The Western Cape’s education budget has risen by 10% to R6,5-billion, with the extra money to go to ”human capital”, provincial education minister Cameron Dugmore said on Tuesday.
Cameron, addressing the provincial legislature during his budget speech, reflected on past achievements and future challenges.
Among the achievements are resolving pupil overcrowding experienced at some schools, and averting the retrenchment of 1 800 teachers in the province.
New targets for April include sod-turning at seven new schools and for 320 schools to have computer labs.
On the challenges, Dugmore said the most pressing priorities are literacy and numeracy development, the building of more schools and transformation of the education sector.
”As far as grade R is concerned, we plan to ensure that every five-year-old in the province has access to quality grade R teaching by 2010, in terms of our human capital development strategy.
”There are currently about 52 000 children in grade R classes in the Western Cape. This means that we have to expand access to about 30 000 children over the next five years, at a rate of about 5 000 additional learners per annum.”
Grade R is reception grade just before grade one (what used to be sub A).
Dugmore said attention will also be paid to ensuring safety at schools, especially after a recent spate of violent incidents affecting both teachers and pupils.
He announced a comprehensive review of the safe schools programme, and vowed that the department will do everything it can to ensure safety.
This includes improving schools to ensure safer environments and extending the use of security firms that are already guarding certain schools.
Dugmore said he will also petition Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula in terms of the Firearms Act to declare public state schools gun-free zones, with 50 schools in the Western Cape already identified. — Sapa