WCED senior officials Mr Darryn von Maltitz,
Programme Manager Mr André Fourie, CEO of NBI Captains of Industry and Entrepreneurs
Ladies and Gentlemen
Friends and colleagues, thank you very much for taking the time to attend this breakfast, and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts with you about our role in preparing young people for good citizenship and your possible role in helping us prepare our young people for the world of work.
In the beginning of this year, there were three significant things that happened in Western Cape Education.
First was the completion and handing over of 15 new schools in communities historically neglected - which was a record. I would also like to add that we had the smoothest start to a school year yet in the history of our Province. No illegal schools springing up unexpectedly. Excellent delivery of learner support material. This is partly due to our early admission campaign, the proactive "hotspots" strategy and better provisioning.
As we speak, there is not single school still platooning in our province. Yes, we still need 40 new schools and overcrowding remains a problem in some of our schools, but we have greater stability and certainty in the system.
Our plans to finalize 44 local education provisioning plans , one for each of our 24 category b municipalities in the province and one for each of our 20 sub-councils in the City of Cape Town, will bring focus and certainty to the development of human capital at a local level.
Secondly, we, along with the rest of the country, have made a decisive break from Apartheid education with the launch of our National Curriculum Statement for the (FET) Band.
Every grade ten learner is now doing four compulsory subjects. These are firstly maths or maths literacy, secondly life orientation, thirdly the language of learning and teaching and fourthly a first additional language.
Our learners then offer three additional subjects available at their school. In 2007 this cohort will move to grade 11 and in 2008 all grade 12's will write the Senior Certificate (Matric) in terms of the National Curriculum Statement.
And lastly, just over a week ago we have launched what we call our Human Capital Development Strategy, which is one of the lead strategies of the Western Cape Provincial Government's growth and development blueprint "Ikapa Elihlumayo" to grow and share the Cape.
All of the above are not just simply empty deliverables or promises. They stem from our desire and commitment as government, that "we should move faster to address challenges of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation confronting those caught within the Second Economy, to ensure that the poor in our country share in our growing prosperity..." to quote our President Thabo Mbeki in his State of the Nation Address earlier.
I believe that despite infrastructural backlogs that remain, we now can say that the transformation of our curriculum is nearing completion, bringing greater stability and certainty.
While we have to continue our redress drive (and the gradual phasing in of no-fee schools in our poorest schools is an example of this), all of our schools now need to focus on quality and impact.
We have a curriculum, which can meet our human capital needs. Now we need schools that are led, managed, supported and nurtured so that we develop young people ready for life. Young people who are ready for work. Young people who are ready and passionate about creating work for others.
I want to illustrate briefly how this new curriculum is preparing our young people for good citizenship. Tomorrow's South Africa needs people who are compassionate problem-solvers, who work with others. Good citizens are systems' thinkers who can take risks and give a lead because they know what they're doing and why.
South Africa's new education system plans to give us these 21st century good citizens. The new education system is built around a central core of 12 major life-role outcomes like "be a critical thinker", "be an organized person", "work well in groups" and so on.
This means that there will be an actual programme in place, which systematically trains learners in those key competencies or aptitudes, which you and I have had to just pick up as we go along.
The new system is set up around a broad-based General Education and Training Band with nine years in which all learners do the same core Learning Areas - what we used to call "subjects".
The most obvious one to talk about today and which focuses, as it were, on "citizenship" is the Learning Area called "Life Orientation", which systematically takes our children through a range of issues like "The learner will be able to make informed decisions regarding personal, community and environmental health" which is Outcome number 1 of that LA OR "The learner will be able to demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to constitutional rights and responsibilities, and to show an understanding of diverse cultures and religions" (Outcome 2 of Life Orientation)
But other parts of the curriculum are just as critical for developing good citizenship: the history part of Social Sciences sets up exercises where children explore issues of our time. Here's a quote from a Grade 9 "knowledge focus" for one of the outcomes.
It says that Grade 9 learners will be learning about "dealing with crimes against humanity: Apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission compared with the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials; xenophobia and genocide (e.g. Rwanda, the Balkans); the effects of globalisation on Africa" and "A new vision for Africa: Africa's economic recovery". This is not "List the reasons for the Great Trek" which was the staple diet of my school history course!
The "National Curriculum Statement" - the name of the new curriculum - explicitly sets itself up to address Values' Education and Human Rights issues.
I think one of the main ways that the new curriculum will be doing a better job of making our children good citizens is that it is, by definition, a performance-based curriculum. Learners must actually give evidence that they can DO certain things.
I don't, for example, just write a paragraph about the outcome I just read out to you. Instead the "Assessment Standard" for that outcome, or the thing that will give evidence that I have achieved a particular level, spells out that (and I'm just picking out one little bit here):
"We know this when the learner:
- Shows evidence of respect for others and the ability to disagree in constructive ways.
- Demonstrates and reflects on decision-making skills".
I'll just run through the 8 Learning Areas of the GET Band quickly and also show how they link to the Further Education and Training Band (FET) band.
Learners must do 2 languages right the way through to Grade 12, one on a home language level and one on an additional language level. I can't resist putting in a plug here for an innovation we are planning to introduce shortly which is for our learners to have at least three years worth of a third language by the end of the GET band.
And that will surely be a huge step towards "good citizenship": once we can all speak one another's languages in this province, then we can really claim to be making progress!
Back to the other GET Learning Areas. I've mentioned History * the other part of the Social Sciences LA is Geography of course. Then it's Natural Sciences, which might still sound a bit familiar to us.
The big new LAs are "Technology", "Arts and Culture", "Economic and Management Sciences". You will see that this is a wide-ranging set of focuses, which lays the foundation for a degree of specialisation in the last three years of school.
The curriculum transformation process has been a necessarily complex one. This year the revised new curriculum has got as far as Grade 7. Next year it gets to Grade 8 and then it's into Grade 9 in 2008. 2008 will also be the first year of the new Senior Certificate. So that will be a big year for us!
Every single subject curriculum has been heavily revised. Many will soon convert to subjects which will require learners to actually use computers to complete the curriculum eg subjects like Accountancy and the old Technical Drawing simply have to be computerised in the 21st century.
All our high schools in the province now have computer labs and teachers are preparing themselves to manage a large scale migration to computers as the normal tool for study.
Our focus now is additional provisioning at our 50 Dinaledi Maths, Science and Technology Focus Schools. Our department has now also approved the conversion of 28 of our high schools into focus schools - ten focussing on Arts and Culture; eight focussing on business, commerce and management; and ten focussing on Technology and Engineering.
In 2006 we will turn our attention to making sure that our primary schools are also equipped with computer labs.
The corner-stones of the new curriculum are the critical outcomes. The class of 2008 will be proficient problem-solvers and critical thinkers. They will have chosen their subjects carefully helped by the Life Orientation program in the GET band and the provincial PACE career guidance program aimed at strengthening this.
All of the above initiatives are part of a plan, the Human Capital Development Strategy. Our mission with this strategy is to provide our youth with relevant skills, knowledge, values and attitudes they need to participate meaningfully in the mainstream economy, and be internationally competitive.
With this strategy, we want to increase the participation and success rates of our youth in FET colleges and higher education institutions, especially those from poor backgrounds.
The further recapitalization and financing of our six Further Education and Training Colleges, (R70 million this year, R80 million in 2007 and R77 million in 2008) is a visible demonstration of how we aim to increase the number of learners obtaining critical vocational skills.
Introducing additional courses in line with our Provincial Micro Economic Development Strategy (MEDS), will be a key contributor to the success of government 's Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative.
To highlight the challenge of achieving quality across our system I want to talk to you about the matric results of 2005. Last year at Leeuwenhof, I said that whilst we must applaud and praise those schools and learners for doing well, we can never use the matric results alone to determine whether we are indeed making progress in terms of the transformation objectives of the country.
For example, out of the 10,144 African learners who wrote matric in the Western Cape, only 2.38% passed Accountancy on the higher grade - that means about 240 learners!
For Mathematics on the higher grade 3.9% passed, which is about 395 learners; and 4.3% passed Physical Science on the higher grade, which is about 436 learners!
The same applies for Coloured learners in these subjects. Of the 18,772 who wrote the Senior Certificate Examinations, 6% passed Accountancy on the higher grade (1,126 learners), 4.9% passed Mathematics on the higher grade (919 learners) and 4.7% passed Physical Science on the higher grade - that is 882 learners!
On the other hand, the results of White learners in this regard are quite extraordinary when one does a comparative analyses. Of the 8,795 White learners who wrote, 21.3% passed Accountancy on the higher grade, 30.2% passed Maths on the higher grade and 26.7% passed Physical Science on the higher grade.
The results of White candidates exceed African and Coloured candidates substantially and the location of success is in the former model C schools environment mainly. After ten years of democracy, these statistics pose us with serious challenges about how we deploy our resources.
Our national Minister and Premier have challenged us to formulate a learner attainment strategy which will ensure that all of our schools achieving less than 60 % (we have 34 in our province) are supported to obtain more than 60% .
We have started already and our final plan will be in place by the end of March. What we have learned is that these schools do not simply require a quick fix. If we simply focus on the matric class of 2006, we may find that the class of 2007 drops below 60 % again.
We need integrated, whole - school development and support in an ongoing way - committed and motivated leadership; involved parents; dedicated learners who share in the vision for their school.
It is not just about passing, it is about the quality of the passes. The number of endorsements. The number of learners passing higher grade maths and science.
One target of the HCDS is to double the number of learners passing maths higher grade by 2009. This means moving up from 4,000 to 8,000. We are now busy making sure that all of our schools set individual targets to achieve this impact. Not only our 50 Dinaledi and 28 Focus Schools - all of our 350 high schools.
Mobilising partnerships, friends and business acquaintances in fighting poverty and creating work, is a key component of our Human Capital Development Strategy, which is about building social networks.
The National Business Initiative (NBI), has, since its inception been a key contributor to our country now being in the Age of Hope in the words of our President and on the "Threshold of Prosperity" - to quote our Premier (Ebrahim Rasool) from his Budget Speech.
Your initiative has contributed enormously to sustainable social and economic development, and I want to thank you for continuing to do so. Support for the Equip programme by business for instance has assisted with whole school development at a number of our schools.
It is these schools then that are better placed to deliver the curriculum. Better placed to prepare our learners for life and the world of work. So, continued support for Equip is one way of making sure that our learners are prepared for the world of work.
In one of a series of publications that seeks to analyse education investment, the United Nations UNESCO's Institute for Statistics published a report entitled: "Financing education - investments and returns - analysis of the world education indicators 2002 edition".
It is quite a lengthy report, but I just want to quote a paragraph that I thought is very relevant to this forum. It states: "There is now robust evidence that human capital is a key determinant of economic growth and emerging evidence indicates that it is also associated with a wide range of non-economic benefits, such as better health and well-being.
"Investment in human capital, and by implication in education, has thus moved to centre stage in strategies to promote economic prosperity, fuller employment and social cohesion.
"As a result, education is increasingly considered an investment in the collective future of societies and nations, rather than simply in the future success of individuals."
You may have read in the Sunday Times of 12 March, in the Business Section, that the emphasis of corporate social investment has in the last decade changed dramatically.
According to the findings of the Deloitte Corporate Social Investment Survey published in December 2004, investment in housing enjoyed number one priority.
Whilst I am by no means implying it has become less of a challenge or a priority, it is heartening to note that education is now the top priority for businesses in South Africa.
According to the Survey, business analysts do not see themselves as competitors when it comes to corporate social investment, but rather as partners to make sure "we work for the benefit of the community concerned".
And therefore your involvement in education, gives us an opportunity to share ideas and exchange notes, which in the long run, will ultimately also benefit the business community and assist us in meeting the ASGISA targets.
The almost complete introduction of a new, progressive and modern curriculum creates possibilities for our schools develop new and innovative ideas about how business can further assist in preparing our learners for the real world of work.
For example, the Rhenish High School in Stellenbosch has a program of "job shadowing" for a full week for all for their grade 11 girls. For a full week before the end of the second term these girls go into a working environment and then report on their findings in the third term.
Now a school like Rhenish has huge amounts of social capital to make a project like this work. Our challenge is to expose more of our grade 11's from Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain and Worcester for example to the world of work as well. Can business in general and the NBI in particular help with this?
I have talked of our Focus Schools.
I would like to call upon our business leaders to network with these schools. An organised programme of visits by business leaders and role models at these schools talking about careers in business and commerce, arts and culture, ICT's, accountancy, project management, engineering - could have a major impact on the lives and future of our learners.
Maybe your company works in a niche operation and you would love to support schools, which offer engineering subjects, or art subjects or things entrepreneurial. Again - our doors are open!
I will ask my department to provide a list of these schools so that together we can develop a strategy to bring the world of work into these 78 schools for a start.
As you know we started last year to breathe life into the Western Cape Education Foundation. The AGM will now be held before the end of March. I see the foundation playing a key role in building public/private partnerships, which are aligned and complimentary to our Human Capital Development Strategy.
We hope to sign an MOU with the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce soon to initiate an 'Adopt-a-School' campaign which aims to encourage businesses to support schools at risk according to a template of ten possible interventions.
Some of these include whole-school development, learner, teacher and parental leadership development, information and communication technologies and infra-structural improvement.
So so far I have given you four ways to help us prepare young people for the world of work. Firstly, keep on doing what you are doing by supporting NBI/Equip Initiative.
Secondly support our focus schools. Thirdly open your doors to more of our learners so that they, like the Rhenish girls, can practically experience the world of work while at school. Fourth consider supporting a school at risk via the proposed " Adopt a School " campaign.
Two more ways you can help before I sit down. Number 5. You can adopt a teacher. These are variations on a theme but you know that many of our teachers did not have the benefit of a good training in the first place.
Through certificates like the Further Diploma in Education or the Advanced Certificate of Education teachers can make huge professional strides.
Further study is not cheap but, again, we will not make real progress unless our teachers and the mentors of our children are fully equipped. Teachers of technology and ICT are in short supply. Your support could help existing teachers with passion obtain ACE's in these critical learning areas.
Finally or number 6 - keep up to date. It's a fact that "good news" is not really the stuff of banner headlines. We don't rush out to buy a paper because of a poster which screams "Teenagers are rushing to school because the curriculum has been modernised".
So I think my final message to you is: keep abreast of developments. Be well-informed. If things are going well - let us know. And if they're NOT, then let us know too.
Our learning organizations, our learning districts and our learning province depend on a networked system. I think you're here on a kind of goodwill mission maybe, unless it's just for the good breakfast.
And it 's that kind of social capital - that goodwill - that we desperately need. Of course we'd really love your money, but at the very least we'd like your support and certainly good doses of your business acumen.
So, thank you very much to Judith, Mr von Maltitz, Fourie, and everyone associated with NBI, for your continued energy, passion, commitment and involvement in making our province a learning home for all. It gives our youth hope, that tomorrow shall be better than today.
Many thanks to all the officials in my department as well. You are all an integral part of the answer to the President's call to grow the economy with 6%, and the Premier's vision of building a Home for All.
I thank you
