Basic Education Deputy Minister, Mr Enver Surty, officially handed over Motaung Primary School to the Khutsong community in the North West Province on 22 July 2016. Being built as part of the Accelerated School Infrastrucutre Delivery Initiative (ASIDI), the new school replaced the asbestos classrooms that placed learners in challenging learning conditions, especially when it rained.

Addressing Khutsong community members, Mr Surty said that the core mandate of the ASIDI was to restore the dignity of rural education. He said this would be done by eradicating all the inappropriate structures and replacing them with state of the art school buildings.

Through ASIDI the Department would provide water, sanitation and electricity to schools which didn’t have these basic resources.

“To date, the ASIDI Programme has delivered over 136 state-of-the-art schools; another batch of 299 schools have been allocated to Implementing Agents (IAs); 571 schools have been provided with water; 410 given decent sanitation; and 294 connected to electricity,” said Deputy Minister Surty.  

The Deputy Minister encouraged parents, teachers and education stakeholders to collaborate to improve the level of literacy and numeracy in schools.

“There is a huge body of research that concludes that the main thrust of literacy development is the promotion of a school-wide reading culture which encourages learners to become engaged and motivated readers,” he said.

The Department is currently steering the formation of Reading Clubs, Spelling Bee projects, as well as the Book Flood Campaign throughout the country.