Education ticks all the right boxes

Despite having lowest matric results

EASTERN Cape Premier Phumulo Masualle is “pleased” with last year’s 65% matric pass rate, despite the province still coming last out of the country’s nine provinces.

Masualle was delivering the State of the Province Address (Sopa) yesterday in the Bhisho legislature, where he also sang the praises of his three-year Education Transformation Plan, which started in 2016, for “promoting quality education and skills development” in the province.

According to Masualle, the province had increased its intake of pupils studying in no-fee schools to about 1.5 million.

This was in addition to 1.6 million benefiting from the school nutrition programme in schools that are in quintiles 1-3.

Masualle also announced that there were 80 595 pupils being transported by the provincial government to and from 751 schools, through the scholar transport programme.

The legislature’s portfolio committee on transport in Bhisho last year raised concern that there were 110 000 pupils who qualify to be transported by the state, leaving about 30 000 pupils having to walk long distances.

The portfolio committee then instructed transport MEC Weziwe Tikana to seek more funds from treasury to ensure all pupils who qualify for scholar transport receive such.

The premier, in a media lockup session before the official delivering of Sopa yesterday, defended his government, saying “everything we do is conditional to available resources”.

Masualle also revealed that there was an increase in the number of Grade 1 pupils who had received Grade R Early Childhood Development (ECD) exposure, from 67% to 71.7%, which included 34 000 pupils.

However, Masualle said the province failed to meet its annual target of training 2 471 ECD practitioners, falling short of its target by 205.

“Going forward, we are going to pay more attention to the ECD infrastructure programme because we want to increase the registration of ECD centres as part of enhancing the quality of foundation phases in our education,” said Masualle.

As for strengthening leadership at school level to ensure improvements, Masualle said the provincial government was making strides through the School Principal Mentorship and Capacity Building Programmes.

He, however, did not go into specifics but maintained that all interventions his government had made in the education department were bearing fruit in the form of improved matric results.

He said his government, going forward, would prioritise ICT-based digital transformation in education and put more emphasis on strengthening mathematics and science training. —