) Public Special Schools in Mpumalanga are accommodating learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
The Department also collaborate with Autism SA to provide capacity building programme to Special School Teachers from these schools.
Currently, there are five schools with Units for Deaf catering to 426 learners.
Silindokuhle Special School with 93 Deaf and 37 Blind learners Grade R-7, KaMagugu Special School with 31 Deaf learners Grade R-7.
Bukhosibetfu Full-Service School has an enrolment of 253 Grade R-12 and will present grade 12 for the first time this year.
Three of these schools provide secondary school education, namely George Hofmeyr and Ethokomola, which are Child and Youth Care Centres and Bukhosibetfu Full-Service School.
The other schools provide a curriculum which is 50% general stream and 50% skills-based.
The Department is finalizing planning and design for this financial year for the construction of the school for the Deaf and Blind, which will be constructed at Emalahleni Local Municipality.
The Department has allocated R 409 million for special schools.
Conclusion
As I conclude, I wish to extend my revolutionary appreciation to the Honourable Premier, Mrs Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane, for the support, guidance and foresight provided when we needed it most.
Equally, the Members of the Executive Council, Portfolio Committee under the stewardship of Chairperson Pat Ngomane, the leadership of the Education Sector Unions, Association of School Governing Bodies, Members of the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign, and Leaders of Learner Formations – have given us unprecedented support and we really appreciate it.
The Business Community is contributing to and supporting the Department in ways that have not been seen before.
I sincerely extend gratitude to the business sector for their patriotic philanthropy in supporting educational programmes and school infrastructural development.
I also extend my appreciation to the Head: of Education, Mrs Lucy Moyane, Senior Management, the 33 000 strong battalions of teachers, our support staff, learners and parents for creating a favourable environment for Education to thrive within the Province.
We remain indebted to the fourth estate, the media and all other social partners for their insights and support. Siyabonga kakhulu.
The bright lamp of flame for teaching and learning in Mpumalanga continues to elicit more light in the school communities of the Place of the Rising Sun.
The sun’s rays are generating huge flames of knowledge for every learner and teacher to tap from.
The night glitter of the stars twinkles messages of a promising future and hope with no despair.
The Rising Sun illuminates the light of success and that of a better tomorrow.
This lamp of learning in Mpumalanga refused to be obliterated by the strain imposed on it by the ravaging COVID -19 pandemic and all other impediments.
It continues to provide the requisite energy, zeal and zest for everyone to soldier on and make a meaningful contribution and impact.
Let everyone shine his/her light of hope for our Education to thrive and to work for the betterment of the citizenry of Mpumalanga Province.
I, therefore, request that this August House approve the allocation of R24 billion 273 million and 229 thousand or just R24 billion in short (R 24 273 229 000) for the Mpumalanga Department of Education to fulfil its mandate.