Chairperson, before I deliver my short speech, I would like to recommend this brochure to all the members of our House. It deals with the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign.
In this document the rules and commitments of different stakeholders - the departmental official, the teacher, the learner, the parent and the community - are spelt out. With our understanding that education is everybody's business, I would also like to give members a call centre number with which we can all communicate if we have any problem on the ground related to education. The number is: 0800202933.
The president of the ANC, Comrade J Z Zuma, on the occasion of the 2009 ANC's manifesto launch indicated that "education is at the centre of all our efforts".
The 2008 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, report on the review of the South African national policies of education calls for the systematic removal of all the remaining barriers to universal access and school completion. In this regard, the ANC has committed itself to the following: Firstly, to work towards free and compulsory education for all children. As the immediate step, it will ensure that at least 60% of schools are no-fee schools. [Applause.] I am happy to respond that this is no longer a dream. Quintile 3 schools started being categorised as no-fee schools as of January this year.
The second commitment is to encourage students from working-class and poor communities to go to tertiary institutions by reviewing and improving the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS. We were told last week that it is about to be completed. In the Budget Speech by the hon Minister an additional R330 million was put aside for NSFAS.
Thirdly, school feeding schemes will be extended to all deserving high schools and the implementation of the feeding schemes in all deserving primary schools will be improved.
The Minister of Finance, hon Trevor Manuel, in his Budget Speech announced the commitment to meeting all these initiatives. It is indeed commendable that government's contribution to public entities remains its single largest investment and it reflects the fact that education is the key to reducing poverty and accelerated long-term economic growth.
At a consolidated government level, education spending has grown by 14% a year for the past three years and is projected to grow by 10% a year over the next three years. That is irrespective of the climate.
However, the African Bank and OECD suggest that although South Africa justifiably allocates the fees of its budgets to education, which is high by international standards, the current system will struggle to address huge geographical and quality imbalances inherited from apartheid. In the Budget Speech the Minister did refer to money put aside for building more schools to reduce the teacher-classroom ratio.
With regard to the curriculum in teacher training, the 2009 Budget makes provision for the attainment of educational imperatives in the national programme identified by the ANC in its 2009 election manifesto. These, amongst other things, include the improvement of the quality of schooling, particularly performance in mathematics, science, technology and language development; promoting the status of teachers and ensuring the employment of adequate numbers; and improving their remuneration and training as an important part of our drive to ensure that quality teaching becomes a norm rather than an exception. To this effect, we have already started to implement the occupation-specific dispensation in order to raise the salaries of those teachers who perform well.
On early childhood development, the ANC's 2009 election manifesto places emphasis on introducing a sustainable early childhood education system that spans both public and private sectors and gives children a head start on numeracy and literacy. The ANC government will also train and employ 15 000 trainers per annum and strengthen support for crches and pre-schools in rural villages and urban centres. This is in line with the OECD report identifying the need for all teachers of Grade R programmes to have access to the same professional development and support resources.
The expansion of the OECD programme is linked to the policy mandate of achieving universal Grade R access by 2010. It is very important for us to also take into consideration the National Mass Literacy Campaign that was started last year and I would like to request the members to bring even more people to this.
There has always been a contention that the examination is only at Grade 11. On Tuesday 17 February 2009, the day before yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised when the department reported that the standardised test took place as scheduled in November for all Grade 1 to Grade 6 learners, which means that as we speak we are having assessments in order to concretise that foundation for our education.
With regard to the supplementary materials and libraries, the OECD team learned that the Department of Education plans to provide extra resources including libraries to 5 000 schools that performed poorly and are allocated in the worst resourced districts. "Kids Up" is one of the programmes that are trying to address this.
Let me now turn to the importance of quality education. Despite the best efforts of South Africa's educational leadership and the large investment in resources as referred to above, the results and outcomes are disappointing. In its very informative background report, the Department of Education itself is critical of the system's achievement so far.
It went on to say, and I quote: "Learners' levels of achievement are very poor". Of 12 African countries participating in the 1999 MLA project, South Africa scored the lowest average in numeracy, the fifth lowest in literacy and the third lowest in life skills.
What is the turnaround strategy? I am happy to report that at the last meeting that I am referring to, held the day before yesterday and attended by all teacher unions and the ERC, the unions recommitted themselves to the non-negotiables: to be in school, on time, prepared and teaching.
In particular, the unions committed themselves to the support and the implementation of the legislation which regulates Friday as a normal school day. I want to stress this because it is very important for us so that we know that Friday is a normal school day. In this legislation it says that all South African schools are obliged to follow the school hours as determined in the two pieces of legislation.
I am going to take just one of these two. The National Education Policy Act says that every educator must be able to account for 1 800 actual working hours per annum. The most important one is the second one. It says:
Workload for educators: All educators should be at school during the formal school which should not be less than seven hours per day.
The schools that are performing well are those that have classes on weekends and during holidays, but we are saying if they can only take the bare minimum. The unions have accepted these hours to push them along so that the quality can change. Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]