Pretoria - President Jacob Zuma will next week visit the Eastern Cape to assess the general state of education in the province, which has been facing a number of challenges.
Announcing the President's visit to the media, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said during the visit, Zuma will further assess progress made in the implementation of Section 100 (b) (1) and the delivery of quality basic education in line with Outcome 1.
"The Presidential monitoring and assessment on the delivery of Outcome 1 will anchor on the outputs to improve the quality of teaching and learning, undertake regular assessment to track progress, improve Early Childhood Development and ensure credible outcome - focusing on planning and accountability," Motshekga announced on Thursday.
During the visit on Tuesday, Zuma will go to several schools in the Amathole District and Buffalo Metro, where he would be accompanied by Cabinet ministers and members of provincial executive council.
He will interact with key role players in education and in wrapping up the visit he will take part in a special meeting with the Eastern Cape Executive Council.
Giving an update on department's intervention on Eastern Cape education, which has faced a number of problems - including amongst others, non-functioning school nutrition programme, lack of transport for pupils and poor management of systems and teachers on the wrong salary scale - Motshekga said progress has been made in some schools in the last three months.
On Wednesday, Motshekga went to the Eastern Cape, where she and Eastern Cape Education MEC Mandla Makhuphula signed a Memorandum of Understanding, setting out the details of an intervention.
"We will be actively involved in the province. The memorandum sets out the purpose, scope, methodology, monitoring, oversight, communications and duration of the intervention," Motshekga said.
Regarding the backlog in the education structure, Motshekga announced that national Treasury has provided funding for Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative to the value of R8.2 billion over the medium term budget framework, starting in 2011/12 financial year to deal with backlogs in education infrastructure.
"An amount of R700 million has been allocated for 2011/12; 60 percent (R420 million in the first year) is allocated for mud schools in Eastern Cape and 40 percent (R280 million in the first year), basic services for all provinces. The first batch of schools, 500 critical schools have been identified and costed.
"On sanitation, we are looking at 354 schools providing water to 188 schools and electricity to 231 schools across all provinces. The timeline for the completion of all projects is 31 March 2012," Motshekga said.
