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Briefing to the Portfolio Committee on Education. Strategic Plans and Budget 2004/05. Government mandate 2004. The mandate of the recently elected government identified these following issues for education : Provide the skills required by the economy ;
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Briefing to the Portfolio Committee on Education Strategic Plans and Budget 2004/05
Government mandate 2004 • The mandate of the recently elected government identified these following issues for education: • Provide the skills required by the economy; • build capacity and provide resources across society to encourage self-employment; • An education system that is geared for productive work, good citizenship and a caring society; • Ensure that all South Africans, especially the poor and vulenrable, are fully able to exercise their constitutional rights and enjoy the full dignity of freedom;
Government mandate 2004 • Ensure that all children have decent classrooms; • further reduce the teacher/pupil ratio; • improve spending in favour of children and students from poor households;and • expand the school nutrition programme.
Emerging issues • Emerging from the President’s State of the Nation Address are these issues: • National School Nutrition Programmes • Adequate funding for FET institutions, ensuring alignment between their courses & the needs of the economy • Recapitalisation of FET colleges • Expand the reach of ABET programmes, aligning with EPWP training • Consolidate the merger of higher education institutions process • All schools will have access to clean water • Eliminate the phenomenon of learning under trees, existence of mud-schools & other dangerous structures
Education responses • In meeting these challenges, the broad priorities of the education sector are: • Dealing with Poverty • Skills Development • Improvement in the System • Health and Education • Institutional Capacity
Dealing with poverty • Develop a school uniform policy • Investigate the “basic” minimum package to relieve the poorest 40% of learners from paying school fees • Investigate other options such as transport subsidies, boarding allowance etc • Ammend the Funding Norms: • A national resource targeting table • Compensate schools catering for the poorest • Food security – NSNP and Food gardens
Skills development • Improve ABET participation and relevance of programmes • Partner with DoL, SETAs and NGOs • Improve funding & relevance of programmes in FET colleges • Deepen and widen Maths & Science Strategy • Schools of Focused Learning • DoE/DoL leadership role in NQF implementation • Increase NSFAS – ring fence for scarce skills
Quality in education • Implement Integrated Quality Management System (DAS, WSE) • Finalise teacher development strategy • Roll-out of ICTs for teaching and learning • Roll-out of NCS at Grades 10 to 12 • Strengthen ACE, NPDE • Delivery of infrastructure, elimination of dangerous structures & learning under trees • Values in education – social cohesion • Sports, arts and culture • Quality in higher education
Health and education • Locate our HIV/AIDS programmes within the broader health issues • Continue mitigating the spread of HIV/AIDS • Role of nutrition in prolonging life • A focus on reproductive health • Health of children – eyes and ears
Institutional capacity • Technical assistance to HE mergers • Support FET institutions implement their strategic plans • Recapitalisation of FET Colleges • Management & governance training • District development to support schools • Improve capacity at provincial and national offices
Other programmes • The Department has a number of other programmes that are in addition to the priorities outlined • The next slides deal provides an outline of these programmes • Also included is the budget of these programmes – Vote 15, that only includes national programmes
A R’000 Budget2004/05: 11 344 957 Voted2003/04: 9 882 840 Increase 1 462 117 +14,79 %
