PRESENTATION TO THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON BASIC EDUCATION

1. PRESENTATION TO THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON BASIC EDUCATION POLICY ON THE ORGANISATION, ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDUCATION DISTRICTS 19 FEBRUARY 2013

2. INTRODUCTION • On 5 March 2012, the Minister of Basic Education published a call for comments on the Policy on the Organisation, Roles and Functions of Education Districts in the Government Gazette (Government Notice 180 of 2012). • All interested persons and organizations were invited to comment on the proposed policy. • The closing date for comments was 18 May 2012. • A committee was constituted to review the public comments and to incorporate/amend the policy accordingly.

3. ORGANIZATION THAT COMMENTED

4. REVIEW COMMITTE • All the comments submitted were supportive of the draft policy. • The committee made the following additional amendments to improve the policy document: • Legal authority of the Minister to determine policy; • Functions of a circuit office to complete the concept of an education district; and • Redrafting some of the sections to clarify aspects for further clarification of intentions of the policy, e.g. the section on ‘Support., Co-ordination and Monitoring of Districts’ and the ‘Conclusion’. • The three documents that initially accompanied the draft policy have been withdrawn as the core responsibility/job descriptions and appointment requirements of office based educators have to be submitted ton the ELRC for negotiation and adoption.

5. LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY • The Minister of Basic Education has the legal authority to determine policy in terms of section 3 of National Education Policy Act 1996 (Act No 27 of 1996). • Section 4 of the Act provides for directive principles of national education policy contemplated in section 3. • In terms of section 5 of the National Education Policy, Act 1996 (Act No 27 of 1996), the Minister of Basic Education is required to determine the policy after consultation with such appropriate consultative bodies as have been established for that purpose in terms of s11 of the NEPA 1996 or any other applicable law, and with the Council of Education Ministers.

6. LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY (CONT) • Education Districts are part of the provincials sphere of government; • They have no original powers of functions prescribed by law, but operate in terms of national and provincial legislation and provincial delegates; • This policy does not propose changing the legal position of education districts; • Rather it provides a common approach, approved by CEM, to the demarcations, organisation, staffing, delegation of authority and resourcing of education district across all PEDs;

7. LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY (CONT) • In each province the power to demarcate, name and organise education districts vests with the MEC for education; • The MEC also determines districts’ public service staff establishment in terms of the Public Service Act, 1994 (PSA) and the educator staff establishment in terms of the Employment of Educators Act, 1998 (EEA); • An MEC must determine the educator establishment of a province subject to national post provisioning norms; and • Staffing matters such as post provisioning and remuneration are subject to continuous adjustment through political agreements in the appropriate bargaining chamber, in terms of the relevant labour legislation.

8. MANDATE AND SCOPE OF THE POLICY • Education district offices have a pivotal role in ensuring that all learners have access to education of progressively high quality, since district offices are the link between Provincial Education Departments (PEDs), their respective education institutions and the public. •  This policy provides a national framework for the organisation and staffing of education district offices and the delegated authority, roles and responsibilities of district officials for the institutions within their care.

9. THE RATIONALE FOR THE POLICY • Many district offices are unable to fulfil their core functions due to the following factors: • Too many education institutions in a district; • The respective delegated authority, roles, relationships and lines of accountability of provincial head offices, district offices and education institutions are not clearly formulated, understood and exercised; • Some district offices do not have delegated authority to plan and develop their programmes, manage their own budgets and recruit or deploy staff members in their own offices or in education institutions; and • Post-provisioning is uneven and does not reflect the responsibilities entrusted to district offices.

10. SCOPE OF THE POLICY • This policy provides: • a uniform nomenclature; • Roles of Education Districts; • norms for district and circuit size taking into account local circumstances; • District and Circuit organisation and function; • Delegated Authority; and • District Staffing.

11. LIMITATIONS OF THE POLICY • The district development policy will not eliminate deep-seated socio-economic inequality among the communities that district offices serve. • On its own the policy cannot provide the conditions to ensure that all schools function well. • It is not a substitute for ensuring that all schools meet national standards of infrastructure, services, equipment, learning materials, IT connectivity and teaching quality.

12. NOMENCLATURE • The following standard nomenclature will apply in all provinces in order to provide a uniform and consistent basis for policy: • Education district; • District office; • District Director; • Education circuit; • Circuit office; • Circuit Manager; and • Subject Adviser.

13. ROLE OF EDUCATION DISTRICT OFFICES • District offices, supported by their circuit offices, have four main roles, which they must execute with due priority being given to the schools most in need of their services: • Planning; • Support; • Oversight and accountability; and • Public engagement. • Priority to be given to the schools most in need of district services.

14. DISTRICT AND CIRCUIT BOUNDARIES • Cabinet resolved, in 2007, that all service departments should endeavour to align their functional boundaries to the constitutionally proclaimed municipal boundaries. • Alignment must make educational sense. • The appropriate alignment will depend significantly on local conditions such as: • Settlement patterns; • Social history (including the impact of apartheid Group Areas legislation); • Terrain; • Distances; • Rurality; and • Road and rail links.

15. CIRCUIT AND DISTRICT SIZE NORMS • National Norms that regulate the respective size of an education district and circuit to be established to ensure effective service delivery and appropriate span of control. • The National norms are as follows: • An education circuit office must be responsible for no less than 15 and no more than 30 schools; and •  An education district must comprise no less than 5 and no more than 10 education circuits. • It follows that no district should have fewer than 75 schools or more than 300 schools. • Factors, including geographical, staff and financial implications to be taken into account in establishing norms.

16. CIRCUIT AND DISTRICT SIZE NORMS (CONT) • To guard against the maximum limit becoming a de facto norm, two other norms will apply: •  In any district the average number of schools per circuit must not exceed 25; and •  In any province the average number of schools per district must not exceed 250.

17. SUPPORT, CO-ORDINATION AND MONITORING OF DISTRICTS • Provincial Heads of Department (HoDs) are accountable for the performance of their district education offices. • HoDs must ensure that district and circuit offices are progressively organised, staffed and resourced to undertake the functions envisaged in this policy. • A clear and efficient organisational links and channels of communication between provincial head offices and district offices are essential. • A strong planning culture must be exhibited by provincial head offices and district offices alike. • The organisational culture of PEDs and district offices (including their circuit offices) needs to encourage, expect and reward collaboration across functional areas.

18. DISTRICT ORGANISATION AND FUNCTIONS • Each district office should be organised in teams to deliver and report on a core basket of services. • The precise composition of each team and its functions may vary from district to district but they will tend to resemble the following: • District Curriculum Support Team; • District Management and Governance Support Team; • District Learner Support Team; • District Examination and Assessment Team; and • District Operations Team.

19. DELEGATIONS • The following delegations are essential for district effectiveness. • Human resource management; • School governance; and • Financial management. • Delegations must be: • Communicated by letter to the delegate; • Circulated within the PED, published on the PED’s website and made available, on request, to a principal, SGB chairperson or member of the public; • Clear and precise; • Appropriate to the function concerned; • Consistent with the appropriate legislation; • Accompanied by sufficient resources; • Subject to appropriate limitations; and • Accompanied by a reporting schedule.

20. CIRCUIT OFFICE ORGANISATION AND FUNCTIONS • The circuit office is a field office of the district office headed by the Circuit Manager. • It is the closest point of contact between education institutions and the PED. • A circuit office is generally a small unit comprising a Circuit Manager, professional and support staff. • In view of the vital importance of the early years of schooling, circuit offices need their own specialist Subject Advisers to support teachers in the primary school phases. • In some cases PEDs may establish specialist secondary teams at circuit level, depending on local needs and the availability of the appropriate secondary Subject Advisers and financial resources.

21. CIRCUIT OFFICE ORGANISATION AND FUNCTIONS (CONT) • The core functions of the circuit office are to: • Provide a channel of communication between the district office and education institutions; • Provide management support to education institutions; • Provide administrative services to education institutions; • Facilitate training for principals, SMTs and SGBs; • Monitor the functionality of education institutions; • Provide curriculum support to grade R practitioners and primary grade teachers; • Facilitate visits of specialist district teams to secondary schools; and • Report to the district office.

22. STAFFING DISTRICT OFFICES • The MEC in a province determines staff establishments for district offices subject to the PSA and the EEA. • The main purpose in establishing district post provisioning norms is to ensure that districts in all provinces have at least the minimum staffing level required to support schools. • The district post provisioning norms for educator staff must be established using tools provided in the Personnel Administrative Measures ( PAM) determined by the Minister in terms of EEA and the Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD) agreed in the ELRC (Collective Agreement No.1 of 2008).

23. STAFFING DISTRICT OFFICES • The model of post provisioning has two components: • the parameter by which the staffing level of a particular function is expressed. For example: staffing needs will be expressed in terms of the number of learners, educators or schools to be served, depending on the function; • the factor that takes into account the context or circumstances of a particular district. Two salient factors have been selected: • Distance: The distance that district officials need to travel to schools. This factor will contribute a maximum of 10% additional posts. • Poverty: Schools serving poor communities require additional support to ensure quality education. This factor will contribute a maximum of 5% additional posts.

24. DISTRICT SUPPORT Districts are receiving support to improve their Planning, implementation and monitoring responsibilities.

25. PROVINCIAL AND DISTRICT ROAD SHOWS The DBE is conducting provincial and District Road shows meeting with Subject Advisors, Circuit Managers and Teacher Development officials to share information on: • Analysis of ANA and NCS results plus their technical reports; • DBE intervention strategies; • Roles and responsibilities of Subject Advisors; • Roles and responsibilities of Circuit Managers; • Roles and responsibilities of HoDs; • Monitoring of curriculum coverage by Subject Advisors; and • Monitoring of basic school functionality by Circuit Managers.

26. DISTRICT IMPROVEMENT PLANS Analysis of submitted DIPs demonstrate a need for a common understanding of what a DIP should entail: • Alignment the Minister’s Delivery Agreement and Action Plan to 2014; • They should be based on a clear understanding of their own provincial priorities, strategies and targets; • Districts should use the NSC and ANA results as the basis of their planning; • The plans should have identified causes of poor performance, e.g. lack of content knowledge, management of the curriculum, etc; and • Realistic and achievable targets be set.

27. ANALYSIS • Consideration should be given to the available capacity within the district to turn the situation around; • DIPs should be based on Annual Academic Report from schools; and • The provisioning and retrieval of textbooks should be a priority for districts.

28. NECESSITY FOR THE GUIDE ON DIPS • In view of the above findings, it has therefore become necessary for the DBE to develop a national guide, without being too prescriptive, on the structure and the content of the DIP. • The aim is to give an outline that will help to improve existing procedures in order to help districts show improvement towards the national average in terms of ANA and NSC results. • It also aims to provide districts with a common way of describing the processes and protocols of practice and to give direction to, support and enhance the improvement of planning process as well as provide a continuum of practice that allows districts to identify gaps that exist between where they are in their current practice and where they want to be.

29. STRENGTHENING MONITORING • The DBE has developed monitoring tools in consultation with districts. There are monitoring tool developed for each term of the school calendar and a monitoring tool for districts. The DBE, PEDs and districts will use the same monitoring tool for schools during school visits. The district tool is for the DBE and PEDs to monitor the support provided by districts to schools. The tools contained in the booklet are as follows: • Monitoring tool for term 1; • Monitoring tool for term 2; • Monitoring tool for term 3; • Monitoring tool for term 4; and • Monitoring tool for districts.

30. THE DIPS TEMPLATE • Focus area/area of intervention; • Gaps identified; • Plans/strategies; • Activities/steps to be taken; • Target; • Performance/success indicator; • Budget; • Time frame; • Progress; and • Responsibility.

31. SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN (CONT) • Districts has to monitor the quality and implementation of the SIP. • IQMS Annual reports shows that districts providing little or no feedback on the quality and content of SIPs submitted by schools. Follow-up on progress of the SIP seldom occurred. • A standardized SIP template is currently being developed. • Mechanisms will be introduced in 2013 to monitor SIP implementation.

32. ENHANCING TEACHER CENTRES AND THEIR USE BACKGROUND: 1. The (DBE) regards Teacher Centres (TCs) as strategic structures/sites that play a key role in providing support to teachers for effective curriculum delivery at the local level. 2. In 2012, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) commissioned an audit of all TCs in the 9 provinces with a view to enhancing the functionality of these TED structures. • In addition, the DBE developed Draft Norms and Standards for Teacher Centres which will assist in ensuring that uniformity exists across all the TCs and also guide further strengthening of the Centres. 3. The audit shows shown that there are 112 TCs in the country which vary in terms of resourcing, size, and level of functionality.

33. SPREAD OF TCs IN THE COUNTRY

34. KEY FINDINGS IN THE AUDIT REPORT • The report shows that the state of facilities varies across the TCs. • the picture regarding the availability of staff, budgets, equipment, resources and communication technologies/systems show that while some centres are doing very well, many of them need strengthening to get optimum performance from them. • The programmes and their reach needs more work from PEDs and Districts.

35. IMPLEMENTATION PLAN – 2013/15 • DBE has started a support programme to PEDs that involves linking 9 Vodacom sponsored ICT enabled centres to the 112 DBE centres: • The programme involves ICT connectivity and teacher development support to a 180 (20 schools per centre) surrounding schools; • This will enable the 112 Teacher Centres to be linked to the Digital Classroom (“ICT Cloud”) and give teachers the opportunity to download teacher support materials (e.g. lesson plans, information on content subjects and teacher support guides); • Work towards adding a further schools in the country on the VODACOM Teacher Resource Centre ICT network;

36. IMPLEMENTATION PLAN – 2013/15 (CONT) • Digitise existing teacher support materials which are not yet in digital form to make it readily available to the teachers through the TCs. • Electronic devices which will be used to store digital content on school subjects. • The DBE is forging a collaboration with UNISA on an initiative funded by DHET aimed at resourcing 35 TCs with ICT equipment for teacher support; and • Planning to link teacher education campuses to teacher centres is underway.

37. CONCLUSION • Education district offices are the indispensable local hub of service provision to education institutions in a province. • Their role is well recognised in education policy documents and departmental programmes, including Schooling 2025, and in the National Development Plan. • This policy is designed to enable all district offices to perform according to expectations. • This will happen only if the policy is implemented purposefully and progressively according to each province’s needs and circumstances. • It is anticipated that implementation of the above named initiatives/activities will provide rich opportunities for teacher development that will improve curriculum delivery.