Pretoria - President Jacob Zuma should address challenges facing education, including school infrastructure, in the State of the Nation Address (SONA), said the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu).
President Zuma will deliver the 2013 SONA at 7pm today.
“[The address] should ensure that teaching learners under trees or mud schools is unlawful,” said the union in its expectations of tonight’s address in Parliament.
Sadtu is hoping that the President speaks to the issue of increasing education funding to above 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product. The union also wants the President to provide a deadline for the building of school infrastructure.
Equal Education -- a movement of children, parents as well as teachers working for quality and equality in education -- said that major advances had been made in education since 1994, including the provision of meals to learners through the nutrition programme.
“Today in the SONA we hope President Jacob Zuma will address the issue of education in South Africa. To address the inequalities that exists within the education system and to ensure that learners receive quality education,” the group said.
Equal Education also expressed concern at the level of mud schools that still exist in the country.
According to the government statistics, the National Education Infrastructure Management Systems (NEIMS) Report, published by the DBE in May 2011, of the 24 793 public ordinary schools, there are over 495 inappropriate schools (mud schools) in the country.
In October 2012, President Jacob Zuma opened 49 schools in the Eastern Cape as part of the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Committee and the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI).
The ASIDI initiative aims to supplement the provincial school infrastructure programmes as well as eradicate all mud schools.
The movement also called for teacher development to be mandatory, while also ensuring that all principals and deputies are trained in holistic school management. – SAnews.gov.za
