Hon Chairperson, the government has indicated that education is one of the top five priorities that it is committed to. The FF Plus welcomes it that education is a priority of government.
The President in his state of the nation address said that government has placed education and skills development at the centre of the government's policies - that's good and positive. Government's Ten Point Plan wants to improve the ability of our children to read, write and count in the foundation years. Unless this is done, we will not improve the quality of education.
The President also said: "We want learners and teachers to be in school, in class, on time, learning and teaching for seven hours a day."
This afternoon the hon chairperson of the portfolio committee emphasised this as point one, basically, of the Ten Point Plan of the ruling party. No one in their right mind can have any problem with this reality. The tragedy, however, is that it is necessary to say this in the first place, 16 years after the ANC came into power. How do we hope to compete globally in the year 2010 if teachers and learners are not at school or in class, on time, learning and teaching for at least seven hours a day?
The President also set specific measurable targets and goals. Those will have to be measured and it must be ensured that they are practically implemented. Teachers are to be provided with detailed daily lesson plans - what have they been doing until now? Students are to be provided with easy- to-use workbooks in all 11 languages; that's positive. From this year onwards, all Grades 3, 6 and 9 students will write literacy and numeracy tests that are independently moderated. This is positive and we welcome it. If only this was done when Julius Malema was still at school - just think what a lot of trouble it would have saved this country.
The other points - to increase the results from 30% to 60%; parents to track progress, etc - are all positive developments. However, the government's education policy will, unfortunately, still not pass the international guidelines for minority language and cultural rights. How serious are we about our constitutional provision of section 6(2) of the Constitution which says:
... ellipses the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages.
Is isiZulu a backward language? Of course not. Can isiXhosa never become a universal language? Of course it can. But we must take positive steps to bring us to that point. The Minister is on record that she is in favour of mother-tongue education - thank you very much for that. Let's work together to get a fair solution on levels of education.
The modern international approach to education is that Parliament will budget an amount for education. It is then calculated what will be spent on every child's education. The parents may then choose to take their child to the ... [Time expired.]