Watchdog Umalusi given top marks

The country’s education quality assurance watchdog, Umalusi, has not only been doing a great job in watching over the quality of education and training, it has done extremely well in handling its finances for close to two decades.

However, it was constrained by a huge staff turnover due to huge workloads, Umalusi CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi told the portfolio committee on basic education recently.

The organisation had a small budget and needed to increase the number of staff, he added.

Umalusi, also known as the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training, impressed the members of the portfolio committee on basic education with its 18th unqualified opinion from the auditor-general since 2001, a great achievement for a state entity

It was recently reported to the committee that Umalusi achieved an overall 89% on its pre-determined objectives for the financial year 2018-19.

Unlike many state entities and government departments, the vacancy rate at the entity at the end of March this year was 8% while total assets in the year under review were R92.50 million.

It also had total cash and cash equivalents of R52.3 million, an accumulated surplus of 71% and revenue reserves of 8%, according to Rakometsi and his team’s briefing to the committee on the council’s annual report and state of readiness to assure the quality of the 2019 matric examinations recently.

Umalusi’s good showing was attributed to the introduction of a performance verification committee, which used new approaches to validate performance information.

After external auditors raised concerns about certain performance areas in the management report, management developed internal controls to ensure there would be no recurrences in the upcoming financial year.

No significant findings were reported on supply chain management and predetermined objectives.

Irregular expenditure for the current financial year was R 1 863 861 as payments for cell phone services that were made without a valid contract.

The Umalusi team told the committee the matter had since been addressed and a request for condonation would be tabled at the next Umalusi council for approval.

The committee was concerned about Umalusi’s use of consultants, which took a huge chunk of its budget.

The committee noted Umalusi’s audit action plan was adding value in reducing the number of findings raised by internal and external auditors.