Deputy Speaker, hon Minister of Finance, hon members and guests, the Appropriation Bill in its allocation makes education one of the key priorities of the ANC government. Basic education that is free, compulsory and universal is the overarching vision that forms the ANC's education policy, and it is people's education for people's power.
In following this vision, the ANC has always advanced towards ensuring that education is becoming free, compulsory, universal, and equal for all children. The 2010 Appropriation Bill should therefore enhance the implementation of the ANC's decisions towards the realisation of the overarching vision. The Bill will go a long way in promoting and supporting mathematics, science and information technology through bursaries to be offered to teachers in these areas.
The appropriations to education, human resources and management expenditure increased at an average annual rate of 134,8%, from R38,85 million in 2006- 07 to R498,6 million in 2009-10. This growth is due mainly to additional funds allocated for the supply of newly trained teachers from 2007-08.
Prioritisation of these decisions by the ANC is critical, as there are very few teachers of these subjects in the country. Untargeted training of educators will not be able to deal with the challenge of scarce skills shortages in general and shortages of teachers in mathematics, science and information technology in particular.
Coupled to this is the recruitment of scarce skills such as mathematics and science from foreign countries, whilst a review of current recruitment and retention strategies and its effectiveness has been made. Clarity about the intention to implement a decision to recruit scarce skills from foreign countries is lacking. The ANC decided that government should recruit the skills South Africa does not have from foreign countries in order to raise the internal skills capacity through an increased number of well-performing learners who will end up not only with a university education, but with university degrees in mathematics and science.
During the 2008-09 financial year, 40% of both primary and secondary schools were declared no-fee schools. Approximately 60% of the 12 million learners in the system are currently benefiting from the system. The policy of declaring no-fee schools, beginning in January 2007 and extended in 2008, meant that by 2008, 14 264 schools were not required to charge school fees, thus removing the barrier to accessing education.
By 2010, there are supposed to be 8 million learners in approximately 19 933 no-fee schools. It is clear that the department is making a commendable effort to implement this decision. This has been the vision of the ANC for years: a free, compulsory and universal education for all.
The no-fee schools are not only ensuring access for all learners but are also relieving many poor parents of the burden of having to pay school fees for their children and thus releasing funds to be used to secure food and other necessities. There is poverty alleviation in action, and it contributes to enabling South Africa to meet the Millennium Development Goal of reducing extreme poverty by 2015.
The Appropriation Bill has to ensure that schools serving the poor are adequately provided with education resources. Numerous projects have been initiated to improve teaching and learning in disadvantaged communities, which are concentrated in the rural areas.
The development of school infrastructure in respect of quality improvement, development, support and upliftment has ensured that 15 503 schools are benefiting from this programme. There are still challenges remaining in respect of the provision of basic services to rural schools. A national framework for developing education in rural areas was developed and is being refined in consultation with relevant stakeholders, including, amongst other things, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef.
The provision of adult basic education and training through the Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign launched in February 2008, was aimed at meeting the Millennium Development Goals of enabling 4,7 million adults to become literate between 2008 and 2012. By 2009, the Kha Ri Gude campaign enabled 613 637 learners to attend classes and had created approximately 40 000 short-term jobs.
A combined total of 1 700 blind and deaf learners were reached through employing about 190 Braille and sign language educators. Government's commitment to the elimination of illiteracy is demonstrated by the fact that expenditure has grown, through the appropriation from the fiscus, from R17,1 million in 2007-08 to R443,2 million in 2009-10. The expansion of early childhood development has been advanced a step further through the 2010 Appropriation Bill. By 2009, there was a 77% national enrolment for Grade R learners at public and independent primary schools, with a further 200 000 learners in classes at community sites. Bags and reading books were distributed to 6 750 Grade R and Grade 1 learners in the Free State and the Eastern Cape as part of the "Drop All and Read Campaign". A total of 2,5 million Ithuba books in all 11 languages were delivered to 2 000 schools as reading material for the intermediate phase learners.
By 2014, all children will participate in Grade R. In this regard, the national funding norms for Grade R will be reviewed to ensure that they consider key curriculum-related matters such as teacher qualifications and class size. The review is expected to be complete by 2011. Through successive Appropriation Bills, the expenditure for early childhood development has grown from R3,9 million in 2007-08 to R11,4 million in 2009- 10. The growth is indicative of the intention of the ANC government to expand the early childhood development provision.
The efforts to ensure that all early childhood development centres are standardised to offer the same quality of knowledge to all children and are mainstreamed to enable the Department of Basic Education to exercise monitoring and oversight over them, are very encouraging. This will ensure that all South African children are provided with the necessary learning foundation by 2014. In terms of this Appropriation Bill teachers are assisted in respect of detailed daily lesson plans and easy-to-use workbooks in all official languages. During 2010, enough workbooks for Grade R to Grade 6 learners, accompanied by teacher manuals, were distributed to schools.
From the beginning of 2011, workbooks will be used by learners from Grade R to Grade 9. Successive Appropriation Bills have seen the appropriation grow from R750 million in 2009-10 to R913 million in 2010-11 and R1 billion in 2011-12. It will ensure that teachers do not spend a lot of time preparing for lessons, but that their time will be spent on the core business of teaching and learning.
On the other hand, the workbooks in all official languages also give expression to the constitutionally entrenched right for everyone to receive an education in the official language of their choice in public education institutions wherever it is practically possible. Learners who learn in their own language from an early age have a stronger potential to understand the essence of what they are taught than those who learn in a second language.
The Constitution calls upon government to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic, social justice and fundamental human rights. In this regard, by ensuring that the poor are adequately provided with educational resources, the ANC is demonstrating that the children of the poor can be emancipated from poverty through education.
This fight against poverty not only gives us an opportunity for a better life for all, but contributes towards the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals to reduce extreme poverty.
Let me now turn to higher education in the context of the Appropriation Bill. Of key concern for the ANC is that higher education institutions, which are highly subsidised by the state, are not being closely monitored to ensure that graduates emerging from them, in the main, are equipped to respond to our society's socioeconomic needs. The funnel effect in the higher education institutions, in which the quantitative input is higher than the throughput which, in turn, is higher than the output, deserves more focused attention.
The ANC seeks to build a national democratic society through a developmental state that is technically capable of driving the national agenda and is organising to rally and unite behind that agenda. Such a developmental state has to be capacitated through a broadened skills base that has the capacity to shoulder the developmental imperatives in areas such as infrastructure development and maintenance.
In that regard, adult education, training and skills transfer have to be prioritised. Further Education and Training colleges, FET Colleges, should also be reoriented to produce more of the critical skills that are necessary for the pursuance of the new economic growth path which is job driven.
The need to develop skills for rural development, for advanced technological capabilities, and for growing the economy is critical. This must inform the skills strategies that should support the engine of the new growth path. At the same time, we must facilitate institutional linkages that are flexible and dynamic to meet the differentiated and overlapping demands and opportunities for skills across the sectors of the economy. We should do so by directing skills development resources available to the state so as to meet the dynamic needs efficiently and effectively. The active support of stakeholders, labour, the community, and business, in particular, must be one of our central concerns.
One of the priorities of the ANC-led government is the creation of decent work and sustainable livelihoods, thus reducing unemployment and extreme poverty to concomitantly respond to the Millennium Development Goals. Research demonstrates a direct link between unemployment in South Africa and the skills deficit, thus revealing a stark mismatch between the supply and demand of skills. Employers have often indicated that knowledge, skills, and capacities that people bring from their educational experiences are insufficient for the needs of the workplace.
Commitment to vocational training should be demonstrated in resource allocation to FET colleges and Sector Education and Training Authorities, Setas, which are vessels through which students in general and adults, in particular, receive skills that are needed to drive the engine of the new economic growth path.
We must do more to capacitate FET colleges and Setas to drive the agenda of skilling the South African society. This will include capitalising these institutions, in order to make them attractive as providers of skills and also to create relationships with business and other employers, to ensure work-driven training and immediate systemic placement of students who exit the training system.
The January 2010 ANC NEC lekgotla resolved that FET colleges should be geared towards promoting scarce skills. The FET colleges have, in the recent past, been focusing on the provision of soft skills which are either subordinate or equip students for a subsistence that marginally contributes to the economic life of the community. This needs a rethink in the light of our massive infrastructure development programme and the skills needs that this brings with it.
In conclusion, this Appropriation Bill must be in line with the ANC's 2009 manifesto priorities. The ANC government will increase graduate output in areas of skills shortages, and this will include measures to streamline Setas and other institutions to address the existing and forecasted skills shortages, as the manifesto requires. The ANC supports the Appropriation Bill of 2010. I thank you. [Applause.]