Just one teacher training centre opened in three years
09 July 2014
A reply to a DA parliamentary question has revealed that in the past three financial years, only one additional teacher education campus in South Africa, at the former Ndebele College of Education in Siyabuswa, has been opened.
It was also revealed that a bid for funding to support the development of new teacher education campuses was denied by the National Treasury.
In the budget currently before the committee, to be voted on this month, there seem to be no additional funds available to the department to rectify this very worrying trend.
This failure to invest in such a critical component of our children's education is simply unacceptable. I will accordingly write to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training, Yvonne Phosa, urging her to summon both the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, and the Minister of Finance, Nhlanhla Nene, to explain the reasons for this failure to allocate enough funding.
I will also call on the committee to make a formal recommendation that this lack of budget be rectified before the budget comes up for debate this month.
Should this request not be heeded, I will also submit a range of questions to the National Treasury so as to ascertain the reasoning behind its consistent failure to allocate adequate funding to teacher training in particular and Higher Education in general.
The severe shortage in trained teachers in South Africa is a central cause of the poor quality of education being delivered to our children. We cannot hope to rectify this, and fill key vacancies in our education system, if we do not provide enough money to training teachers.
If the ANC in Parliament is at all serious about the education of future generations, they will join the DA in doing whatever is possible to ensure a change in the Higher Education budget before it voted on.
We owe it to our children to make sure this happens, and soon.
Statement issued by Belinda Bozzoli MP, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, July 9 2014
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