Dept plans to delegate duty of primary education to districts

With the government’s aim of transferring functions to provinces and districts, the Education Department has plans to delegate the responsibility of early childhood learning and primary education to the lower level of government, Education Minister Nick Kuman says.
Kuman revealed this during his presentation to the Leaders’ Summit last week.
He urged MPs to make use of their district service improvement programme (DSIP) funds for a complete district education system.
“Every ward should have an elementary school, there are about 3863. In 2012 of the 3863 wards, 3300 had an elementary school which represented 80 per cent.
“By 2018 we had 3616 wards with elementary schools which indicated a growth of 93.6 per cent. So we still have to look at the 30 per cent to have an elementary in a ward.
“Every local level government (LLG) should have a minimum of one primary school, the 324 LLGs had 2280 primary schools in 2012.
“In 2018, there were 2517 primary schools in the LLGs. The 324 LLGs had only 83 high schools in 2012; in 2018 there were 126 high schools and we still have a lot of work to do in establishing high schools.
“Secondary schools – of 87 districts, 70 had a secondary school in 2018.
“For the next four years we must give a complete district education system,” Kuman said.
“We must follow the 1-6-6 structure by having pre-school, primary school grades 1 to 6, junior school from grades 7 to 10 and senior high school from grades 11 and 12 all in a district.
“That district must also have a Flexible Open Distance Education (Fode) Centre and a vocational training centre, depending on population.
“Every district must have a complete education system.
You cannot forget about Fode and vocational centres because we will lose a lot of our children there.”
“The proposal is that the government invests the DSIP into education where you have a complete cycle where there is a net that will catch every child that comes out goes into every level of school.”
Kuman said in the next four years, all the elementary schools would be phased out with grades 1 and 2 moved into primary schools and grades 7 and 8 into high schools.
“In that way we will be able to achieve a better quality education system at the primary level,” he said.