Gauteng MEC announces stern measures for education

Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi presented the Department of Education’s 2014/15 budget speech at the Provincial Legislature on 31 July.

Working with a budget of R32.8 billion, which is a 12 per cent increase from last year, Lesufi announced that most of the money goes to salaries at FET colleges, technical schools, school of nutrition programme and HIV/Aids programmes and also Dinaledi Schools.

Speaking at the Legislature, Lesufi highlighted that the focus will also be on e-learning – distributing tablets to schools and installing Wi-Fi.

Seventy-five per cent of the budget will be spent on salaries of teachers and officials of the Department and the rest of the 25 per cent will meet infrastructure, pupils teaching material and school subsidy demands.

Lesufi came down hard on some teachers, informing that teachers will be disciplined for absenteeism – he further explained that from now on, the recruitment of teachers will be mainly and strictly made on merit only.

“We will make certain that teachers are in attendance in the classroom and take swift action against teachers who have been absent for a long time, and other disciplinary issues.”

Starting from next year, all Grade 11 pupils will be given free K53 driver’s licences to equip them.

Last year, the Department announced that African languages would be made compulsory – and this year, Lesufi informed that Gauteng schools will likely be part of a programme to introduce history as a compulsory subject. However, the MEC encourages 80 per cent of children in Gauteng to do pure mathematics by 2019.

“The Department implemented a total of 16 maths, science and technology programmes through the SciBono Discovery Centre, to improve the performance of pupils in these subjects and to produce the skills in pupils as required by the economy,” said Lesufi.

When it comes to tackling youth unemployment, Lesufi stated that the Department will implement a mass Recruitment and Skills Training Programme for 20 000 unemployed youth in Gauteng.

The Department will be training them to fill potholes, be traffic cop assistants as well as traffic lights technicians.