Speaker, Minister Nzimande, Deputy Ministers present, the leadership of the different political parties, hon members, comrades, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you warmly for the opportunity to report to the National Assembly on challenges facing the Eastern Cape department of education, and steps that we have taken, as the Department of Basic Education, DBE, to address these challenges.
Following a number of reports, visits and engagements with the province, it became very apparent that there were serious challenges in the province compromising and threatening the right of many children in the Eastern Cape to accessing quality education, a right guaranteed in the Constitution of this country.
Again, as the national Department of Basic Education, we realise that all the efforts aimed at bringing about a sustainable turnaround in the department had to effectively address the critical underlying challenges, and we have to work with other key stakeholders to provide an enabling environment conducive to the efficient and effective delivery of education services in the province.
In view of the seriousness of the situation, and at a critical time when we have committed to and are working hard to provide and improve the quality of basic education, it was resolved at the Cabinet meeting of 2 March 2011 that the Minister of Basic Education should assume responsibility for the areas in which the provincial department was struggling to meet the minimum standards of delivery.
We had hoped that the province was going to resolve its challenges on its own, but it has been clear that that was not to be. So, Cabinet resolved that this would be done in terms of section 100 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
The most recent challenges in the Eastern Cape department of education are just a few of the many problems that the province is experiencing. The most urgent has been the overexpenditure of the budget for the compensation of employees, because the province did not comply with the policies and norms and standards relating to the educator post provisioning. This problem has placed an enormous strain on the overall budget for education in the province, and has impacted on the province's overall budget and spending trends.
The province again failed to provide textbooks and stationery to section-20 schools owing to poor management of the procurement process. It also again suspended the scholar transport programme owing to overspending; terminated the school nutrition programme before the end of the financial year owing to factors like noncompliance with policy, poor management of the budget and poor supply-chain management; and again failed to effectively implement the infrastructure programme, resulting in earmarked funds for infrastructure being returned to Treasury.
Since the Cabinet decision of 2 March 2011, the Deputy Minister of Basic Education and I have consulted extensively with the President, the leadership of the province, in particular the premier and the MEC for education. All our discussions with the provincial leadership have been conducted in a spirit of co-operation and support. As the Department of Basic Education, we have appointed a technical team comprising senior officials under the leadership of the director-general to develop a problem analysis and draft an intervention plan, working collaboratively with senior counterparts in the Eastern Cape department of education.
The first draft of this plan was duly completed, but, owing to limited time, I will not be able to speak to all the facts that were picked up. I will just cite a few underlying causes that were picked up in the province that resulted in this crisis that they find themselves in.
These are due to a strategic leadership vacuum in the province; the organisational structure; the organisational culture; poor financial management systems; problems with supply-chain management; and lack of monitoring and evaluation. These are some of the factors that we picked up from our visit to the province that are in the report.
Section 100 of the Constitution requires that when the national executive acts in terms of this section, it must submit the notice of intervention to the National Council of Provinces within 14 days of its first sitting after the intervention began. Accordingly, as required by the Constitution, a notice regarding this intervention was lodged with the NCOP on 15 March 2011 within the stipulated timeframes.
The intervention that we are going to undertake in the Eastern Cape includes taking over the above-mentioned functions and working collaboratively with the Eastern Cape department of education to address the current challenges.
In line with the commitment that the President made during the state of the nation address, we have met with the National Treasury and the national Department of the Public Service and Administration. Amongst other things, we have agreed on the following: that the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Public Service and Administration, and the Ministry of Basic Education will actively co-operate in the implementation of the intervention in the Eastern Cape department of education.
The National Treasury will primarily focus its support on stabilising expenditure, and on ensuring that credible systems and processes for budgeting, planning and financial management are instituted in the province. A detailed budget and expenditure review will be conducted to develop a credible financial management and recovery strategy.
A key thrust of this strategy will be to reallocate savings realised through efficiency and budget reprioritisation. However, given the impact of years of inefficient spending in the department, it is likely that recovery cannot be sustained within the current budget projections if we are to avoid an adverse impact on schooling in the province.
The National Treasury will facilitate the involvement and co-operation of the provincial treasury in the intervention. Our immediate focus of the intervention will be on arresting the current financial leakages owing to poor controls and corruption. The National Treasury will focus its efforts on this endeavour.
The Department of the Public Service and Administration, the DPSA, will focus on those areas that lead to the stabilisation of the schooling system. Key in this regard is the priority of dealing effectively with teacher provisioning to ensure that there is a teacher in every class. This will require a purposeful and urgent intervention to deal with the current problems related to the employment of temporary teachers and the failure to place teachers that are accessible to the establishment.
The Department of the Public Service and Administration will assist in ensuring that appropriate steps are taken to stabilise the human resource management environment, and to facilitate the need for flexible appointment of the staff required to implement the intervention. This may require some deviation in the application of Public Service regulations. The DPSA will assist in facilitating a labour-relations environment that is conducive to ensuring that the school year and teaching are protected. I will provide regular reports on the progress with regard to these interventions.
The Cabinet decision of 2 March 2011 to invoke section 100 of the Constitution was taken consciously in order to resolve challenges in the Eastern Cape department of education, and will provide for continued delivery of quality learning and teaching in the province.
The ruling party has the responsibility to ensure that our clear goal of improved quality of basic education is met across the country. It is expressly for this reason that we have taken proactive steps to better strengthen the provision of educational services in the Eastern Cape.
As learners have already lost valuable time during this term, we will undertake extraordinary measures to ensure that we compensate for lost time through extra teaching and other measures. We will work with relevant Ministries in the provincial and national departments to develop a sustainable turnaround strategy that addresses the underlying factors that led to the situation we find ourselves in. This turnaround strategy will include, as I have said, stabilising the province, dealing with the underlying causes, and putting in place new systems to ensure that we don't have a repeat of the same problem.
When I reported this morning to Cabinet about most of the underlying causes, which I have not mentioned here, Minister Dlamini asked me if there was anything that worked in the province. My answer was that indeed there are many good people in that province at provincial, district and school level.
There are committed educators and managers who are themselves inconvenienced by the problems in the province. The province has many good policies. There are actually national leaders and pioneers in many other policies that are used by other departments, which policies, unfortunately, they are not necessarily implementing.
These are people that we are counting on and who give us confidence that we will turn around education in the province. With them we will make sure that the children in the Eastern Cape will have their right to quality education protected and that these people actually deal with the current challenges to make sure that tomorrow is better than today, and that the day after tomorrow is even better than yesterday, opening up better times for children in the Eastern Cape.
To realise that, we commit ourselves as the Department of Basic Education and as the ruling party to ensuring that, indeed, the challenges experienced by people in the Eastern Cape are addressed and permanently reversed. I thank you, Speaker. [Applause.]