Education

The Auditor-General of South Africa briefed the Select Committee on Education and Recreation on the outcomes of the 2015/16 Education Sector Report. It was reported that around R10 billion is spent every year on infrastructure for basic education.  The report found that contractors did not produce quality work for projects in five provinces; the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Kwazulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape. In light of this, the Auditor-General stressed the need for competent individuals within the Department of Education to oversee project development on-site and ensure that funds were not wasted on sub-standard infrastructure.

The report also found that the Department of Basic Education’s policy on education districts was issued without a comprehensive feasibility study. The policy had set out specific norms, and would be difficult to amend considering different provinces are currently in different stages of implementation. Kwazulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga had averages considerably higher than the national norm of 25 schools per circuit.

In terms of curriculum support and learner performance improvement strategies, the report found that many schools were not visited enough by subject advisors. Within the report’s sample data, it was discovered that many schools had also ordered excessive textbook stock, while other schools were severely undersupplied as many orders did not take into account requirements or existing supplies.

The hoarding of school support items presents a serious problem to the education sector, considering around R5 billion is spent per year on the provision of textbooks, and that figure is growing. Additionally, the transport budget for curriculum officials to visit schools was found to be inadequate in most provinces. Other problems included Personal Development Plans only being conducted for the purpose of compliance and not for the purpose of identifying genuine training needs on a bottom-up basis. There were also shortcomings in terms of record-keeping and how provinces benefitted from skills-development, as well as monitoring and evaluation with little was being done to determine whether training exercises were effective. Information management and record-keeping were found to be virtually non-existent. The Committee expressed concern about the findings and intends to engage further with the Auditor-General of South Africa and the Department on the topic.