18 Jan 2012
The Eastern Cape Education Department has unveiled its re-prioritised service delivery turnaround strategy for the next few months starting in January 2012. The strategy was unveiled during a meeting of the provincial government held in Bhisho recently.
According to the Education MEC Mandla Makupula, the bone of contention for the next few months for the department and its leadership is to ensure that its fight is meant to ensure the children’s education is prioritised. A list of the departmental priorities have been lined up and include the Scholar Transport Programme, provision of Learner & Teacher Support Materials (LTSM), the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) and the implementation of the 2012 Post Provisioning.
Despite the listed priorities there are also other teething issue at this time of the year that include the admission of learners and the availability of infrastructure for teaching and learning.
The department has prioritised these since they help to ensure that schools are able to start teaching on the first day of the academic/school year in compliance to the list of national non-negotiables.
These non-negotiables are meant to ensure that:
- Teachers are at school on time, in the classroom teaching and well prepared, there is no abuse of children and no neglect of duty,
- Learners are also expected to attend regularly, be punctual, respect educators, be committed to learning, and refrain from substance abuse,
- Parents are expected to participate in school activities, support their children with school related work, ensure that there are no learners that are out of school during school hours, and
- Departmental officials are expected to support schools, ensure that funds are transferred to schools on time, LTSM is in schools on time, educators are supported in the classroom through subject advisors, etc.
Although the department is still using the same service providers and routes as in 2011 according to the existing budget, and the scholar transport programme will continue with the transportation of deserving learners in 2012.
Additionally, the department has allocated a budget of R881 Million for LTSM to schools and R164 million of the amount will be spent on stationery and the balance which is R617 million will be spent on textbook for both the 4 480 section 21 schools and the 1 132 section 20 schools.
School visiting teams have been dispatched in all the 23 districts to ensure that there is compliance on admissions with mop up arrangements planned despite the fact that there are no envisaged risks and to ensure that any last minute changes to registration of learners is managed.
All departmental schools have received their monies for the three tranches last year (since April 2012) and on the 13th of January 2012, the department will deposit R214 million for feeding, R9,3 million for utensils that include spoons and plates. Additionally, the department will also distribute 32 kitchens to deserving schools with the help of the district officials.
To ensure that schools function properly, and following the declaration of 64 752 post basket for the 2012 school year on 30 September 2011 and issuing of school post establishment on the same day last year, all districts developed their own customised management plan to implement the post provisioning in their respective districts. The declared posts resulted in the creation of 8 269 vacant posts and simultaneously 6 715 of educators were rendered additionally because the school post establishment where they are currently employed, had decreased in the number of posts.
The dispatching of departmental teams to all districts seeks to employ and ensure that all experts in all fields work positively to ensure school functionality is prioritised. These teams will prepare daily reports that will identify quick areas for the intervention by the office of the Superintendent General within a short period of time.
All these interventions are meant to ensure that challenges experienced last year are dealt with and that learning and teaching becomes the focus and centrepiece of this school opening season and that all schools meet the minimum requirement for school readiness.
Enquiries:
Loyiso Pulumani
Cell: 083 275 0675
Issued by: Eastern Cape Education
18 Jan 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please Leave a message