Premier Noxolo Kiviet's claims about school infrastructure development in the Eastern Cape were selective and insufficient, according to the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM).
Premier Noxolo Kiviet's claims about school infrastructure development in the Eastern Cape were selective and insufficient, according to the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM).
Kiviet's made the claims during her State of the Province address last Friday, 21 February.
Kieviet claimed the South African government has built 1 516 schools in the Eastern Cape over the past 20 years, 202 of which have been constructed since the last election in 2009. A further 160 were currently being built, she added.
But education researcher at PSAM, Zukiswa Kota, said the Premier’s address left "much to be desired".
“Notably, the Premier incorrectly states that the national Department of Education’s Accelerated School Infrastructure Development Initiative (ASIDI) project began ‘last year’ when, in fact, this was introduced by the Department of Basic Education in 2011 across three main provincial departments, including the Eastern Cape,” Kota said.
“What this highlights is the delays in infrastructure delivery in the province, a circumstance not referred to in the Premier’s address, despite the obvious negative implications for the state of education in the Eastern Cape,” she said.
Kota pointed out that Kiviet also failed to mention the 2011 court settlement with the Centre for Child Law (CCL), which stated that R8.2 billion would be spent on eradicating mud schools nationally, with more than R6.36 billion of this being for the Eastern Cape.
Kota added that information about struggling infrastructure budgets was left out in favour of positive information.
“Another omission in the State of the Province Address was an indication of how many of the school infrastructure projects commenced, have actually been completed. Over the years, a significant challenge in school infrastructure has been delays in completing schools and handing over functional infrastructure to communities. This places further strain on infrastructure budgets,” she said.
Literacy Programme co-ordinator at the Lebone Centre, Cathy Gush, said that the issues being addressed by Kiviet were insignificant compared to the larger challenges faced by Eastern Cape schools.
"It remains to be seen whether the Province will achieve the amount of education infrastructural upgrading that they are aiming to do. This is critical if they are to comply with the Minimum Norms and Standards that were agreed to by the National Minister late last year, and – of course – to meet a real need on the ground," said Gush.
"The Province's commitment to the infrastructural project, while admirable, should not serve as a smokescreen for the much deeper and equally serious malaise that affects education in our province, and indeed our country.
"Basic issues such as adequate numbers of teachers in classrooms and decent remedial services in our schools are not being dealt with satisfactorily, and far too much money is being spent on bureaucratic (staffing) structures that don't achieve much," she said.
