The Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga, MP, delivered the Basic Education Budget Vote for the 2018/19 financial year in the National Assembly in Cape Town on 09 May 2018. The Minister did not only outline the plans and strategies put in place to improve the outcomes for the sector during the 2018/2019 financial year, but also reflected on the significant achievements made by the basic education sector in terms of improving quality teaching and learning in all public schools.

The overall 2018/19 MTEF budget allocation for the Department of Basic Education is just under twenty three billion Rands (R23 billion), which as a result of the austerity measures, was decreased by three percent (3%) from the 2017/18 allocation.

Outlining the performance of the sector, Minister Motshekga said: “We have brought about stability in curriculum implementation, which has led to a sustained improvement of the teaching and learning outcomes, and strengthened our National Curriculum Statements through the introduction of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS), which is viewed as one of the best in the world.”

“We have repositioned and strengthened the alignment of the basic education sector, in preparation for providing young people with skills, competencies, and knowledge for the changing world through the implementation of the Three-Stream Curriculum Model, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Entrepreneurship, and the UNESCO International Bureau of Education Framework for Future Skills and Competencies.” The Minister added that a solid foundation for accountability in provincial efforts to provide quality education has been established through quarterly meetings with District Directors and annual meetings with provinces and a focus on our core business of teaching and learning in the classroom. The focus is on the foundational skills of reading, writing and counting (arithmetic), as well as having the basic necessities in place for quality teaching and learning to take place, especially in the early Grades.”

“Now that we have laid a solid foundation by advancing the implementation of social justice principles, the next, and the most immediate task in the sector is to deal with radical social transformation and cohesion.  We have already identified and started to deal with these areas through the modality of Roundtable Discussions and other forms of engagement, with the context that education is a societal matter,” Minister Motshekga concluded. 

Click on the below link for the Minister’s full Budget Vote Debate Speech for the 2018/19 Financial Year:

https://www.education.gov.za/Newsroom/Speeches/tabid/950/ctl/Details/mid/7006/ItemID/5573/Default.aspx