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THE ruling African National Congress (ANC) has once again reiterated calls for a comprehensive review of the education and training system in South Africa following its policy conference at the weekend.
The sixth ANC National Policy Conference was held at the NASREC Expo Centre South of Johannesburg from Friday until Sunday.
The governing party said that since 1994 the South African education system still does not foster a culture of creativity and has failed to encourage the country’s youth to pursue entrepreneurship.
The South African education system is also characterised by crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms and relatively poor educational outcomes.
The policy meeting called for the basic education sector working with the Higher Education and Training sector and the National Treasury to urgently submit a comprehensive review of the education and training system to the ANC.
The report was due for submission in April 2019.
The conference said, however, that it has noted good progress being made in the speeding up of the implementation of Operation Phakisa in Education, the Presidential Programme on ICT in schools.
Delegates said that the greatest challenges remain in rural areas where many areas do not have connectivity because of lack of ICT infrastructure and systems.
Delegates also called for the protection of public facilities and infrastructure, saying they were deeply concerned schools continue to be vandalised across the country, particularly in Eastern Cape, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
The party also said it has noted that the infrastructure programme has not performed at its best.
It also added that the Basic Education sector has not provided the ANC with details of the delivery of infrastructure against targets.
“On the average, 27 schools are delivered per annum through the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI),” said the ANC.
“The poor performance of infrastructure programmes and recurrent low expenditure have led to the decrease in budgetary allocations to
provinces.”
“At the current pace of infrastructure delivery maintenance, the current backlog of school infrastructure will not be eradicated.”
The conference also said it has noted the relocation of Early Childhood Development to the Department of Basic Education, adding that a lot of work was done, including putting systems in place to ensure that policies, laws and regulations are in place.
The transfer of the ECD from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Basic Education took place on 01 April 2022.
The conference reported that poor progress has been made by Basic Education, Departments of Social Development and Health to optimise Early Childhood Development with great emphasis on children with special needs.
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