Education Department Annual Report 2005/06: briefing

EDUCATION AND RECREATION SELECT COMMITTEE
7 February 2007
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT ANNUAL REPORT 2005/06: BRIEFING

Documents handed-out:
Department presentation on the Annual Report
Department Annual Report (available at www.education.gov.za).

Audio Recording of the meeting

SUMMARY
The Committee was briefed on the Department’s annual report for the year 2005/06. The Department had released the draft norms and standards for the funding of Grade R in public schools. They were submitted to the Minister of Finance for concurrence and the Department was awaiting his response. Amendments to the South Africa School Act were effected to allow for the declaration of "no fee" schools. Regulations relating to the exemption of parent from the payment of school fees in public schools had been strengthened. District based support teams to support the implementation of inclusive education were established in all provinces. National guidelines for inclusive learning programmes were finalised for field-testing. The national strategy for screening, identification, assessment and support of learners with special needs was also finalised.

Guidelines on school uniforms were gazetted. The school governing bodies would have to take the guidelines into account when determining school uniforms. This would ensure that parents were not unreasonably burdened by the cost of school uniforms. The impact of the guidelines was only felt from the beginning of this year. Positive comments had been made about simpler school uniforms. The Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM) Forum comprising stakeholders involved with LTSM was established. The Department was still not comfortable that it was getting full value for money on LTSM. The Mathematics, Science and Technology Strategy had been expanded to include 400 Dinaledi schools. A catalogue of grade 11 textbooks had been compiled for selection by schools. Schools were expected to choose textbooks from the catalogue.

The Department had spent 98, 5% of its total budget. There was an under spending of 1, 2% which looked small as a percentage though it involved a lot of money (R193 million). It had received an unqualified audit report but there were matters of emphasis relating to conditional grants and the asset register. Provinces had not reported by the 15^th of each month despite regular reminders. The asset register was incomplete for intangible assets including computer software and copyright materials.

The Committee asked many questions that included the following:
- Did the people who had to deliver the books have the required capacity.
- Had the Department explored the possibility of paying a full teacher salary to Grade R teachers.
- Whether there was a system that could be used to inform suppliers of what schools would need in the coming year.
- Whether schools would still be allowed to buy books from the supplier of their choice.
- What the Department was doing to deal with the movement of learners from schools that charged fees to no fee schools. A number of learners were flocking to no fees school in some provinces.
- What criteria was used to determine the no fee schools.
- Whether the schools health project launched in the Eastern Cape would be rolled out to other provinces.

MINUTES
Presentation by the Department
The Chairperson welcomed the Department to the first meeting of the Committee for the year. Dr Duncan Hindle (Director General) and Mr P Benade (Chief Financial Officer) represented the Department. Dr Hindle made the presentation (see document attached). He said that the Department had released the draft norms and standards for the funding of Grade R in public schools. They were submitted to the Minister of Finance for concurrence and the Department was awaiting his response. Cabinet had approved the National Integrated Plan on Early Childhood Development programme for the 0-4 years olds. It was a cluster programme to be implemented by the Departments of Social Development, Health and Education. A major issue was special needs schools and inclusive education. District based support teams to support the implementation of inclusive education were established in all provinces. National guidelines for inclusive learning programmes were finalised for field-testing. The national strategy for screening, identification, assessment and support of learners with special needs was also finalised.

He said that many teachers had complained that they were spending too much time doing administrative tasks. The national protocol on assessment had been published. It was aimed at reducing the administrative workload of teachers. A teacher's main job was to teach and assessment was consequential to that. Guidelines on school uniforms were gazetted. The school governing bodies would have to take the guidelines into account when determining school uniforms. This would ensure that parents were not unreasonably burdened by the cost of school uniforms. The impact of the guidelines was only felt from the beginning of this year. Positive comments had been made about simpler school uniforms. The Gauteng Department of Education had said something to the effect that it would entertain jeans and takkies if this meant that more children would go to school. The Department was misunderstood to be promoting jeans and takkies. The point was getting more children to school. There was a need for school uniforms but children should not be excluded fro schools simply because they could not afford the uniform.

Dr Hindle said that a Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM) Forum comprising stakeholders involved with LTSM was established. The Department was still not comfortable that it was getting full value for money on LTSM. The Education Management Policy Framework and the South Africa Standard for Principalship were finalised. There was no attempt to say that principals were not doing their jobs. The issue was that they were trained to teach. Being a principal was equivalent to being a manager and this required different training. There were about 700 bursaries available for principals this year and a number of organisations were prepared to sponsor the training of principals. All provinces had implemented the National Curriculum Statements Grade 10 as from January 2006. The Mathematics, Science and Technology Strategy had been expanded to include 400 Dinaledi schools. A catalogue of grade 11 textbooks had been compiled for selection textbooks by schools. Schools were expected to choose textbooks from the catalogue.

He said that amendments to the South Africa School Act were effected to allow for the declaration of "no fee" schools. Regulations relating to the exemption of parents from the payment of school fees in public schools were strengthened. The Department had successfully defended a case that sought to declare section 14 of the Employment of Educators Act unconstitutional. It was successful in an application to scrap discriminatory provisions in a certain higher education bursary fund administered by the Syfrets trust. The case was very important because a lot of people held the view that a person's will was sacrosanct. It had implications for a large number of bursary schemes.

Dr Hindle said that the Department had spent 98, 5% of its total budget. There was an under spending of 1, 2% and this looked small percentage wise even though it involved a lot of money (R193 million). It had received an unqualified audit report but there were matters of emphasis relating to conditional grants and the asset register. Provinces had not reported by the 15^th of each month despite regular reminders. The asset register was incomplete for intangible assets including computer software and copyright materials.

Discussion
Mr A Sulliman (ANC) [Northern Cape] said that the under spending was minimal percentage wise but it involved a lot of money. He asked if the Department had put some mechanism in place to lower the under spending in the next financial year. Educators were complaining that they had a lot of additional administrative work to do. He asked if the Department was working on this concern and when results could be expected.

Dr Hindle agreed that the Department had under spent by a lot money. A lot could have been done with the money and there were mechanisms to deal with under spending. Teachers were at times asked by their district offices and provinces to assess, keep records of assessments and submit the marks. Teachers were expected to do some administrative work but there were problems when the administrative roles started to compete with teaching time. There was a need for non-educators to help at schools.

Ms J Masilo said that there were delays in delivering books to schools every year. She asked if people expected to deliver the books had the required capacity. Most of the Grade R pupils in her constituency had been taken to primary schools. Their schools were closed. The educators who used to teach them before were left with no jobs. She also focused on the delivery of the national flag to schools. The North West province had the Speaker's programme in which member of the legislature were given ten flags each. They were encouraged to “adopt” schools and distribute the flags to them. The programme ran well and almost each school had a flag.

Dr Hindle replied that the Department had spent R3 billion a year on LTSM and it did not make sense that some schools did not have books. Different provinces had different systems. The Western Cape had a decentralised system and had told schools to go and buy materials from any supplier. This system was working well in the province but this did not necessarily mean that it would also work well in Limpopo province. Some provinces had a centralised system whereby the province would make a single purchase and distribute the materials to schools. Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal province had appointed agencies to buy the books on their behalf. Very few of the systems were delivering the value that the Department thought it should be getting for the R3 billion investment.

He said that the Department was looking into the issue of how to manage the distribution and retention of LTSM. Books were not retained and reused as expected. There were lots of issues involved and capacity was one of them. There was a problem in the Northern Cape because the publisher had not yet published the books. The publishers held the Department and schools ransom. Many of the provinces had indicated that they were not at full delivery. Delivery was expected to continue in the next coming. This was unacceptable because the first months of the year were very important. Delivery was also about sending a message to children about how the education system regarded them. A good textbook could certainly help a learner overcome any limitation that the teacher might have.

In respect to the Grade R classes, Dr Hindle said that it was not like the Department was pushing that the Grade R should be in primary schools. It still favoured community-based sites. Many community-based sites offered better quality Grade R than primary schools. Schools were not designed with the Grade R in mind. They often found small back rooms and used them as Grade R classrooms. One could not put children in classrooms with bare walls. Grade R classroom should be fun and exiting with colourful pictures. Attention was being given to the quality of Grade R. More children were getting access to Grade R classes but the quality of the learning experience left much to be desired. He took the Committee's comments on the issue of flags. The Department of Arts and Culture had the money for flags. The Department would look at the provision of flags to members but there should be some register in place. There was evidence that some schools had as many as three flags but had none at the moment. One would be told that a teacher had taken a flag to a sports meeting and that it could not be traced. Schools should be held accountable for the flags.

Ms Masilo said that part of the North West province was the former Bophuthatswana area. There were buildings for Grade R classes and qualified teachers paid by the government. The buildings were built by the community and had pictures but were now empty. There were problems in the area at the moment.

The Chairperson said that Grade R was not provided for in terms of salaries. Teachers in those classes were given stipends. They were paid R1000. He wondered if it was not possible to regard them as teachers because they were a permanent feature of the system. This would ensure some stability. At the moment such teachers were only there until such time they got employment elsewhere.

Dr Hindle replied that children were not to supposed to be moved from viable community sites. The Grade R funding norms dealt with issues raised by the Chairperson. The Department was looking at a subsidy approach whereby a school would get a subsidy to manage its Grade R. The subsidy did not allow for a full teacher salary. The difficulty was that a full enrolment in Grade R would mean an extra million children, 40 000 classrooms and 40 000 teachers. The system did not have the capacity to deal with such a situation. The Department had made an allowance for qualifications of Grade R teachers. It was a complex process and the first imperative was access and trying to make resources available.

Mr Sulliman asked if there was no system that could be used to inform suppliers of what schools would need in the coming year. It seemed that there was a communication gap.

The DG replied that the Department was moving towards such a system. One had to be carefully when saying that the textbook catalogue would ensure uniformity. The catalogue did not prescribe the book that should be used for a particular subject. It only provided a list of books that were available for Grade 10 and it was a wide catalogue. Schools placed their orders on time and sometimes publishers worked overtime in order to publish them. However, they sometimes compare orders made by provinces and prioritise big orders. The catalogue would be trimmed down as time goes on.

Ms H Lamoela (DA) [Western Cape] asked if it was possible for Department to publish the catalogue.

The DG replied that publishers had immediate access to the catalogue but never knew how many of a particular book would be ordered. The Northern Cape could submit its order in October but the publisher would still wait for Limpopo, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal so that they could do them all at once.

Ms Lamoela focussed on special needs school. The Committee had discovered tremendous problems in Mpumalanga during its visit to the province. The MEC was not even aware of the programme to be followed in special needs schools. She asked who monitored and how well monitored was the programme. She also asked who monitored the time spent on assisting teachers with their schooling problems. The Department and the MECs were always there whenever there were problems. The problem was that nobody was there when everything seemed to have calmed down. Failure to attend to teachers' problem could be one of the reasons why some schools under performed. The catalogue of Grade 11 textbooks would ensure uniformity in schools. She asked if schools would still be allowed to buy from the supplier of their choice.

Dr Hindle replied that the concerns around special needs schools well recognised and the Minister had made them a priority for the next financial year. There was a much more closer monitoring of the situation. The difficulty was that most of the work was funded by international donors, largely the Swedes and the Finish. The allocation for special needs schools in provincial education budgets was very minimal if it existed at all. It was about public mobilisation and this was a sector of education that was hidden and not raising its voice as much as it should. More attention and resources were needed. There were curriculum guidelines and Department would ensure that the MECs and people had access to them. Schools would still be able to buy books from their suppliers of choice.

On the issue of support to schools, he said that districts were there to making schools function better. Good districts tended to have good schools. The Department was working closely with districts to ensure that they played their support role. There were 114 schools in the previous year than had achieved a less than 20% pass rate in matric. Nine of those schools broke out of the below 20% category and seven of them moved to above 80%. None of those schools had received extra money or teachers. All that they had received was more attention from the department, provinces and districts. They were monitored, supported and held accountable. There evidence was there that such interventions worked. By contrast, some 200 schools who were over above 20% slipped down because did not get the required attention. This should not have happened because districts should have sat down with problematic schools by May or June. A districts colloquium was convened late last year where all the responsibilities of districts were outlined. It was agreed that all district managers would be convened early this year following the publishing of the matric results.

He said that the word district meant different things across the provinces. Some districts had 20 schools. The manager of such a district should know about each school and be held accountable. He or she should be visiting each school once a month. Some districts had close to 200 schools and a manager could not be blamed for not having visited some of them. It was important to define districts and give them resources to enable them to do their work. One could find a manager working from the back of his car because he had no office and no phone. Some districts also did not have computers and electricity. There was also the attitude problem in some of the districts and some managers were very arrogant. It was important for district managers to understand that they worked for schools and were below the level of principals. Some principals were being paid more than district managers and this made managers very uncomfortable. Schools were the point of delivery and the work of districts and departments was about supporting them. The Department had set up an under performing schools unit to which people would be appointed to work with the 200 under performing schools. The intention was to get those schools out of that category and to ensure that no new schools slipped into that category.

Ms N Madlala-Magubane said that the Department had referred to the revision of no fee schools legislation. She asked how soon the legislation would come to Parliament because there was confusion in schools. Not all schools were happy. Some were claiming that some kids could not afford to pay fees but it was compulsory for them to pay. During its oversight visits the Committee had found that there was a lot of useless and incapacitated principals. Matric results were not good and some principal were hopeless. She asked what the Department was intending to do about this. Former Model C schools in her constituency needed flags. The flags were in the past available in Parliament but it was now difficult to get them.

Dr Hindle replied that the no fees schools legislation was in place. The legislation outlawed compulsory fees but did not take away the right to collect voluntary fees. Many schools were still collecting fees on a voluntary basis. No child should be excluded from school due to none payment of fees. Schools got their allocation from provinces around February and March. Schools were normally helped by schools fees in the first months of the year until they received their allocations from the province. This year they had a cash flow problem but they would get their allocations. The allocation would be more than what the schools had ever collected. The government was giving about R530 to each and every learner. Fees were nowhere R500 in the no fees schools. Hopefully schools would have petty cash to get going them from day one in the coming years.

Mr J Thlagale (UCDP) [North West] also focussed on the no fee schools. The Committee had visited a Free State primary school and found that it was losing learners. Almost a third of the learners had moved to no fee school. He asked what the Department was doing to resolve situations of that nature.

Dr Hindle replied that it was wonderful that pupils were moving from schools that charged fees to no fees schools in the Free State. Such movement was confirming what should be happening. More and more schools should be no fees schools. No fees schools should not become second-class schools in which people did not want to go. They should be quality schools that charged no fees. The more complex issue was around zoning. One would find that a school that was full last year was now empty largely because of poor results that they had achieved in the past year. One could find that there were learners under trees in a school whereas there was an empty school somewhere nearby. It was a planning problem and any zoning would just be unacceptable. There was a need to recognise that uncontrolled movement was a problem in the system. The Department had explored solutions like saying that a learner should not be able to move from one school to another unless he had moved residence to the area in which the school was located. The truth was that people moved across and within provinces. Learners also moved schools within suburbs every year. Some provinces were using mobile classrooms. They would move a class to a school because of high growth in the school. The growth could be gone in the next year and the classroom would have to follow the learners. This was not the right approach and there was no easy approach. The movement from one province to another was causing problems in the receiving provinces.

Ms J Vilakazi (IFP) [KwaZulu-Natal] gave an example of a child from a poor family getting get very good matric results. One might find that such a child had no father and the mother was unemployed. There were problems when such a student applied for assistance from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). The mother of the child would be required to raise an amount of R2000 despite her being unemployed. She asked how such a person could be expected to raise the money. She wondered what the Department was doing about this because it was a crisis.

Dr Hindle replied that the NSFAS regulations were very clear. The university had no right to charge a deposit. The Department would distribute pamphlets to members so that they would know what was acceptable.

Mr Tolo said that the Minister had spoken to universities about registration fees.

The DG replied that the Department had bursaries available to deserving learners. Telkom had given ten bursaries to the Minister. He appealed to the Committee to forward any case of a deserving student (preferably with maths and science) who had been excluded from tertiary education due to lack of funds to the Department. The Department would give out 120 million this year in teacher bursaries. It was more generous than NSFAS because the recipients would not have to pay the money back but work for the Department. The bursaries provided money for fees, books and living expenses. There were also very generous bursaries for studying at FET colleges. Some of the urban colleges were over subscribed. Some of the rural colleges had not yet had a full take up of bursaries.

Mr M Thetjeng (DA) [Limpopo) asked what criteria was used to determine the no fee schools. He had been told that the determination was based on some information supplied by Statistics South Africa. He had been tracking the delivery of Grade 10 and 11 books. Not all of the materials had been delivered by yesterday. A teacher from one school had told him that, for maths and science, three children were sharing a book. One might find that people who were supposed to deliver books had no capacity. All children were supposed to have books by now. His nephew did not have a maths book and he could not get it in bookshops

Dr Hindle replied that the same criteria for putting schools in quintiles was used in relation to no fee schools. The criteria were spelled out in the norms and standards for school funding. The criteria was broadly based on census data and had to do with areas in which schools were located. Poor areas tended to have poor schools but this was not automatic and provinces had to exercise their discretion. Many former privileged schools had taken on a number of poor learners and this had changed their situation. One school had to come down every time a school moved a quintile up. No school wanted to move up because they would receive less money. Overall, it was the quintile 1 and 2 that were no fees schools.

The Chairperson said that the Department had spent up to R14 billion on education. The central issue was value for money especially when looking at the matric results. The outcome was not equal to the money put in. South Africa was performing far lower than countries that were poorer (Malawi). There was very little monitoring done by districts on schools. Laws were passed but not implemented by schools. Parliament had amended the South African Schools Act (SASA). The budget of a school should be available for inspection at least 14 days before a meeting but most schools that he had visited had not complied with this requirement.

The Act provided that schools could not charge extra fees during the course of the year once the school fees had been determined. However, this was rampant in schools. It seemed as if the very monitors needed to be monitored because they were not doing their job. It seemed that they sometimes gave false reports to the Department. There was the phenomenon of multi grades in one classroom in farm schools. There would be one teacher who taught three different grades in one classroom. This was a big challenge. Provinces would always say that there was a national law in terms of the provision of teachers and that they had to work in accordance with the law. One could not have situation where one size shoe fitted all. He asked if the Department could not look into the possibility of provisioning for them differently and give them more teachers.

He said that he had listen to some debate on mother tongue education. It was said that there were no more people who wrote books in African languages because there was no readership. The process should to start at schools where learners should be encouraged to read in their own languages. He said that during his schooling days learners were forced to read a number of books in different languages and summarise them by the end of the year. This was a good system of encouraging learners to read. The Department was providing books to schools but there was nothing that encouraged learners to read them.

The Chairperson said that there was a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Department and Sports and Recreation South Africa (SRSA). During the Committee’s engagements with SRSA on the MOU, it was said that the Department of Education was not coming to the party. Competitive sports were supposed to be the responsibility of SRSA and mass sports the responsibility of the Department of Education. It did not look like the Department was budgeting for mass sports. He had thought that the positions of ABET teachers would have made permanent by now. The Department wanted to attract good quality teachers for that level. There should be a salary in order to attract the relevant skills. The teachers were given a stipend. One could not enter into a contract or do proper planning or budgeting on the basis of a stipend.

Dr Hindle agreed that a salary would be desirable. One of the problem with ABET was the extreme unpredictability of student numbers. One could start the year with 100 learners but be down to 20 by March. People dropped out and this was an international phenomenon in ABET. One could employ one of two teachers but the question would be how one could keep paying teachers throughout the year whilst there were very few learners. This issue had been raised a number of times and the Department was trying to bring some stability into it. The Department would love to have some permanent staff especially in those centres where there was stability and predictability in terms of student numbers. A certain number of the teachers would have to be on contract given the nature of the sector.

He disagreed that the Department was not coming to the party in relation to the MOU with SRSA. The Department had extensive programmes in this regard. The issue of mother tongue language was complicated. The Department provided books to schools. One of the challenges was to find descent reading books in some African languages. Publishers had said that they were not producing such books because departments were not buying them. The Department had bought a lot of such books last year thinking that a lot more would be available this year but this was not the case. The Department had recently published a reading toolkit that gave more directions to teachers.

The DG reminded the Committee that the Department was in court last week in relation to the Ermelo case. A half empty Afrikaans school was saying that it could not accommodate other learners unless they were prepared to learn in Afrikaans. The court had ruled in the school’s favour and the Department was reviewing the case. It seemed that people were using the promotion of home language to protect something else. The school could have more learners if it was not for its stance. There was the danger that the Department could be accused of having closed an Afrikaans school. It was not the Department that was closing it down but the Afrikaans parents who did not want to send their children to that school. The Western Cape was proposing to prescribe that every child would study in their medium of their language up to grade six. This could work in the Western Cape because they would probably use Afrikaans, English and Xhosa. How could one prescribe in Gauteng where one could find all 11 official languages in the same area?

Dr Hindle said that some of the farm schools were not viable and expensive to run. The Free State and North West provinces were consolidating such schools into boarding schools in town. For instance, they would bring all learners from different schools to one school. The Department had visited one such school and the learners were proud of their boarding school. They were given meals each day and their work was supervised. The Minister was keen to establish a national fund of some sorts where an exception to the rule in relation to the funding of schools would apply. At the moment the Department was not allowed to spend on schools in terms of the Division of Revenue Act. It could be able to assist if it had a fund of some sort.

He said that the R14 billion was just what the national Department had received and a large amount had gone to tertiary institutions. The whole country spent over R90 billion on education and the question of value for money became more complicated. The model that the Department was using gave lot of choices to parents, learners and teachers. Many systems that were performing better than South Africa were more prescriptive. They prescribed the school that a learner should attend, books to be read and the medium of instruction. SA did not want to go down that route. Cuba, for instance, was prescriptive and teachers had no choice on where to teach. Learners were expected to attend the school nearest to them. A political balance had to be found on how far to prescribe in order to get the required quality. There was no way that SA would want to be authoritarian. The Human Rights Commission was given R70 million by the Dutch to conduct research on issues of quality.

Ms Lamoela asked if the schools health project that was launched in the Eastern Cape would be rolled out to other provinces.

Dr Hindle replied that the project was a pilot. He was of the view that it would be rolled out to other provinces.

The Chairperson said that there were instances wherein one could find a school not giving tablets to a sick learner. They would say that policies did not allow them to give out medicines to learners.

Dr Hindle said that teachers were not trained to be doctors but teachers. Even the de-worming of children at school was done by the Department of Health.

The meeting was adjourned.