Chairperson, hon Minister of Basic Education, Minister of Higher Education and Training in absentia and the members who are my colleagues, I was worried that ...
... uma ubiza uNdabezitha bese ubiza uNgqongqoshe bonke bangoNgqongqoshe. [... if you call him Ndabezitha [your majesty], and then you call a Minister, they are all in charge.]
My work was going to be very difficult, but they assisted me in a number of areas that I was worrying about. When I grew up, I was taught that, Ndabezitha, in this land where we are, people were living in it somewhere in 1652. They were just told that they had been discovered, and their land had been discovered. I was worrying, this year, when I heard that a particular province had discovered the culture of learning.
I think the Minister has helped us with this one by saying to us that all these things are ours. I was worrying because I was wondering and asking myself: If we say the culture of education has been discovered now, what happened in 1955 when we said the doors of education and culture would be opened? I was asking myself if that wasn't about the culture that we should be talking about? I was very worried when we were talking about recent discoveries, but you have covered us, Minister.
One of the things that you have also covered on that discovery is that the Freedom Charter that spoke about education in 1955 also said that when our children are educated - we actually have to educate them to respect our country and our people, and also ensure that they are capacitated to participate with other people of the world - they must showcase their talent to the world, and that sporting event, which the Department of Education has started, is spot-on.
Minister, I am a product of a tree because my first class was under a marula tree, and the second class that I went through was in a church, and the third one was under another marula tree, and the fourth one was under an acacia tree. Therefore, I understand what you mean when you talk about unsafe structures.
It is important that when we deal with this issue of education, as you have said, the limitation on our politicking about it becomes very important because at some point when I was attending, I was staying in a forestry village. I used to walk to a high school that was on the other side of the town. I used to find my fellow scholars standing by the road to be taken by a school bus. The school bus was actually taking them to a school that was nearer than my school. That school was actually the best when you looked at it. The issues that you have covered, Minister, clarify that we are dealing with history and a particular section of our society that has suffered. That is why, when we deal with this matter, I ask myself if that wasn't an ideological focal factor that was putting us there.
Therefore, we don't need an ideology to reverse that. Is the Constitution not addressing that matter to allow us not to fight against these ideologies that are actually competing in that particular situation? Then I asked myself if I still have to bring in my ideology. Yes, do I still have to throw in my ideology in terms of my thinking when I was saying the doors of education must be opened? What happened to Ermelo, when it was said that in my province other children should not be taught in other languages? Then I was asking myself if it is an ideology or not. Is it not something that we have to counter?
I want to say that in Mpumalanga we also draw our mandate from what the President and the Minister have said about the framework that we have actually set. What is good about it is that many colleagues were asking me why my human settlement is here. In Mpumalanga, education is the business of every one of us. Whatever we do, we actually said to ourselves that we are going to focus on that, and we are going to place education and skills and development at the centre of this government, as the President has said. We have decided that, Minister.
We know that the result for this year rejects us and that all these things we are talking about here are for us to lead you because we are right at the lower rank of the outcomes. We have said to ourselves that we are going to set bold steps in relation to dealing with institutions so that the improvement at the national level must be better.
We have decided that from that 46% result that we achieved this year, we are going to set ourselves a bold plan that between now and 2014 we are going to take steps in the areas that we have identified, with the President, in Grades 3, 6, 8, 9 and 12, and we are going to have external examinations and ensure that we get a 60% increase, including in Grade 12, by 2014.
We have sponsored only 6 552 children in schools. We felt that when we talk about this 60% increase, we want to increase those entries from 13 000 to 112 000 by the year 2014.
Somebody will ask us what it is that we are going to do, and what it is that we have identified that we have to do differently between now and then. Following what the Minister said and indeed reflecting exactly the challenges on the ground, we said to ourselves that we are going to take specific areas that we think are critical, such as the issue of the number of contacts between the learner and the teacher, which we are going to try to increase.
The MEC for education has been up and down every time interacting with teachers' organisations, learners, parents and sometimes with Members of Parliament till now to assist in that situation so that the culture of learning and education at school can improve.
In that way, one of the things that actually came out is that they had identified the collective contract in terms of what it is that must be done. They have committed indeed to be in class on time and learning. We have also committed, on the other side, that we are going to ensure that the learner support materials are present all the time and by December of every year. We have started with this in this financial year.
The other area of work that we have identified is that of infrastructure and the rural community. We have discovered that some of the areas that performed badly actually do not have proper infrastructure. They have unsafe structures and mud schools. We have a premier who committed himself last week to ensuring that this year we must clear those off. At the same time, he has also noted that in farm schools children are spending time going up and down and sometimes the scholar transport doesn't assist them with transportation.
We have decided that we are going to build hostels for those farm schools. Those hostels must be able to assist the children in different ways. In farm schools, the issue is not only about travelling, but it is also about the conditions on farms. There are children that we realised are learning without lights. They are actually using fire to study. You can imagine what is going to happen. So, those are the matters we said we had to deal with.
The last issue is that the premier has also made a commitment that we should have extra classes for all those schools that got less than 20%. While we have continuous assessment, we must have the winter schools and extra classes that are supposed to be able to assist us to deal with that.
If I had time, I would have talked about how one could deal with the issue of scholar transport and early childhood development, ECD, issues as part of the support of this particular programme. But all these are actually done to support what we have already started, Minister.
Lastly, I would like to say that all these things we have talked about are what we do because this is the business of all of us. Actually, we have to participate in it, and that is exactly what activism is all about, namely the participation of all those who are supposed to be involved. It is not any other thing; it is not an ideology to be shouted; it is not a decree that you give. Activism is something that you do in practice repeatedly until the results are better. Thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]