Minister of Basic Education Budget Speech, responses by FF+, DA, IFP

Watch: Mini-Plenary (Debate on Vote 16)

Basic Education Adjusted Budget Vote Speech for the 2023/24 Financial Year, Delivered by the Honourable Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga, MP, at the National Assembly, Cape Town

18 May 2023

Honourable Speaker / Deputy Speaker
Cabinet colleagues and Deputy Ministers present
Honourable Members of Parliament
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

Today we are presenting the 2023/24 Budget – Vote 16, mindful of the reality that, at the heart of any development within the Basic Education Sector, must obviously be what learners learn.  This point is clearly articulated in our Action Plan 2019 – Towards the Realisation of Schooling 2030; the National Development Plan (NDP), Vision 2030; the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA, 2024) on the African Agenda 2063; and the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal, Number 4 (SDG4).

It continues to be of great significance for South Africa’s development that learning outcomes, according to reliable standardised testing programmes, such as the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SEACMEQ), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), have improved progressively over the years.  But equally, the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning since March 2020, continue to be a cause for great concern.

Speaker, I had requested our researchers to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our basic education system, the lost ground; and the return of the schooling system to its earlier improvement trajectory.
The researchers agree that at the heart of our Sector, is learning; and at the heart of improving learning, is improving reading in the early grades.  They report that prior to COVID-19, we had seen progress in the reading abilities of children.  According to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), reading in Grade 4, had improved substantially between 2006 and 2016.  Between 2011 and 2016, South Africa saw the second-fastest improvement among all PIRLS participating countries, after Morocco.

According to Professor Martin Gustafssohn, by the end of 2021, the average Grade 4 learner, could read as well as the average Grade 3 learner before the pandemic.  Therefore, there has been a loss of one year of learning.  Put differently, we slid backwards in terms of our PIRLS progress by a few years.These losses are similar to what has been witnessed around the world.

Honourable Members will recall that after the PIRLS 2016 report was released, the Basic Education Sector embarked on a variety of interventions to improve the foundations of learning through reading.  These interventions were introduced under the slogan “Read to Lead”.  During the 2018 State of the Nation Address (SONA), His Excellency, President Ramaphosa decreed that learners must be able to “read for meaning by the age of 10 years”.  The DBE, assisted by the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), immediately responded to the President’s call by coordinated broad consultations with critical stakeholders in the reading space – the product of those consultations, was the National Reading Strategy, which we launched in 2019.

On Tuesday, 16 May 2023, the DBE, like all other departments of education worldwide, received a report on the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2021).  PIRLS is coordinated on a five yearly basis, by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA); and is the global standard for monitoring reading achievement at Grade 4 – an important transition point in learners’ development as readers.

It is important to note that PIRLS 2021, is the first international large-scale assessment to report results after successfully collecting data during the COVID-19 pandemic, assessing four hundred thousand (400 000) learners in only fifty seven (57) countries worldwide.  South Africa was one of the three countries in the African Continent that participated in PIRLS 2021, the others being Morocco and Egypt.

PIRLS 2021, summarised the state of global learning poverty, which is defined as “the share of children who cannot read with meaning a simple text by the age of 10”, as follows – firstly, in 2019, learning poverty was estimated at 57% in low- and middle-income countries; secondly, post-COVID-19, a surge of up to 70% learning poverty in low- and middle-income countries was noticeable; and thirdly, learning poverty was found to be as high as 86% for Sub-Saharan Africa.

The overall reading scores of our Grade 4 learners, who participated in PIRLS 2021, dropped from 320 points attained in 2016, to 288 points in 2021.  Our Grade 4 girls performed better at 317 points; than their boy counterparts, who achieved 260 points.  PIRLS 2021 shows that the longer the children stay in school, the better their performance.  For instance, the overall reading score achieved by our Grade 6 learners, was 384 points; with girls attaining 408 points, and the boys attaining 359 points.  Moroccan and Egyptian Grade 4 learners scored higher than our Grade 4 learners.

We must state that the longer our learners remain in the system, their performance improves steadily, as the PIRLS 2021 Grade 6 score shows – that is, an upward shift of 96 points when compared with the PIRLS 2021 Grade 4 score.  A similar observation can be made when the Grade 4 PIRLS 2021 score, is extrapolated with the scores from an extensive national Systemic Evaluation pilot study we conducted in 2021 among Grades 3, 6 and 9 learners.

The noticeable upward shift between the Grade 4 PIRLS score and the Grades 6 and 9 Systemic Evaluation scores, is 28 and 23 points, respectively.  This is indication that our system self-corrects, the longer learners remain and progress through the Phases of our system.  No wonder the performance of our Matric Classes in the National Senior Certificate examinations over the years, has been on the rise.

Because we take what the national, regional and international assessment studies tell us very seriously, we will be embarking on report back and engagements sessions with our critical stakeholders, including renowned local and international scholars, to ensure that we all understand the conundrum about reading for meaning as different from oral performance in reading.  This is the highest level of reading, because it requires that are children are empowered to analyse and interpret information; and make deductions and inferences, which demonstrate their ability to organise and internalise facts logically, systematically and coherently.

Whilst acknowledging the devastating effects of COVID-19, these assessment studies continue to sharpen our understanding and plans on improving our performance on reading for meaning.  The researchers and experts from government and research institutions, confirmed that indeed reading for meaning is a very complex exercise, as it involves a number of interlaced variables, which range from teaching skills, teaching resources, learner and teacher wellbeing, parental and societal involvement, cultural contexts, nuances and sensitivities in the children’s learning journey.

In 2019, as a Sector, we had reached consensus on ten (10) pillars to anchor our 2019 National Reading Strategy.  These pillars included strengthening of the capacity of the Sector to support and monitor reading; teacher development and support; provisioning and utilisation of LTSMs; direct learner support; tracking learner support in reading outcomes; parental and community support; research, monitoring and evaluation; partnerships; advocacy and communication; as well as reading across the curriculum.

In our continuous consultations, and from the lessons learnt from the regional and international assessment studies, there is an emerging view that we should reduce the ten pillars to four (4) key interdependent strands, namely, explicit reading literacy policy; skilled and agile teachers; age-appropriate and culturally relevant LTSMs; and involved parents and communities.  This approach is critical, as the PIRLS 2021 has also observed that “[learners] with higher home socioeconomic status, had much higher achievement than [learners] with lower home socioeconomic status”; and that “[learners] in schools that were not affected by reading resource shortages, have higher reading achievement, on average, than [learners] in schools that are somewhat affected by reading shortages”.  Therefore, the consensus that the implementation of an Integrated National Integrated Reading Literacy Strategy must be well resourced, is justified.  We are engaging the National Treasury in this regard.

Budget Vote 16 – Basic Education for the 2003 MTEF period

Speaker and the Honourable Members, allow me to highlight the following in relation to the Budget Vote 16 – Basic Education for the 2023 MTEF period –

Firstly, the overall 2023/24 MTEF budget allocation for the Department of Basic Education is thirty one point eight billion Rands, (R31.8 billion), an increase of 7.0% from last year’s overall allocation.  The breakdown of the budget by Education Programme, is as follows –

The allocation for Administration is five hundred and thirty-eight point eight million Rands (R538.8 million).

The allocation for Curriculum Policy Support and Monitoring is about three point five billion Rands (R3.526 billion).

The allocation for Teacher Education Human Resource and Institutional Development is about one point five billion Rands (R1.508 billion).

Planning Information and Assessment is allocated about sixteen point six billion Rands (R16.616 billion.

The allocation for Educational Enrichment Services is about nine point six billion Rands (R9.594 billion)

Secondly, the overall allocation for Condition Grants is about twenty-five point three billion Rands (R25.329 billion) – an increase of 9.5% from that of last year.  The specific allocations for Conditional Grants are as follows –

The Mathematics, Science and Technology (MST) Grant is allocated four hundred and thirty-three point one million Rands (R433.1 million).

Infrastructure delivery – which continues to be funded through the Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG), is allocated thirteen point nine billion Rands (R13.9 billion.

The Accelerated School Infrastructure Development Initiative (ASIDI) is allocated two point one billion Rands (R2.1 billion), which is inclusive of the allocation for Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) Initiative.

HIV and AIDS is allocated two hundred and forty-one point seven million Rands (R241.7 million).

The National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) has been allocated about nine point three billion Rands (R9.279 billion).

The Learners with Severe to Profound Intellectual Disabilities (LSPID) Grant received two hundred and sixty point four (R260.4 million.

Thirdly, the overall allocation for Earmarked Funds and Transfer Payments, is about three billion (R3.1 billion) – an increase of 6.3% from last year’s allocation.  The specific allocations for these funds are as follows –

The budget allocation for the Funza Lushaka Bursary Programme (FLBP) is about one point three billion Rands (R1.334 billion).

The subsidy to Umalusi is one hundred and sixty-two point nine million Rands (R162.9 million).

The National Senior Certificate Learner Retention Programme, is allocated fifty-eight point one million Rands (R58.1 million.

The National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) is allocated one hundred and twenty-one point five million Rands (R121.5 million.

Workbooks, including Braille workbooks for visually impaired learners, have been allocated about one point two billion Rands (R1.184 billion.  This amount increases to about one point two one billion Rands (R1.205 billion) when the Compensation of Employees (CoE) allocation is included.

The South African Council of Educators (SACE) is allocated fifteen point six million Rands (R15.6 million.

The Presidential Employment Stimulus, also known as the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI), is allocated six point nine billion Rands (R6.9 billion.

Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) is allocated fourteen point four million Rands (R14.4 million.

Early Childhood Development (ECD) is allocated two hundred million Rands (R200 million) for Resource packages.

Strategic realignment of the Basic Education Sector priorities for the Sixth Administration

Speaker, we must remind this House and the nation at large, about the six (6) Basic Education Sector priorities we had committed ourselves to, in order to be able to continue laying a solid foundation for a quality and efficient education system; as well as to contribute to providing permanent solutions to the architecture of the education and training system of our country.  Because of time constraints, I will focus on three of our strategic priorities, and the Deputy Minister will deal with the rest – time allowing.

The first critical priority is our new function of Early Childhood Development (ECD).  Since the ECD function shift from the Department of Social Development to the DBE, we have been hard at work in the process of crafting and implementing innovative strategies, to strengthen the foundations of learning. looking at the continuum from birth to early Grades in the Foundation and Intermediate Phases.

The Department conducted the National Census of Early Learning Programmes in forty-two thousand four hundred and twenty (42 420) ECD programmes known in our country.  The Census highlighted the vast access challenges in South Africa, and we are in the process of developing a new publicly planned, coordinated and funded mixed ECD provisioning model, which is based on our social justice principles of access, equity, redress, inclusivity, efficiency, and quality.  To regularise and align the function shift, the Department is collaborating with the Department of Social Development to amend the Children’s Act.  In the short- to medium-term, the Department has also partnered with the Presidency’s Red Tape Reduction Team to identify areas of streamlining registration processes; and enabling greater collaboration with local government.

The second study we had conducted, since we received the ECD function, is the Thrive by Five Index Baseline Study, which we conducted with the cooperation of First National Bank, Innovation Edge, USAID, and ECD Measure, to assess the quality of ECD programmes in a nationally representative sample.  The study revealed that only 45% of the children, who are currently attending ECD programmes, are developmentally on track.  More worrisome, the study revealed that about 50% of these children, who are attending ECD programmes, will not thrive when they reach the age of 5 years.  Also disheartening, is the finding that, of the children attending ECD programmes, 6% of them, are stunted, due to chronic malnutrition.  Surely these are some of the factors which contribute to the inability of children to read for meaning when they reach Grade 4.

The third study we conducted in collaboration with the National Treasury and the World Bank, is the Public Expenditure and Institution Review (PEIR), which determines the funding on ECD programmes by the different spheres of Government, and the different Departments on the prioritised ECD outcomes.

Clearly, the current model of funding ECD programmes as NPOs, must be reviewed.  ECD programmes must ensure the children’s readiness to enter formal schooling.  Therefore, it is important that a new holistic and inclusive model includes all communities of trust in the ECD space – the State Departments, whose line functions have a direct bearing on the Constitutional rights of children – such as the Departments of Health, Social Development, Home Affairs, Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, as well as the National Treasury, amongst others.

Honourable Members, the second priority area, is a cluster of critical topics from our quest to strengthen our curriculum, focusing on the implementation of a curriculum with skills and competencies for a changing world in all public schools.

It is a known fact that the Department had taken a bold and strategic decision to actively move from a predominantly academic curriculum, to one that is varied and inclusive.  This ground-breaking move came in the form of the introduction of a multiple pathway education delivery approach of the Three-Stream Curriculum Model.  This was primarily driven by the Department’s quest for a responsive curriculum, to the demands of a rapidly changing education and skills development sector of the 21st century.

Significant strides have so far been made in the introduction of critical aspects of this innovative programme.  The introduction of the two (2) additional teaching and learning routes, the vocational and the occupational streams, has created additional learning pathways towards the attainment of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) in the schooling system.  This also enables greater learner choice, that provides diverse learning experiences, to fulfil learner’s potential, and meaningful contribution to society.

Critical developmental milestones realised in the Three-Stream Curriculum Model, include the finalisation of thirty five (35) Occupational and Vocational subjects, with their learning and teaching support materials (LTSMs) for implementation in seventy four (74) Schools of Skill.  In 2021, we began piloting the specialised subjects in Grades 8 and 9 in one hundred and four (104) public ordinary schools and Focus Schools selected across all nine (9) provinces.
Honourable Members, at the heart of the Three-Stream Curriculum Model, is the preparation of young South Africans for employability.  The DBE is working collaboratively with DHET and Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) in implementing the EU-funded Education for Employability (E4E) Project – a three-year project that commenced in 2022.  In ensuring policy alignment and complementarity, the three departments will be engaging in a Policy Dialogue, in pursuit of a shared goal throughout this year.  The Policy Dialogue will also seek to explore entrepreneurship in education, as well as strengthening the Career Development Services, for the purposes of providing career guidance, as early as in Grade 8.  This is one of the directives from the NDP.

Parallel to our quest to strengthen the curriculum in the General Education and Training (GET) Band, has been the piloting of the General Education Certificate (GEC).  The GEC, which is an integral qualification in the implementation of the Three-Stream Curriculum Model, was initially piloted for assessment in two hundred and seventy seven (277) schools in 2022.  This year, we have decided to step-up the pilot in one thousand (1 000) schools, including one hundred and twenty six (126) Schools of Skill.  For purposes of articulation to Further Education and Training (FET) Band within schooling, the Department has begun a process of conceptualising, and subsequently developing and strengthening the Vocational and Occupational streams, while engaging with Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) to ensure programme alignment to allow learners who have completed a Grade 9 qualification, to articulate to TVET Colleges, should they so choose to do so.

The third priority, is School Infrastructure Delivery, is school infrastructure, which is delivered through the Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG).  In some provinces, the EIG is augmented with the respective province’s equitable shares allocations.  In addition to the work the DBE and provincial education departments have been doing, is the replacement of schools built entirely of inappropriate materials; water supply to schools with no water; delivery of sanitation to schools with no toilets; and electricity supply to schools with no power, in 2018, the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) Initiative was launched.  SAFE focused on providing appropriate sanitation to schools, which were dependent on basic pit toilets.

In 2018, there were initially three thousand, eight hundred and ninety eight (3 898) schools on the SAFE initiative.  Further assessments and rationalisation decreased this number to three thousand, three hundred and ninety five (3 395) schools.  As at the end of the 2022/23 financial year, the construction age-appropriate sanitation projects were completed in two thousand, seven hundred and twenty two (2 722) schools.  The remaining six hundred and seventy three (673) sanitation projects, are scheduled for completion before the end of this year.

Following a critical evaluation of the infrastructure challenges, and the lessons learned from previous delivery strategies, the Department has crafted an Infrastructure Ten-Point Strategy to accelerate the roll-out of school infrastructure.  This Strategy, which was recently workshopped and adopted by the Council for Education Ministers (CEM), comprise of the following ten pillars –

All Provincial Education Departments should provide updated information of the extent and condition of school infrastructure per school.  All planning of infrastructure projects, both nationally and provincially, should be based on such updated information.

The template for the provincial five-year asset management plans, must be simplified to ensure focus with the national priorities and budget allocation.

The template for the provincial one-year infrastructure programme management plan, must be simplified to ensure a prioritised project list.

Concept designs, specifications, and processes should be standardised and simplified to ensure value for money.

The delivery of infrastructure programmes should be through framework contracts, with management contractors and construction managers, with contract management through independent quantity surveyors and project managers.

Such management contractors and construction managers must be contractually obliged to outsource the vast majority of the work to local suppliers and sub-contractors.

There is a move away from price-based contracts with bills-of-quantities, to cost-reimbursable contracts with target costs.

All deliverables across the entire life cycle of each project should be monitored.

A rigid gateway review process will be implemented, to control the quality of deliverables.  A service provider will not be allowed to progress to the next stage, if the deliverables of the current stage did not pass the quality test.

The contracts of defaulting service providers must be terminated.  Such defaulters should be reported to National Treasury and restricted from doing business with the State.

The Council of Education Ministers (CEM) further recommended that the Department, with is provincial counterparts, must establish dedicated workstreams, which among other tasks, should focus on the preparation for school infrastructure procurement documents; ensure the alignment of designs and specifications of school infrastructure; develop school infrastructure cost norms; advise on recruitment of critical skills; develop innovative strategies to address overcrowding in schools; develop cost-effective solutions for energy, water and sanitation; ensure that maintenance of school infrastructure is a norm; and develop compliant approaches on the enforcing consequence management.

I have no doubt that with this plan, the sector will go a long way in addressing the serious challenges the sector faces in school infrastructure delivery.

Conclusion

Speaker, as a nation, we must celebrate the Matric Class of 2022 for clearly demonstrating that with dedication, focus and resilience the sector will recover from the COVID 19 setbacks, rebuild better and reboot itself to its pre COVID upward trajectory
As we continue to confront our ongoing challenges in the Sector which include, but not limited to learner performance, schools and district offices, infrastructure, resource constraints, school safety, learners and teachers’ well-being, parental involvement, the Sector is well poised to face its challenges.

We must always remember what Dr Mokhubung Magubane once told us, that “the future is embedded in the present, as the present bears imprints of the past”.  The observation in the PIRLS 2021 on the performance of Afrikaans- and English-speaking learners, which is recorded as better to that in the African languages, is symptomatic of our regrettable past.

In conclusion Speaker and Honourable Members, allow me to thank our local, regional, continental and international partners, sister departments and their State institutions, business, and civil society organisations, for their selflessness and professionalism in the variety of the roles they continue play.  I wish to single out the SACE, Umalusi, NECT, our teacher unions, the national SGB associations, the principals’ associations, national organisations responsible for learners with special needs, as well as independent schools’ associations for their wise counsel and impeccable resilience.

We wish to thank the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, the Whippery, and the Honourable Members, our Chairperson and the Honourable Members of our Portfolio Committee for their engagements and guidance.  We cannot forget to acknowledge the Honourable MECs in the Council of Education Ministers, their respective Heads of Departments, and their officials for their counsel and dedication to the cause.

Finally, I wish to thank the Deputy Minister, Dr Reginah Mhaule; the Director-General and his army of senior officials, the entire Ministry staff, and my family for their ongoing cooperation and support.

I thank you!!