Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP, hon Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training, hon members of this House and the public at large, the ANC will continue to promote the objectives of the National Democratic Revolution, NDR, to unite all South Africans behind the vision of a united, nonracial, nonsexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa. Father of the nation, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, once said:
Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times ... that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.
Chairperson, the ANC-led government needs to use this budget to quantify the costs and implement measures to eradicate these social ills.
Fellow South Africans, if truth be told, we cannot boldly tackle the current challenges in our education system without interrogating the painful past. The question today is whether the ANC-led government has achieved a single, united, diversified education and training system where all people enjoy equal opportunities.
Education is the top ANC-led government priority and accounts for 19,4% of the total national Budget for 2011-12. The Department of Higher Education and Training lived up to the expectations of the ANC-led government. In the year 2009 President Jacob Zuma established this Ministry and said:
We have to ensure that training and skills development initiatives in the country respond to the requirements of the economy. The Further Education and Training, FET, sector with its 50 colleges and 160 campuses nationally will be the primary site for skills development training. We will improve access to higher education of children from poor families and ensure a sustainable funding structure for universities.
The department's vigilance should aim at ensuring that it widens access to education as a right.
Hon members, education not only provides children and families with a pathway out of poverty, but it can also yield even bigger returns for the world's poorest countries through its impact on areas such as health and the economy. Lack of access to education is preventing millions of people from escaping the cycle of extreme poverty around the world. Of the 67,5 million children out of school around the world, 95% live in developing countries. Our people have struggled selflessly for freedom from oppression, and we therefore cannot fail them when it comes to the struggle for the elimination of poverty. The National Skills Fund is a catalytic fund that will enable government to drive key skills strategies, as well as meet the training needs of the unemployed. It will be used to target gaps and complement resource shortages for national priorities.
The ANC is convinced that central to building a more just and a more equal society is the creation of more and sustainable decent jobs and opportunities for self-employment across all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. In the same breath the ANC-led government will review the funding policies applicable to universities and FET colleges so that consideration is given to fund innovative and creative programmes relating to race, class, gender, age, disability, and HIV and Aids.
Our young people in education and training are vulnerable. Therefore the ANC government encourages working together between the departments, for instance Higher Education works together with a number of government departments, including the Department of Social Development on the training of social development professionals and community development workers, CDWs. Social Development promotes education and awareness about the effects of substance abuse.
We seek to build a developmental state premised on people-centred and people-oriented change, and on sustained development based on high growth rate, restructuring of the economy and socioeconomic inclusion. That is why the ANC-led government deliberately made a choice to follow a New Growth Path that is driven by job creation and skills development. In this regard, the government of the ANC treats skills development not only as a domain of tertiary education institutions, but also as a mandate of work places. Our advantage is that we are a population dominated numerically by young people. The irony of this, however, is that the majority of these energetic young people are unemployed.
In 2011 the sector education and training authorities, Setas, entered a new phase. During this new phase the Department of Higher Education and Training made some fundamental changes to the leadership, governance and strategy of the Setas in order to meet the objectives of the National Skills Development Strategy, NSDS 3, and improve their functioning and performance. The intention is to set up a comprehensive performance monitoring, evaluation and support for all our education, training and skills development institutions, with a particular focus on the Setas and public FET colleges. The real value added by Setas is their understanding of labour market issues in their respective industrial and economic sector. Setas must ensure that they are backed by employers and workers, acknowledged as a credible and authoritative voice on skills, create interventions and shape solutions that address skills needs with their sectors.
The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande, has met members of the Seta forum and reached a ground-breaking agreement on the transformation of the Seta landscape and the urgent need to develop an adequate skills base that seeks to promote economic growth and development in South Africa. This happened after the Minister took a decision to place the Setas under administration. This follows their poor performance over a period of four years. There was nongovernance and financial mismanagement, general noncompliance with the Public Finance Management Act, PFMA, Act 1 of 1999, and the Skills Development Act, Act 97 of 1998.
Universities received R19,4 billion for the 2011-12 financial year and R4,3 billion is allocated to FET colleges. Public entities received R4,1 billion , of which R4 billion is allocated to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS. The remainder is shared by the SA Qualifications Authority, SAQA, and the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations. Chairperson, NSFAS will distribute R5,4 billion in loans and bursaries for 2011-12 - double the R2,7 billion distributed last year.
The vision of the ANC-led government is taking shape through NSDS 3. The NSDS 3 is aimed at increasing access to training and skills development opportunities and at eliminating unfair discrimination in skills training. This seeks to improve the quality and effectiveness of training, and channel it increasingly to the formal training institutions, where workers and the unemployed can get full occupational qualifications. The University of Stellenbosch is amongst the institutions that have accepted a policy for the assessment and recognition of prior learning, RPL.
The ANC-led government is integrating workplace training with theoretical learning, improving the skills levels and addressing poor work readiness of many young people leaving formal education institutions and entering the labour market for the first time. The department is addressing the skills shortage in the artisan, technical and professional fields, as well as ensuring that rural development receives the necessary attention and priority. Recognition of prior learning is a process whereby people's prior learning can be formally recognised in terms of registered qualifications and unit standards, regardless of where and how the learning was attained. Recognition of prior learning acknowledges that people never stop learning, whether it takes place formally at an educational institution or whether it happens informally.
An announcement by the President was made in the 8 January statement and further elaborated on in his state of the nation address regarding further assistance for FET students and final-year university undergraduates who qualify for NSFAS. In previous years NSFAS charged interest on student loans throughout the period when the students were studying. This resulted in students of the working class leaving the university with large debts, as the Deputy Minister has indicated.
We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us. The ANC- led government provided R200 million to enable NSFAS to grant loans to students who have completed their studies but have not received certificates due to outstanding debts. The Government of the ANC intensifies the fight against corruption and the fly-by-night institutions and eliminates unnecessary middlemen in the provision of services, in order to maximise the impact of the allocated resources.
Education must address the development of knowledge and skills that can be used to produce high-quality goods and services in such a way as to enable us to develop our cultures, our society and our economy.
In conclusion, I would like to remind this House of what former President Nelson Mandela said about education. He said:
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of a 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.
I thank you. [Applause.]