President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) before the two houses of Parliament on 8 February 2024, in the Cape Town City Hall. This year’s address holds special significance as it is not only the end of term SoNA, but also the address ahead of South Africa’s celebration of 30 Years of Freedom and Democracy. This is an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come as a nation and recommit to working together to build the country we envisioned at the start of our democracy.
During his speech, the President used the example of Tintswalo, democracy’s child, as an example of progress made in education, referring to, amongst others, No-Fee Schools and the impact of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) that provides 9 million learners from poor families with a nutritious daily meal.
He added that, despite the remarkable achievements of the last 30 years, many of democracy’s children still face great challenges with millions of young people aged 15 to 24 years are currently not in employment, education or training. The President highlighted the PES and the PYEI, which have placed more than 1 million school assistants in 23,000 schools, providing participants with valuable work experience whilst improving learning outcomes: “Through the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, we established SAYouth.mobi as a zero-rated platform for unemployed young people to access opportunities for learning and earning. Over 4.3 million young people are now engaged on the network and 1.6 million have so far secured opportunities.”
The President added that, “our basic education outcomes are steadily improving across a range of measures. The latest matric pass rate, at 82.9%, is the highest ever. And with each new year, learners from no-fee schools are accounting for more and more of the bachelor passes achieved. At the same time, fewer learners are dropping out of school. We have increased funding for poor and working-class students in universities and TVET significantly over the past five years. Over the next five years, we will focus our attention on expanding access to ECD and improving early grade reading, where we are already beginning to see progress. Moving early childhood development to the Department of Basic Education was one of the most important decisions as we were now able to devote more resources to early childhood development and ensure that through cooperative governance various departments of government get involved in early childhood development augmented by the Department of Basic Education. As we celebrate 30 years of freedom, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to our constitutional democracy and its promise of a better life”.
After the SoNA, Basic Education Minister, Mrs Angie Motshekga, expressed her gratitude to the President for the support that has been provided to the Basic Education Sector throughout the past 30 Years of Democracy to ensure a system on the rise, expressing her confidence that, with Government’s continued support, strong foundations will be laid for the South African child to develop and thrive for no learner to be left behind.