Sue Blaine
26 July 2007
Johannesburg — WESTERN Cape's education department is interviewing candidates for "about 50" senior management positions.
Education MEC Cameron Dugmore said yesterday this was part of a R159m , three-year "redesign" that included adding a new branch, hiring senior management officials and giving district offices more staff.
The refit was prompted by substantial changes in national education policy, and the introduction of provincial government strategies to grow the Western Cape economy.
These economic strategies gave the education department increased responsibility to widen the province's skills base partly by improving its less than satisfactory matric endorsement (exemption) rate, and improve its matric-level mathematics and science pass rates, especially among black and coloured pupils, he said.
On average only 13% of pupils at former house of representatives (coloured) and former department of education and training (black) learners obtain matric endorsement, compared with 52% at former CED (white) schools, and "very few" black and coloured candidates passed science on higher grade, he said.
Also, for the past five years the department had been contending with a 30% vacancy rate, which had compromised service delivery, Dugmore said.
R50m had been set aside for disbursement in the 2007-08 fiscal year, which would allow for the filling of senior management posts -- Dugmore's spokesman, Gert Witbooi, put the number of posts to be filled at about 50 -- and "initial" resourcing of district offices.
The national education department said last year that district offices were the weak link in the education system. The department had conducted an assessment of district offices, and found districts could not fulfil their core functions because of a lack of skills, resources, personnel, technology, equipment and funding, the department said last September.
Seventy percent of the R159m set aside for the redesign was to be spent on district offices, Dugmore said.
"The first round of interviews ... is almost complete, and we will make an announcement as soon as (the provincial cabinet) has cleared all the appointments. Thereafter a second round of filling of posts will commence on middle-management level."
Dugmore said it was clear that, while many schools in the province were "excelling in their matriculation results and various other measures of performance", teachers needed significant additional support if the province's 947815 pupils in public primary and high schools were to reach their full potential.
The departmental redesign included a "new brand" of circuit team within the district office.
Each team would be dedicated to 30 schools and would include curriculum advisers, special needs education professionals, professional support for institutional management and for school-based management, a psychologist, a social worker, a learning support adviser, an institutional management governance adviser and an administrative development adviser.
The provincial education department caters for 30872 teachers at 1452 public schools, 70 "special needs" schools and 446 subsidised primary schools, six further education and training colleges and 112 adult community learning centres.
The changes were also aimed at making the department more demographically representative, Witbooi said.
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