MC - Ms Lawrence
Dr Eltie Links, Head of Corporate Citizenship of Santam
Mr Nkosi Sishi, Chief Director of National Exams & Assessments in our National Department of Education
Mr Sammy Erasmus, Chief Education Specialist in Business, Economics & Management Sciences
Senior officials from my department
Teachers and Learners
Members of the Good Hope High School choir that performed so well

Also, many thanks for the presence of Ms Minki van der Westhuizen, who is very involved in the promotion of reading among our kids.

Ladies and Gentlemen: thanks very much for the invitation. It is always a pleasure for me to attend functions, which are intended to promote the development of our children.

Proficiency in numeracy and maths forms the basis of many of our further education and training fields in science, technology, engineering, business and accountancy.

At the moment, our country has too few skilled people in this area to sustain the long-term developmental needs of our increasingly globalised economy.

SA needs to produce between 13,420 and 15,680 engineers each year to cope with the expected development boom in the next few years. Clearly we have a huge shortage of especially black and women engineers, and this is not sustainable, especially given our increasingly globalised and competitive economy.

If one thinks of the 2010 Soccer World Cup being hosted by SA, we will need to upgrade our roads, airports, harbours and telecommunications. We will have to build accommodation facilities and possibly more stadiums. But who is going to do it?

I am sure some of our learners here maybe want to play for Bafana in the tournament, but there are many other opportunities as well for potential entrepreneurs.

Currently our education system has a strong emphasis on the academic stream. We intend to balance this with the introduction of Further Education and Training (FET) from next year.

Making sure that our department is ready for the introduction of the new curriculum, is going to be one my key challenges for this year. Minister Pandor wants to make an assessment by the middle of this year, and needs a firm commitment from our province that we are able to implement the new curriculum.

With FET we aim to provide our learners with renewed opportunities to complete their twelve years of studies, either at school or at an FET College.

We aim to introduce a wide range of subject options to learners in schools. We want to introduce new courses at FET colleges, and extend our loan schemes to FET colleges.

Some of the practical skills they will acquire, will include the subjects covered by your programme. We will certainly utilise the expertise and knowledge base of this programme in our future developments of the FET Curriculum.

With the introduction of FET, we hope that as Government we can make a significant breakthrough in our efforts to retain our learners in the system. Currently we are enrolling about 80,000 children into the public schools system every year, but only half reach matric. I am committed to increase this number progressively during my term.

Treasury has just approved money for us for the development and implementation of a learner tracking system, which will assist us in monitoring the journey of a learner. In this way we can respond more accurately to drop-outs.

The vision of Premier Ebrahim Rasool and the provincial government is to build this province as a Home for All. In order to build this Home, we have adopted an economic development strategy - Ikapa Elihlumayo - which means "Growing and Sharing the Cape".

To truly build this province as a Home for All, we have serious challenges to provide the human resources necessary to grow the Cape, especially in the fields of engineering and the sciences.

The Education Department is committed to play a leading part in providing the knowledge, skills and values for iKapa Elihlumayo. We are committed to quality education to produce the human resource personnel to grow the Cape.

The performance of our schools in mathematics, as well as the levels of numeracy and literacy among our learners in all grades, are therefor important indicators of our reversal of, and liberation from, the legacies of apartheid in education.

In this respect, we have initiated various interventions in previous years to improve learner performance in numeracy, maths, science and technology. This includes teacher training, developing support materials, regular diagnostic testing and special interventions.

And therefor I am proud to say that our matric results last year confirmed that our interventions have made some kind of difference.

Last year, more learners enrolled for the Senior Certificate examination: 38,896 - which is an improvement on the last two years.

Furthermore, although our percentage pass rate of 85% for 2004 represents a slight drop of 2,1% compared to 2003, all indications are that the quality of our education is improving.

For example: the number of candidates achieving endorsement, increased from 10,323 in 2003, to 10,524 in 2004 - which is an increase of 201 learners.

The number of candidates who passed with Distinction, which is an aggregate of more than 80%, increased from 2,170 to 2,202 - which is an increase of 23 learners.

In 2003 we had 3,938 candidates who passed maths on the higher grade. In 2004 it has increased to 4,268, which is 330 more learners.

In 2003 we had 3,892 learners who passed physical sciences on the higher grade. In 2004 it has increased to 3,937, which is 45 more learners.

Seventy percent of our 386 high schools have recorded a Distinction Pass Rate of more than 80%. Of these, 157 schools have achieved a pass rate of 96% or more.

This confirms that the standards of our education is high, and I believe we have now laid a solid basis for the introduction of FET, to tackle the challenges and demands of the new economy.

The introduction of Further Education and Training is potentially the shift, which can help us as a society in overcoming the legacy of the past.

Over the last ten years we have achieved a lot, but we have to build on this foundation to ensure a better future for our province and country, especially in our poorest communities.

When this government was sworn in, the Premier has launched a 100-days-delivery campaign. As education we had to complete the building of and move learners of the Usasazo High School in Maitland to Khayelitsha.

I am happy to say that we delivered on this, which means hundreds of pupils do not have to get up early every morning and come home late at night. This also means we are saving R3 million per year in bus transport.

Secondly, we had to make sure that 50% of twelve schools still without electricity, must have been electrified. We have exceeded this target, and again, there is now not a single school without electricity.

Similarly, the Premier has now instructed us to deliver before the end-of-April, the following:

• Start-up kits for 30 Grade R sites in poor areas
• 80 Bursaries for Maths and Science Teachers
• Sod turning for seven new schools
• 320 high schools to have computer labs

So, ladies and gentlemen, you can see we are starting to feel the heat. The President and the Premier are driving us to work day and night. In addition to the Premier's April-targets, this year some of the most daunting challenges for us will include the following:

• Finalise the Provincial Human Resource Development Strategy with a focus on youth, to meet the demands of the new economy.
• Thoroughly prepare the department and our learners and parents for the implementation of Further Education and Training, which is the new curriculum to be implemented from next year, designed to give our children practical skills to assist them in acquiring jobs relevant to the economy.
• Finalise our policy of when is a school full. At the moment we have a guideline of 35 - 38. If we want to create a climate for the provisioning of quality education, we need to bring down the numbers of overcrowded classrooms, and make optimal use of available space.
• Ensure that the building programme to deliver 27 new schools by March next year, is on track and on target.
• Completion of our land audit of under and unutilised education property for possible alienation to generate additional funds to build extra schools we need, faster.
• By the end of this year all our historically disadvantaged high schools should be equipped with sattelite dish, TV and VCR, which will give them access to various learning programmes.
• Transformation of the civil service, especially with regards to employment equity and representivity.
• Challenging the unconstitutional and illegal practices of some of our schools, including the use of ever increasing school fees, which makes education almost inaccessible for most of our learners.
• With regards to our programme of building human capital, we want every school to have a dynamic Representative Council of Learners (RCL) and School Governing Body (SGB), and that these are organised at a provincial level to become a partner with the WCED in the provisioning of education
• I also want to form an Association of Retired and ex-Teachers, to utilize their skills to further improve the quality of our education.

As government we cannot do all of this on our own. We rely on partnerships to help make this possible. Therefor initiatives like these of Santam and other's like Minki's, are important, as part of our efforts as a nation to overcome the legacy of the past.

Thanks to Santam, grade 9 entrepreneurs-in-the-making can be given an opportunity to reach for the stars.

The solution to SA’s education problem lay firmly in the hands of both private and public sectors. Successful education initiatives will bring overwhelming benefit to both the poor in South Africa through increased opportunity, employment and contribution to the economy.

I want to thank Santam for your involvement with the department in this entrepreneurship programme for the past five years, with an investment of over R5-million. Mr Links, you have come a long way.

Thanks very much to all of you.

For enquiries, contact Gert Witbooi: 082 550 3938, or gwitbooi@pgwc.gov.za.

Gert Witbooi
Media Secretary
Office of the MEC for Education
Western Cape
Tel: 021 467 2523
Fax: 021 425 5689
Visit our website: http://wced.wcape.gov.za