Deputy Minister of Basic Education, Mr Enver Surty, today (Friday) wraps up his three day visit to the Eastern Cape. The Deputy Minister received reports from senior management in the department as well as the MEC on a number of the challenges faced in the Eastern Cape.
The province presented a comprehensive plan to address concerns around teacher vacancies drawing on Funza Lushaka bursary graduates as well as B.Ed. graduates to fill vacancies. They have also managed to place a large number of excess teachers within the system into those existing vacancies. The Department has identified 6022 additional educators within the system in the EC, 2114 of those have already been transferred to substantive vacant posts and the department is currently busy with a person to post matching process to alleviate the vacancy rate across the system.
“I am delighted by the enormous progress being made in the Eastern Cape I am confident that we are beginning to turn this ship around and steer it in the right direction,” said Surty.
The Deputy Minister was also encouraged by the provinces commitment to deal with non-viable or small schools. The MEC emphasised in his report the importance of the school rationalisation programme due to its impact on ensuring learners get a quality education through adequate resourcing.
The province has been holding public meetings with stakeholders in a number of the effected districts and 194 schools have been identified to pilot the provinces school rationalisation programme.
The Deputy Minister suggested that an innovative approach is needed to address urbanisation which has an effect on the provision of infrastructure and LTSM in schools. He inspired senior management with a number of possible ways to tackle the issues they faced and called on them to report back on their findings on the best ways to deal with this reality.
The Deputy Minister insisted the province call on its service providers to account. The province is reviewing its infrastructure contracts and will enforce compliance by service providers to ensure effective service delivery. The Deputy Minister volunteered his services to assist the province in this endeavour.
The Deputy Minister wrapped up his visit with a meeting with over 800 principals from two districts and communicated the plans and priorities of this government under the new administration with an emphasis on ensuring quality education for all our learners.
He covered the non-negotiables to effectively ensure we work together to deliver quality and efficient education to all of our learners. These include effective management of the curriculum and use of LTSM, the benefits of ICT, continuous teacher development and the use of the newly launched teacher development centres, an emphasis on MST and the important last push from the province to ensure that they are ready for, and improve their NSC results.
“These provincial visits are an important part of the monitoring and oversight role national government needs to play. It is also extremely valuable from the point of interacting with officials at a school level to get a real sense of the situation at schools in the province first hand. I look forward to returning to the province on my next visit to monitor the progress and see implementation of our discussions here,” said Surty.
Enquiries: Troy Martens – 079 899 3070
Elijah Mhlanga – 083 580 8275
ISSUED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF BASIC EDUCATION