Chairperson, thank you for facilitating this because I understand it was the wish of the Whips and arrangements committee. These two Bills are necessary. They are not housekeeping Bills, they are important policy Bills that enable us to get to where we want to go. Therefore, these Bills are both necessary and implementable.
The first Bill refers to the fact that adults pursuing studies, as well as children and youths, in schools and colleges, will be positively affected by the provisions of these pieces of legislation, if they are approved by this House. I hope that the members' principals in the provincial legislatures have mandated them to support the Bills in the interests of these learners. They are, of course, part of the general and further education bands, apart from the normal general education bands which we have looked at before.
In the first instance I had to introduce the Adult Basic Education and Training Bill, the Abet Bill. There is a saying that a country that does not invest in its children has no future. Likewise, a nation that does not invest in its adults faces the continuing spectre of poverty, stagnation and hopelessness that haunts us in South Africa. We saw this before 1994 when the previous regime and the private sector made little or no investment in the education of the adult population.
Therefore, let me elaborate on the challenges facing a section of our 24 million adult compatriots. First of all, 3,2 million adults have never entered a learning institution because there was no compulsory education for Africans until the democratic Government, in 1994, introduced a Bill that became part of the law in 1996. So we are only talking about four years of compulsory education for all our population. They are effectively illiterate, with the written words of our Constitution, legislation and policy papers remaining mere worthless symbols with little meaning to them.
Secondly, 9,4 million adults have not completed the equivalent of nine years of school, which renders them functionally illiterate, mostly unemployed and leading survivalist and undignified lives on the very margins of our society. They are virtually invisible to those who chatter at dinner times and those who sit in our shebeens. Many have ended up in prison. More than 60% of those who ended up in prison - I visited them on the Abet programme at Pollsmoor - are between 19 and 24. Even in these circumstances, as I found, prisoners are anxious to learn in order to get out of their dire situations. A little later I will say how we, as public representatives, can do something to help these people.
Thirdly, the participation rate at our 2 226 Adult Basic Education and Training centres stands at less than 300 000, at 294 000, with only one in three adult learners getting basic education and training. We now have a consolidated list of the Adult Basic Education and Training centres, which I will place in the library because we published it only recently. This suggests that we are not as clever, innovative or sharp as we could be in social mobilisation and recruitment, because without social mobilisation we cannot do anything here.
Given the new realities of the global economy, the low skills profile of our people is jeopardising our economic prospects and is stifling the new energies we need to reconstruct and develop our country, and to provide for the basic needs of our people. There are also dramatic implications for the employability of many of our citizens, especially if one factors in the technological illiteracy among even those who are otherwise quite literate. Of course, I am not suggesting that Government, acting on its own, can create demand for skills and jobs, although through its economic development and empowerment initiatives it will provide the learning and earning connection for the development of key skills and the creation of jobs.
It is only when it acts together with all its social partners, and I say this very seriously, that Government can successfully meet the skills development and employment creation challenge. So, I am confident that the recently appointed national board for adult basic education and training and similar provincial advisory bodies will enable Government to work successfully alongside its social partners to identify priorities and relevant programmes.
The Bill also recognises that collaboration on human resource development between the Ministries of Education and Labour, in particular the Skills Development Act of the Ministry of Labour, is essential for comprehensive human resource development, with adult basic education and training featuring strongly. In the next few days our two departments and the Ministries will be making a very important announcement on joint collaboration in this area.
Faced with this situation, the Department of Education in 1998 embarked on a five-year plan to develop structures, systems and the capacity of the public adult learning centres to respond to the challenges of adult illiteracy and upscale provision in these centres to a mass level of 2,5 million by 2001. I think that is a very optimistic approach, but we need a high degree of optimism here, while our mind may tell us that it may not be possible always to meet this target everywhere in South Africa.
The first objective has seen us, therefore, with the provincial departments of education, achieve our objectives of relatively small increases in learner enrolments, the development of the curriculum framework and unit standards within the National Qualifications Framework, which is a particularly South African progressive measure, that will provide linkages to further education and training and on-the-job training, the introduction of learner support materials, enhancing practitioner standards, and establishing providers and transforming them into a network of adult learning centres. On the second objective we are already gathering momentum.
I have identified, as the House knows, the absolute need to break the back of illiteracy, as a priority. We all know what illiteracy does. It disempowers people, not for the global revolution, but for technology. It diminishes them as human beings - we know that - and now we must seek to accelerate the work of fighting illiteracy through collaboration with all spheres of our society.
Let me make a special appeal to public representatives. For this reason, I have recently established the SA National Literacy Initiative with its board of advisers and agency - a nonbureaucratic, very creative body with, we hope, the expedience to do things rapidly on the ground. The National Literacy Initiative, which has representatives of all political parties, must succeed, and, towards this end, we call upon our people and organisations to offer national community service, particularly those who have the capacity, not the young people only, for the next five years, as we mobilise and jointly provide education and training to our target of 3,5 million adults. I said I would make an appeal to hon members. Next year is the Year of the Reader, again an initiative with NGOs, and we hope to make it a very exciting thing, to bring the book to our people. I went to Pollsmoor Prison, and saw that there are no books there. So I have given them 200 or 300 of my own, for they have no library resources.
I ask hon members to mobilise public representatives to donate books at 120 Plein Street - we are prepared to have thousands of books there to send to prisons. Of course, as we know, in 60% of South African schools there are no libraries at all. So I make this appeal to hon members, not for their rubbish books, not for their textbooks, but for books that would be relevant to our people.
The Adult Basic Education and Training Bill therefore provides the legislative framework to advance our constitutional obligations set out in section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution - recognising every person's right to adult basic education and training.
The Bill provides for the establishment of public learning centres and for the registration of private adult learning centres. It focuses on the quality of education and governance at these centres.
It does many other things. There is a five-year programme. It also obliges a head of department of a province to provide facilities for public adult learning centres to perform their functions. We should not have the authority there. If there are no facilities available, then the governing body of a public school or a further education and training institution must allow the reasonable use of the facilities by the adult centres.
We are getting rid of this idea that the principal and the governing body own the school. Schools are national assets, and the provincial head can, in fact, intervene there. Over 29 000 public schools and many technical colleges already provide ready facilities. They make use of these functions. There must a governing body for the adult basic education and training centres, and they can co-opt people without voting rights.
The Bill therefore provides for adult basic education and training to be funded in terms of norms and standards to be determined by the Minister of Education, in terms of the National Education Policy Act, from funds appropriated for this purpose by the provincial legislatures. Many of the provinces have made a modest start in that.
I call upon the NCOP to send a clear message to our country, that the era of cheap and unskilled labour, of a lifetime of low-skill occupations, of poor-quality curricula and qualifications by public and private providers, will be replaced by lifelong learning of high-performance, high-quality, relevant curricula and qualifications which will offer new pathways to higher education, particularly taking into account previous experience. For the first time in our country, we can draw on that quality of experience that many of our people have without any formal qualifications.
Quickly now I turn to the Education Laws Amendment Bill. We seek to amend three pieces of legislation: the South African Qualifications Authority Act, the South African Schools Act and the Employment of Educators Act.
The amendments to the South African Qualifications Act are technical, and recognise a change in the organisation of teachers since the inception of the Act and that there are now three teacher organisations rather than two, so that they are all represented on the board.
The changes to other laws are central to the governance and management of public schools. The South African Schools Act is significantly strengthened by the power of the Minister to make regulations regarding school safety measures, and any other aspects in pursuit of the primary objectives of the Act.
I have already declared schools and higher education institutions to be gun- free institutions. Now we must, in fact, ensure that communities are involved in providing safety and security. The schools must become centres of community life, and the safety of the schools is enormously important. Then, of course, the heart of this is changes to employment legislation to be able to deal more effectively with incapacity among teachers.
The President awarded prizes last Thursday as part of the National Teacher Awards, in a variety of categories. One of them was for lifetime service. I am sorry that all hon members could not be there. It was a very moving experience to have in the five categories teachers from all over South Africa, predominantly women, I should say, who gave their own two-minute statement about what it means to be a teacher, and why they want to be teachers.
The recognition came with money awards to the schools, not the teachers - one of the most moving experiences that I have had as the Minister of Education. We want to build on that to ensure that good teachers are recognised and that those who need assistance, particularly those who fail in their tasks, are given proper assistance because of their incapacity. I draw hon members' attention to incapacity in the Bill.
More important, also, is the fact that many teachers do not perform because of inadequate initial training and subsequent development, or simply a refusal to make the effort to be retrained. A procedure is laid down for poor performance by teachers.
Again I think it is a kind of first that we are involved in here. It is very important that we should do this gradually with the agreement, I must say, of the teachers' unions. Unless we have the agreement of teachers' unions, we will, in fact, not be able to enforce it as effectively as we should. On the other hand, these are professional matters, and Parliament, ultimately, must have the last word on that.
Finally, where the poor performance is the result of ill health or inadequate training, we are bound to support the developmental approach. The important thing is not to say, ``Kick them out!'' because there are human failures arising from our past. We must have a developmental approach.
Of course, we end by saying that where teachers seriously undermine the foundations of our education system, then the law must be strict and straightforward. Undermining the educational system includes theft, bribery and fraud relating to examinations. I must say that the examinations are about to end, and we have had one case of maladministration and corruption in the past year. That is a remarkable thing. When we talk about the size of the country and the millions of people involved in the process, it is a remarkable victory for good sense, ethics and morality.
Regarding sexual assaults on learners, I beg to say that, according to the Medical Research Council, 33% of the abuse of children under the age of 15 is against girls and committed by teachers. It is one of the most regrettable things to happen in our country - recently the Medical Research Council said that. Of course, the Act now makes it a serious form of misconduct.
Others are assault in general, ordinary sexual relations with learners - as if one can have ordinary sexual relations with learners when one is in loco parentis; and one should not abuse that authority - possession of intoxicating or - I like this - stupefying substances. These will result in dismissal. They are serious offences and there must be dismissal. Of course, there will be a hearing where the information is put forward, but the hearing will be short, deliberate, fair and constitutional - and, for these offences, there must be dismissal.
A stringent approach has to be adopted to restore the moral order of our education system, and in this way we might even begin to restore the moral order for all the people of our country. A list of other offences is included in that, including unfair discrimination and financial mismanagement.
The fact is that we now also allow for delegation of these powers. Up to now the provincial head of the department has been taking disciplinary measures, and members know how difficult it is to do that. We now allow for the delegation of powers to the principal at a lower level of the system. The principal is empowered to counsel, to educate and then to issue verbal or written warnings. Only when the nature of the offence is sufficiently dangerous, the hearing must be held within 10 days, because, in fact, the community's sense of rightness is violated if a serious offence takes place and no hearing is held for six, nine or up to 15 months, as was the case in the past.
We cannot allow undisciplined educators to linger in our system. They are protected by weak procedures and ineffective administrations. We appeal to all our communities to take action, but we must therefore make sure that our procedures are open, fair and without victimisation.
Can I end by saying that a class without a teacher is a terrible thing, but a class with a morally corrupt teacher is much worse. I recently received a badge which read: ``If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.'' Members can see it in my room. I have no dispute with this sentiment, but I would add a rider: that the social costs of re-education and rehabilitation of the miseducated are greater still. The moral regeneration of our society starts, really, not in Parliament, but in our classrooms, and teachers must be the leaders in this campaign by setting our best example. The Bill and the earlier Bill are both positive steps towards this, and I call upon this House's support. [Applause.]