Hon House Chairperson, hon Ministers, Deputy Ministers, hon members, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to talk about broadening access to quality education for all. Education is a means of promoting good citizenship as well as preparing our people for the needs of a modern economy and a democratic society. The ANC government aimed at ensuring the progressive realisation of universal schooling, improving quality education and eliminating disparities.
Chairperson, I would like to remind this House of what uTata uMadiba said about education:
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
The ANC adopts the view that the task of broadening access to quality education should remain at the centre of all our efforts to build our nation. This stance is founded on the understanding that education plays a crucial role in broadening the scope of social and economic emancipation for all of our people. The ANC continues to hold education as a key mechanism to enable people to define their identities, take control of their lives and participate confidently and effectively in the social, political and economic life of our society. To this end we regard education as a matter of public interest, relevantly serving as a critical foundation for the advancement of human dignity, equality, human rights and freedom, nonracialism and nonsexism.
Research shows that the ANC government, together with South African people, are joining hands in an effort to improve the quality of education and to make it accessible to the majority of all South Africans. It shows that we are all beginning to recognise in the most practical way that education is central to the success of a whole range of other human endeavours. Our reconstruction and development efforts, the renaissance of the entire continent of Africa, and our successful interaction in the global village, depend largely on the progress we make in educating our population. There has been a significant increase in the percentage of individuals aged 5 to 24 years attending an education institution between 1996 and 2011.
Over the years there has been a steady decline in the percentage of adults who have not received an education. The percentage of persons 20 years and older who have no schooling decreased from 19,1% in 1996 to 8,7% in 2011, whilst those with education higher than Grade 12 increased from 7,1% to 12,3% during the same period of time.
Chairperson, most of the individuals without schooling were generally black Africans, but even so their numbers decreased from 24% to 10,5% in 2011. Our people continue to bear the socioeconomic burdens that were imposed by the apartheid legacy. This legacy makes it difficult for our people, particularly children from poor communities, to get the required opportunities to define their lives and participate meaningfully in the socioeconomic life of our society.
It is within this view that government has elevated the task of broadening access to quality education as a priority that we should be working together to realise. As the ANC, we believe that such a trajectory lies at the centre of the call for working together made by the President in his state of the nation address in 2013.
Education is a concern for all of us and we can only make it work better for our people if we are prepared to converge and synergise our efforts of working together.
I believe that it is therefore imperative that our government works to address the socioeconomic burdens to ensure that all our children can have access to quality education, in order to enable them to participate fully and meaningfully in the socioeconomic life of society. Dealing with socioeconomic burdens should continue to be a priority for our government, specifically the Department of Basic Education. Such an understanding is against the backdrop that these challenges are potentially eroding the gains we have made with regard to ensuring that every one of our children receives the education to which they are entitled in terms of our constitutional obligations. The ANC decided at its national conference in Polokwane to assign top priority to education. In order to give practical expression to this decision, we felt that the then Department of Education was too big and overburdened, with a vast and comprehensive series of tasks and functions that were often beyond the management and leadership capacity of a single government department. Arising from this concern, it made more meaningful and practical sense to group together issues relating to the special focus area of basic education, while separating these from issues relating to higher education. This gave birth to a split of the Department of Education into two new Ministries in the new government structure, namely the Ministry of Basic Education and the Ministry of Higher Education and Training.
Chairperson, our observation as the portfolio committee has been that this decision was an appropriate step in the right direction as it has streamlined activities and focused the Department of Basic Education on issues that matter at that level of our education system. However, we want to encourage continued co-ordination between the two Ministries, as the two departments are interdependent. In essence, we consider this as vital for a flawless transition of students from one level to the other.
Chairperson, the structural changes instituted by the government in 2009 served as an important signal for a strong sense of accountability for service delivery. The Cabinet lekgotla held in 2010 adopted the 12 outcomes for government. These outcomes served as the basis of our service delivery activities. One of these outcomes was an improved quality of basic education. This speaks to our oversight mandate as the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education.
Flowing from this outcome, the Minister of the Department of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga, as well as the members of the executive councils for education, committed to the agenda of working towards improving the quality of education in the service delivery agreements signed with the President.
The service delivery agreement of the Minister covers output areas such as improving the quality of teaching and learning; undertaking regular assessments to track progress; improving early childhood development; and ensuring a credible outcomes-focused planning and accountability system. We are confident that this is the right step towards broadening access to quality education for all. We can already see the benefits of this move.
Chairperson, the question of access to quality education remains on the agenda of the government led by the ANC. As such, the department has identified the annual national assessments, ANA, as a strategic tool for monitoring and improving the level and quality of basic education, with a special focus on the foundational skills of literacy, numeracy and life skills.
The department initially introduced the annual national assessments for learners in Grade 3 and Grade 6 as a diagnostic tool to inform us of the health of our schooling system and how we could go about shaping our interventions going forward. In 2012, we expanded ANA to include learners in Grade 9. The findings of the annual national assessments have provided the department with important lessons on what it should do to improve the health of our schooling system.
The findings of the 2012 round of ANA revealed an overall improvement in learner performance across grades. Significant improvements were observed in the foundation phase, in particular. However, the report also revealed depressing levels of performance in Grades 6 and 9, particularly in mathematics and languages, which is an indication that there is a need for focused interventions at this level.
Chairperson, our engagements with the department during our budget review meetings for 2013-14 gave us confidence that the department is treating this initiative with the seriousness that it deserves. For instance, tests for ANA 2013 have been set, reviewed and versioned. Two forms of tests have been piloted, and results from the pilot are being incorporated into the tests. The timetable for ANA 2013 has been approved by the Heads of Education Departments Committee, Hedcom, and procurement of service providers for printing, packing and distribution is in progress.
More than R260 million has been set aside for the implementation of national assessment and public examinations. As part of the department's response to the findings of ANA, the department took an unprecedented step of developing and distributing workbooks to all Grades 1 to 9 learners in all of our more than 24 000 public schools across the country, benefiting over 11 million learners. However, the department also provided 900 000 workbooks to all our Grade R learners.
It is not only workbooks that were made available to schools, but also textbooks through partnerships with private sector partners such as the Mark Shuttleworth Foundation. However, we realise that it would be unsustainable for government to renew textbooks for the entire learner population every year. Therefore, we call on parents, teachers, learners and communities at large to work with government to ensure 100% retrieval of textbooks.
We have prioritised early childhood development based on its potential to contribute positively to learner performance in the subsequent years of schooling. As such, the Grade R programme remains one of the department's critical interventions. We commend the fact that the department has done very well in broadening access to Grade R. For instance, in 2012 the government of the ANC committed over R3 billion to expanding accesses to Grade R education. Currently, over 90% of public schools offer Grade R education. In 1999, South Africa had just over 150 000 learners in Grade R. However, by the close of 2012, the number had increased to about 800 000. Currently, there are more than 22 000 Grade R classes in our schools.
The high increase of learners aged five who are attending educational institutions in particular is attributable to such factors as the provision of nutrition to Grade R learners in public or ordinary schools; increased subsidies to ECD practitioners; cheaper fees paid by parents at public ordinary schools offering Grade R; the automatic acceptance of registered Grade R learners to Grade 1 in public schools; and the increase in the registration of ECD centres by the Department of Social Development.
A major task at hand is universalising access to Grade R education by 2014. This is particularly important as research indicates that access to early childhood development programmes improves learner retention and performance in subsequent years of schooling. The 2013-14 budget for basic education is a reflection of our response to our commitment to improving the quality of our ECD programmes by allocating more resources.
We have noted with content that we are on our way to meeting our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Goal 2 of the Millennium Declaration commits us to ensuring that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, should be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. In terms of this goal, we have done well in expanding access to universal primary education. Pursuing universal primary education for all is imperative; indeed, it is a central part of our commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goals.
However, focusing on girls poses particular and considerable challenges, but offers considerable benefits that far outweigh these challenges. Girls' education, in particular, is an integral part of virtually every aspect of the development of our nation.
Since 1994, South Africa's net enrolment rate in both primary and secondary schooling has increased dramatically, with the participation rate among girls being the highest compared to global standards. [Time expired.] [Applause.]