Prepared text of the speech by Wilmot James MP, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, in the Debate on the President's State of the Nation Address, February 15 2011:

Now is the time to stand up for our children and give them a chance for the future

It is well known, Mr. President, that you care about the education of our children.

Jeremy Gordin quotes you as saying that ‘without education one is like a warrior without weapons.'

The fact is that there is a gap that lies between what you say and what your education officials do.

You say teachers should be in school. Many walk the street.
You say that teachers should be on time. Many arrive late and leave early.
You say that every child must receive textbooks on time. The workbooks arrived 3 weeks late. Textbooks for 2012 will arrive late.

The 2010 strike had teachers absent from school for several weeks. For many, a slack attitude to work persists.

Mr. President, you celebrated the 2010 matric examination results. But we all know that the results are suspect. Schools kept the weak Grade 11 students back. 80,000 full-time students were turned into part-time students. Part-timers do not count in the statistics.Umalusi practiced grade inflation by pushing up marks to make many pass who would otherwise have failed.

Universities will have to cope with more underprepared students. Instead of refining the minds of competent students, lecturers are turned into remedial teachers, trying to fix a problem created by the schools.

There are very good schools and they are not all in middle class areas. There are very good teachers and they are not all in former Model C or private schools.

Yet the fact is that schooling is crippled in many parts of the country. The fact is that schooling is poor where the trade unions are strong.

SADTU President Thobile Ntola says that ‘many managers managing the department of education are from our fold'. To his surprise he says ‘yet things are falling apart'. He says that schools ‘are dysfunctional' and then makes the startling admission that ‘most of them are managed by us'.

Mr. Ntola says that teachers should be measured not by how well they teach but rather by whether they are ‘good revolutionaries'.

Mr. Ntola says that children missing school is a mere ‘inconvenience'.
Mr. Ntola says negotiations are to be ‘used to create a state of panic to the employer' and ‘in the public sector, panic is the creation of instability'.
Mr. Ntola says that Minister Motshekga's ‘education management has mastered all the evils of bureaucracy ... we have dishonest management ... deceitful and talentless ... useless and lazy.'

The fact is that your provincial education ministers in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga are undermining your education agenda by doing a deal with SADTU, which results in teachers being absent from school, teachers who are late for school, teachers who take endless amounts of leave, who, in short, neglect their duty and who cannot teach.

You have to stand up to SADTU, Mr. President.
You cannot remain silent on SADTU, Mr. President.
You have to face down SADTU, Mr. President.

You must boldly support Minister Angie Motshekga and rescue her department from the stranglehold of the ever-interfering SADTU. Mr. President, you need to stand up for parents, who want a good education for their children, and not stand up for the union bosses in SADTU.

You need to stand up for students, who want to learn so that they can grasp opportunities, not the bosses of SADTU. You need to stand up for teachers, who are committed to educating our children, not the bosses of SADTU.

Most of all, you need to stand up for our children, without whom there is no future, no democracy and no growth, and not stand up for the union bosses of SADTU who treat them as fodder in their revolution.

What is to be done?

Appoint a salaries' commission for educators.
Pay merit salaries to those who excel.
Reward teachers who obtain additional qualifications.
Work bad teachers out of the system.
Train better teachers and more of them.
Put teachers in front of a classroom of reasonable size in working schools.

Mr. President you put teacher development on the table and that is a very good start. But it is not good enough. Mr. President, if you really care about education then tell us, tell us in your reply, what you are going to do about SADTU? Tell us what you are going to do about the service conditions, salaries and wage bargaining system for teachers that cripples education?

Tell us Mr. President.
The nation needs to know.
The nation deserves to know.
The nation is entitled to know.

Issued by the Democratic Alliance, February 15 2011

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