Introduction

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure and honour that I stand here before
this august house to present the 2024/25 Policy and Budget Speech on behalf
of the Eastern Cape Department of Education.

Looking back, Madam Speaker, over the last decade, we have made
significant improvements in expanding access, participation, and equity in our
education system in the Eastern Cape. This administration will continue to
consolidate, expand, and accelerate this mandate by ensuring that education
remains the apex development imperative in accelerating the social
transformation and modernisation agenda of the province.

As tabled in this august house at the beginning of the sixth administration; our
singular focus, in the past five years, has been on improving on all facets of
teaching and learning in the province. This commitment is aligned to
government’s National Development Plan and commitments to other
internation convention such as Sustainable Development Goals of the United
Nations, and the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) of the
African Union.

Honourable members, the National Development Plan (NDP), enjoins us to
enhance “access to education and training of the highest quality, leading to
significantly improved learner outcomes by 2030”. It further enjoins us to
improve the “performance of South African learners in international
standardised tests should be comparable to the performance of learners from
countries at a similar level of development and with similar levels of access”.

Download policy speech here

Speaker: MEC Fundile Gade