Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill: Status Report; International Study Tour

Meeting report

The Chairperson greeted the Members, the officials from the Department of Basic Education and all those in attendance at the meeting. This would be the last meeting that the Committee would have for the quarter and for the year. The Committee had requested to have this meeting because it could not adopt the minutes the previous week because of the congestion of the BELA Bill oral submissions that were had. She thanked Members for availing themselves to attend the oral submissions physically which the Committee managed to proceed very well.  

Agenda

The Chairperson said that today the Committee was adopting the outstanding minutes of 1 November 2022, 8 November 2022, 15 November 2022, 22 November 2022 and 29 November 2022. After that, the Committee would have an update on the processing of the BELA Bill. The Committee was anticipating holding provincial public hearings next year. The Committee would then have a briefing on the international study tour. The Committee would also receive an update on the draft programme for 2023.

The Chairperson asked for the adoption of the agenda.

Ms D Van Der Walt (DA) moved for the adoption of the agenda.

Mr S Ngcobo (IFP) seconded the adoption of the agenda.

The agenda was adopted.

Consideration and Adoption of Draft Minutes: 1 November 2022

The Chairperson took the Committee through the minutes.

Mr T Letsie (ANC) moved for the adoption of the minutes.

Ms Van Der Walt seconded the adoption of the minutes.

The minutes were adopted.

Consideration and Adoption of Draft Minutes: 8 November 2022

The Chairperson took the Committee through the minutes.

Mr P Moroatshehla (ANC) moved for the adoption of the minutes.

Ms N Adoons (ANC) seconded the adoption of the minutes.

The minutes were adopted.

Consideration and Adoption of Draft Minutes: 15 November 2022

The Chairperson took the Committee through the minutes.

Ms Adoons moved for the adoption of the minutes.

Mr B Yabo (ANC) seconded the adoption of the minutes.

The minutes were adopted.

Consideration and Adoption of Draft Minutes: 22 November 2022

The Chairperson took the Committee through the minutes.

Mr Yabo moved for the adoption of the minutes.

Mr Moroatshehla seconded the adoption of the minutes.

The minutes were adopted.

Consideration and Adoption of Draft Minutes: 29 November 2022

The Chairperson took the Committee through the minutes.

Mr Letsie moved for the adoption of the minutes.

Mr Yabo seconded the adoption of the minutes.

The minutes were adopted.

Consideration of Draft 1st Term Programme 2023

Mr Llewellyn Brown, Committee Secretary, briefed the Committee on the Draft 1st Term Programme for 2023. It highlighted the Committee’s planned engagements and activities.

The Chairperson said that this was the programme for January to April 2023. She asked if there were any points of clarity or additions.

Mr B Nodada (ANC) sought clarity if the programme was cast in stone or if there was a potential for change. He wanted to know from a planning perspective for the Members’ own diaries. Or did it also have to go through a process and then Parliament would approve it? The Members needed to understand in the first quarter how things stood.  

Mr Letsie made a suggestion. If one looked at the constituency period in April, it was quite long. It was about three weeks or so. It was a long constituency period, from 3 April to 17 April. Maybe the Committee could consider scheduling an oversight visit to the Eastern Cape, Port St. Johns, where there were floods and/or KZN that was also affected by floods. The Committee could check a year on how far things have moved in terms of fixing the infrastructure. He wanted to raise those two things during the constituency period in April.

The Chairperson asked the Committee Secretary to highlight what Mr Letsie had raised.

Mr Ngcobo said that he was partly covered by Mr Letsie. He wanted to discuss KZN. The Chairperson said that it was dependent because it was scheduled on a holiday, on whether it could be approved with that holiday in between. What was the Committee likely to do if it was not approved? He asked this because he felt that it was a very important oversight. Could it be shifted to somewhere else then?

Mr Moroatshehla said that he supported what Mr Letsie had indicated. It was possible for the Committee to kill two birds with one stone. He supported the visit to Port St. Johns in the Eastern Cape. He noted the point raised by Mr Nodada. The plan that was submitted to the Committee needed to be appreciated. It was good news and a move in the right direction. He suggested that the draft programme be adopted in principle. Should there be any unintended interruptions then the Committee should be able to revisit it in the name of correcting it.

Ms Adoons said that she supported what had been proposed by Mr Letsie. The programme noted that the Eastern Cape and KZN had been highlighted as two areas that would be visited. She discussed the BELA Bill. If the Committee was not going to prioritise the BELA Bill, then it might face a problem of finishing on time.

The Chairperson said that the programme was not cast in stone. It was a proposal. It was subject to approval from the House Chairperson. She had raised the issue of KZN. She noted that in the first week there was a Members training. The Committee would have to convince the House Chairperson and provide some motivation on why it needed to do this oversight. This was a Committee that would be dealing with schools and schools would be opening around that time. It would depend on whether the House Chairperson approved or not. For now, for the sake of the Members’ personal programmes she suggested that the Committee take the programme as is. It needed to be before the Members before it was sent to the House Chairperson. She noted that the Committee wanted to go to KZN, but should the Committee not be able to then it would have to find another slot which she was not sure was going to be in this quarter because all the other weeks were full. She hoped that it would be approved. She noted the suggestion that the Committee should consider going to the Eastern Cape, Port St. Johns in April. The Committee also needed to make an application to do an oversight visit. Mr Brown had now included the Eastern Cape and KZN on the programme. She noted the issue of the BELA Bill. There was a proposal that the Committee use the constituency period to also consider adding three provinces so that the Committee could try to fast-track the BELA Bill. Members needed to take into consideration that it was going to be bumper to bumper next year with the preparation of the election work for 2024. The more the Committee did provinces the better so that when it got to be congested at least the Committee had been in many provinces. Because it was a constituency period it needed to be approved by the House Chairperson and the Chief Whip. The Committee would also make the addition of those provinces as recommendations. She took note of what Members were raising. For now, this was what the programme would look like for the first quarter. This included the constituency period in April. She noted that the public hearings would be done during weekends, starting from Thursday to Monday. When the Committee embarked on public hearings it was going to be weekend programmes. She was alerting Members so that it did not come as a surprise when the Members needed to leave their families during weekends and embark on the public hearings. The Members were on the same page as far as the draft programme was concerned. She asked for Members to adopt the programme. It would be adopted subject to approval.

Mr Letsie said with the proposed changes made, he moved for the adoption of the draft programme.

Mr Moroatshehla said that he seconded the adoption of the draft programme.

The Committee adopted the 1st Term Programme 2023.

Mr Ngcobo said that he supported the adoption of the programme. However, he wanted to protest because of what the Chairperson had alluded to. Next year was going to be a very busy year for the parties. So, if the Committee added three oversight visits that could be a bit hectic. It might not be very successful because parties would be running from as early as the Committee began the year. However, there was no train smash. The Members would do everything they could, but it would be understood if some Members did not pitch up once or twice. He supported the adoption.

The Chairperson said that she noted what he had raised. The Committee had adopted the programme. The programme would be subject to change. The proposal she had made must still be applied for, including doing public hearings during a constituency period. That needed to be approved. The Committee needed to see how it went. The Committee would do all the applications. The Members would receive a report on how far the applications went.

Processing (Written, Oral and Provincial Public Participation Hearings) Status Report

Ms Portia Mbude-Mutshekwane, Committee Content Advisor, briefed the Committee on the progress of the BELA Bill. The purpose of the presentation was to provide a brief summary of the progress to date in the processing of the public submissions of the BELA Bill, to provide an update on the processed written submission comments, and to provide public perspectives and the progress on Oral Submissions Hearings at Parliament. The themes emerging from written submissions included access to basic education, compulsory learner attendance, language policy issue, government and management of public schools, budget and finance, home education, independent schools and educators.

A total of 7689 written public responses were captured into metadata, categorised and analysed:

Number of Email Submissions processed   on MS Word: (1412)

Number of Email Submissions processed on Excel, approximately 5728

Number of  google forms processed 549

The Committee embarked on physical oral public hearings in Parliament from 8 November 2022 to 29 November 2022. The public hearings afforded an opportunity to the stakeholders who had expressed interest to make oral presentations of their written submissions. Stakeholders included professional associations, civil society organisations, individuals, university academics, children’s commissioner, chapter 9 institutions, learners organisations, home education sector, trade unions and faith-based stakeholders.

Provincial public hearings will take place next year. All nine provinces will be visited. The Committee will schedule hearings in at least three districts per Province. Hearings will be held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

In Term 1, the following hearings have been scheduled:

-Limpopo Province (23 – 27 February 2023) Giyani, Vhembe, and Capricorn Districts

-North West Province (9 – 13 March 2023) Bojanala, Dr Ruth Mompati and Ngaka Modiri Molema Districts

-Gauteng Province March – 3 April 2023) JHB Central, Tshwane South and Gauteng East

(See Presentation)

Discussion

The Chairperson said that that was the processing of the submissions to date. The Members would note that not everything had been processed. The volume of the submissions received was too many verses the human resources that Parliament had.

Mr Nodada thanked the support staff of the Committee for processing such a larger number of submissions. He noted that there was quite a large volume that was left that still needed to be gone through. There were about 10 000 submissions still to process. He asked Ms Mbude-Mutshekwane if she thought those would be processed before the Committee went to the public participation hearings in the provinces. If not, did she have a forecast? The Members needed to plan ahead and see the potential timelines by when these submissions could be completed. He requested that when the programme was adjusted that the Members be sent the programme. He noted that beyond it being an election campaign year, some of the Members had elective conferences in the next year as well. The Members needed to plan thoroughly so that the Members did not lack in doing their constitutional responsibility. He wanted constant communication on this issue so that the Members were available for the work of the Committee. It was very important and it was also a very important year for the Committee to process this particular Bill.

Ms Adoons said that she aligned herself with Mr Nodada’s comments. She proposed that the Committee receive a weekly update on the work done from now up until the public hearings. If the Committee did not push, then it would be left with so much work that still needed to be done. It was important that the Committee pushed to finish the written submissions. She proposed a weekly update from the support staff on the work that had been done on the written submissions.

Ms Mbude-Mutshekwane said that the support staff noted the comments. She apologised for the summary being presented late. She noted that the support staff was committed to the work. They wanted to ensure constant communication. She noted that the previous day, they had tried very hard to trace the written submissions so that the information they gave to the Members was verified. She noted that the verification process had been difficult. Behind the scenes there was a lot of work that the support staff was doing. It noted what the Committee had said and strived to get the information to the Committee. She discussed Ms Adoons proposal of a weekly update. She asked if a bi-weekly update would be appropriate? She noted that because of the range of information they were dealing with they had to come together and to meet. She suggested that it be a bi-weekly update.

The Chairperson said that the support staff should do whatever was possible. If the updates could be sent weekly or bi-weekly to the Members, that would be fine. The Members needed to be informed of any progress that had been made. She noted that the Committee was able to process 31 stakeholders. There were one or two individuals that were part of that sector who raised their views. The rest of the individuals the Committee would meet at the public hearings, on the ground. She noted that as the submissions were being processed, the trend was the same. The trend would not change much. The organisations would not change much. The issues would not change much. It was a repetition of the issues that were raised by these organisations.

Briefing on International Study Tour

Ms Mbude-Mutshekwane briefed the Committee on the international study tour. The presentation provided an update on the envisaged study tour for Members of the Committee to make a decision on a country to be selected for the study tour. Members, after deliberation, would select one country from the three suggested. The three suggested countries were Finland, South Korea and the USA.

The Chairperson said that the Committee should see which country should be selected so that the support staff could do costing and the Committee could apply for it.

Mr Nodada said that over and above the objectives that had been put as the motivation, he suggested that the Committee might want to look at decentralisation versus centralisation in whichever country the Committee decided on. Secondly, he discussed the school monitoring or evaluation method, and the quality teaching inspectorate method that was used in those countries. So, how those countries held their teachers accountable? Thirdly, the assessment methods used to measure the personal and professional knowledge development of the child. He knew there was a linkage in the curriculum, but he did not think it was quite clear. He noted it was vocational streams and so on. It would be interesting to look at the curriculum. He discussed the accountability measures that were put in place vis-à-vis independent or private schools versus public schools. How did that relationship link together? He knew there was a huge discussion now about Montessori schools and other schools that provided different curricula to what South African law prescribed. It would be assistive to look at those in-depth things. He noted that the proposals that were put in place to do the study took made sense. He suggested Finland. It was quite an interesting landscape that was used there. Even though it was a small country there was a lot that could be learned from their education system across the spectrum of the issues that had been raised. He was aware that at the beginning of the democratic dispensation, South Africa used the US model of the education system. It was then abandoned at some point in time. South Korea offered a very limited scope. He noted that there were aspects of early childhood development and specialisation. As a country that was still developing it needed a wide range of issues that it could cover when Members did such a study.

Mr Letsie said that he agreed with the priorities that were looked into by the staff. He added that given the meeting last week Tuesday and the interest of South Africa in homeschooling, that homeschooling be included as a priority as well. There was serious interest from homeschooling associations. The Committee also needed to look into prioritising homeschooling so that it was on the same page as the homeschooling sector. He agreed with Mr Nodada that what South Korea was offering was a little bit limited. He suggested that the Committee eliminate South Korea from the options and focus on the remaining two, Finland and the US. He noted that the Committee should also focus on the issue of homeschooling which was huge in the US. He suggested that the Committee look at the US as number one. Then number two, the Committee should consider Finland. The Members should give a mandate to the Committee staff to start doing their preparation to look into these two, with a specific order of preference.

The Chairperson said that the Committee now had two proposals. There was Finland and the USA.

Ms M van Zyl (DA) agreed with Mr Nodada regarding Finland. It would provide an all-rounder look at basic education. Mr Letsie had mentioned homeschooling and it was a big thing in the news at the moment. It needed to be remembered that homeschooling was only a handful of the service of basic education in South Africa. The public schooling system was the most important. Going on a study tour for a handful of people that utilised the function of homeschooling versus visiting a country where the Committee could have more input on basic education on public schooling as a whole would be better.  

Ms Van Der Walt said that the Committee needed to look at public schooling. She asked how many people in poorer communities could do homeschooling because of their socio-economic circumstances. Then of course the country needed to benchmark itself. Did it really want to benchmark itself with America or with Finland? Finland had received several accolades of being home of the world’s best education systems. She supported the Finland proposal.

Mr Moroatshehla said that the order that was proposed by Mr Letsie made a lot of sense. He supported Mr Letsie’s proposal.

Ms Adoons said that she supported the proposal of Mr Letsie.

Mr Hubert Mathanzima Mweli, Director General, Department of Basic Education, said that one would never find a country that was a perfect fit for South Africa. Every country had its unique context and history. It depended on what Members were looking for. If the Members were looking for large education systems, then the US was the country to go to. Their ECDs were highly institutionalised. Future study tours would want to look at what Cuba and Jamaica were doing where there was a mixture of institutionalised, community-based and having families playing a role. Even UNESCO said that they had one of the best models when it came to ECDs which was quite inclusive. Members might want to look at the size of the country as well. Finland was among the best. However, Singapore would even be better than Finland. Finland had been overtaken by Singapore. It depended on what Members were looking for. If it was about ECD then he thought the US would be a very good country to look at. The Members should not stop at the US. The South African context was such that it might not be a neat fit into the US. The US had resources and had institutionalised everything. The Members might want to look at other countries as well. Whatever country the Members arrived at, there would never be a perfect fit with the South African context. It all depended on what the Committee was looking for.

The Chairperson said that the Committee would put through a submission that was supporting the US for June 2023 for the study tour. She asked the staff to work on this. The staff would make an application as early as possible. If it was possible to do it before the close of Parliament. There were a lot of applications that the Committee had spoken of. There was a lot of work that the support start needed to do so that the applications were processed. That included this study tour as well.

Mr Nodada made a suggestion. He suggested that the Committee submit for both Finland and the US and then take the matter offline to lobby one another on the matter. He was sure that the Members could find some common ground.

The Chairperson said that was fine. The Committee could make a submission on both countries. It would also depend on the costing. The Committee agreed to put both countries forward and then it would see the costing.

Mr Brown said that on 19 January 2023 it would be the official matriculant results release by the Minister. The Members would be contacted to travel to the official results release.

Mr Letsie said that this was the last Committee meeting of the year. He wished all Members a prosperous new year and merry Christmas. He told the team from the Department to relax and enjoy their holiday.

Mr Mweli wished the Members a well-deserved rest. He hoped the Members would rest. He wished the Members a wonderful festive season and a prosperous new year.

Mr Yabo wished the Members and support staff a merry Christmas, and a prosperous new year. He hoped the Members would get the rest they needed. He was grateful to the team that had supported the Committee for the entire year. He offered his gratitude for the work they had done. He thanked the Chairperson for steadying the ship for the whole year. The Chairperson had done very well. The Members appreciated her leadership. The Chairperson made a good case for woman in leadership, in the fight for gender equality. He thanked the Department for always being informative, available and supportive of the work of the Committee.

Mr Nodada said that it would be amiss of him not to say anything. He thanked the Chairperson and the whole Committee for being very patient with some of the long questions. He thanked the Department for bearing with his enquiries throughout the year. He prayed that everyone had a blessed Christmas and a prosperous new year. He also thanked some of the stakeholders who had contributed to the Committee. He hoped that the Committee could continue with its work next year to provide good quality education.

The Chairperson thanked all of the Members for being committed Members to the Committee. The Members came from different political parties but they had the ability to manage their differences and work together. Since 2019, the Committee had been able to hold the Department of Basic Education to account. She thanked all the Committee staff for their work. She asked the Director General to pass on the Committee’s gratitude to both the Minister and the Deputy Minister. She thanked the Director General for being committed. She wished the ANC well as it was going to its national conference. It was going to be a way forward for this country. She noted that Members might differ politically, but the ANC was the governing party. The ANC could not sink and be directionless. It meant that the whole country would be directionless. She wished everyone a merry Christmas. She wished everyone a prosperous 2023. May everyone come back to the Committee alive and fresh.

The meeting was adjourned.