The following speech was delivered in Parliament’s debate of the 2019 State of the Nation Address.
Honourable Speaker,
I will not begin my speech with “Once Upon A Time,” because I do not intend to tell a fairy-tale about the plight of children in South African schools.
I do not intend to be the Brothers Grimm and paint a picture of an imaginary and magical land that does not exist.
I am here to present the cold hard facts that we need to reflect on as a Parliament, and the DA is here to also present workable solutions.
While the President spoke about how he met with the people of South Africa during the election campaign, he spoke not in frankness of the true state in which the people of our country live. Nor did he offer his apologies for how his party has disappointed and left particularly our young people, hopeless.
Honourable Speaker, over the last few months I met with teachers who expressed how they are working under awful conditions that no human being should be expected to work in.
They are overwhelmed and overworked.
They expressed how they are not only teachers to our young but they are:
- Mothers and fathers to orphans of missing parents;
- They are social workers to the broken;
- They are nurses to the sick; and
- They are police to the disruptive and to the drug dealers on school premises.
The fact is that, Mr President, the majority of our children come from broken homes:
- With unemployed parents who are filled with despair and hopelessness;
- They come from poverty-stricken homes;
- Abusive homes;
- They are broken and bring their brokeness to their teacher, their playground, their classroom which leads to bullying and excessive violence; and
- They witness violence and they use violence to solve disputes.
These socio-economic ills spill into our school environment.
The recent murder of a KwaZulu-Natal teacher and the stabbing of Daniel Bakwela by a fellow learner in Gauteng sent shock waves throughout the country, and that should really worry you. Violence has become a daily phenomenon in our schools.
Nkokheli, you cannot talk about education in this country and totally ignore the wave of violence that is crashing through our schools.
Kushubile ezikolweni. Amatitshala abetha abantwana, abantwana babetha amatitshala, abantwana bayabethana bayabulalana!
Our teachers and learners need our support, and social workers and nurses have a supporting role to play in our schools and must serve that role.
To mitigate this spate of violence in our schools, the Western Cape has introduced a Safe Schools hotline.
It allows learners, staff, parents and communities to get help where abuse, crime, drug use and gang activity occur.
This excellent model should be extended to all provinces, as cooperation on the ground is vital to preventing violent acts before they happen. This is one of the initiatives we need to combat school violence.
We need you, Mr President, to come on board and give a directive.
I was taken aback when you re-instated Minister Angie Mothsekga as Minister of Basic Education.
She has been presiding over this Ministry for a decade and:
- under her, the state of public education has worsened;
- under her, we tragically lost two learners in pit-latrines and the number could be more;
- under her, 8 out of 10 Grade 4 children (78%) cannot read for meaning;
- under her, we performed poorly in both Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); and
- under her, the World Economic Global Information Technology Report 2016, which ranks the quality of education in 139 countries, ranked South Africa 137th.
You are a Mabena, Mr President, just like your predecessor, you disappoint South Africa again.
In your speech you emphasise implementing the Early Grade Reading Programme.
As we speak, we have 1.1 million learners in Grade 4. We simply cannot wait a decade to have our learners reading.
All foundation and intermediate phase teachers are already trained they need professional development.
SADTU has been blocking Annual Assessments for years, and this is policy impediment. Unless you act now – you threaten the future of the generations to come. A DA government will prioritise the future of learners over the ambitions of union members.
In the Western Cape we have prioritised basic reading and numeracy skills and we are seeing results. We are the only Province to achieve more than 600 points for reading (627.6) and mathematics (654.5), according to Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ) 4. This is significantly higher than the national average of 522 points.
45% of Western Cape learners in Grade 4 can read for meaning in their home language, compared to 9,2% in Limpopo and 22,1% nationally.
We applaud your action to move co-ordination of disability initiatives to the Presidency. I hope amongst its mandate, the needs of the disabled in basic education will be a priority.
Coding is a fantastic idea but you need to be able to read to do coding.
When I listened to your speech, I was hoping you would give us an update on school infrastructure and the progress in the tablet distribution programme. Or has this been abandoned?
The lack of consistency Mr President concerns us all.
So Ndiyakucela Mongameli sukuphupha vuka! Yeka ukubamba apha u yeke u bambe phaya uyeke. Yi ba ne Vision, fund it and execute it.
It can be either improvement in the quality of our education, infrastructure or safety at school. Forget about iPads okwangoku ezinye izikolo azinawo no mbane and focus on one thing in the next five years before u Ace ekuxhotha!
Thank you!