1. HON. Members, the Minority Front acknowledges the report of the Chairperson, HON. Hlongwa on the 2017 School Functionality Programme.
2. A key observation from the Minority Front is that the school transformation programme is very slow and HON. MEC, this House deserves an executive statement on this programme before we undertake the next School Functionality Programme in 2018.
3. HON. Speaker previously reported social ills are on the rise in schools, many of these continue to disadvantage female learners.
4. The Minority Front would like to see more attention to policies that affect gender equality in education which would improve school functionality in the outer years e.g. biased treatment, harassment, sexist stereotypes in educational content and similarly boys face certain issues that causes more grade repetition or drop-out rates.
5. As female legislators, HON. Members we too need role-models for girls’ academic success. I appreciate our female teachers who impart powerful confidence in young girls in all schools visited.
6. HON. Members, we need a social/health intervention category e.g. to curb pregnancy. We need to see the plan of care by the school and we need to send in the School Health Team to assess the situation.
7. I recommend focus now on policies for gender equality noting that the department puts a lot of resources into equity using the Quintile System but we have all seen that the most money does not give us the best academic results so we need to improve school functionality by dropping the Quintile System of funding and in the future by reporting on teaching and learning content, whilst infrastructure programmes should be centralised. Hence, a policy paradigm shift is required HON. Members.
8. Thank you.

Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi

Minority Front Leader (KZN Legislature)