Zuma: Education is priority number one

President Jacob Zuma on Friday told more than a thousand school principals that education was priority number one for his administration and said he would visit schools unannounced to check if teachers taught for seven hours a day and that pupils were attending classes.

‘We have essentially come together to launch a new drive to truly change the learning, teaching and management of our schools,” Zuma told 1 500 school principals from throughout the country at Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre.

“As part of active performance monitoring and evaluation, I will visit some schools unannounced to check if the non-negotiables are being adhered to,” he said.

Zuma said one of the non-negotiables was to ensure teachers taught for seven hours every school day.

“Teachers should be in school, in class, on time, teaching, with no neglect of duty and no abuse of pupils.

“Some of our teachers should know that Fridays and pay days are ordinary school working days.”

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande, and education ministers from all the provinces were attending the conference.

The conference was aimed at giving school principals an opportunity to tell the president of problems affecting their schools.

Zuma said he had wanted to meet all school principals but he had been told it would be impossible as South Africa had 27 000 school heads.

Zuma said the meeting was an acknowledgement that wonderful policies that had been implemented since 1994 had not led to the delivery of quality education for the poor.

‘The question that we must answer today is why our policies have failed to deliver excellence and what we should do about it.”

He said the importance of education in his administration was demonstrated by the fact that the Department of Education had been separated into basic and higher education.

Zuma said the mini imbizo was the launch of an ongoing interaction with principals and key delivery agents in the department.

Follow-up talks in provinces would be hosted by premiers and provincial ministers, Zuma said. The president would also attend them when possible.

When Zuma took over the presidency, he said it was unfair that the president only met principals of tertiary education and not school principals.—Sapa