Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal Education Department has spent the past two days seeking solutions to a series of challenges at the 2011 KZN Education Summit.
MEC for Education Senzo Mchunu listed the most pressing issues his department faces, at the opening session of the three-day summit.
"We need to adjust to the new set of needs and challenges that face South Africa," said Mchunu.
The province, which has over 5900 government schools, is faced with a shortage of teachers particularly in maths and science. The MEC called for collaboration with universities in KZN to develop a model to address this issue.
Every year, KZN loses around 3500 educators to retirement, death and other circumstances and only recruit about 1800 teaching personnel.
He said the province cannot continue to complain about this situation and wants the summit to look into recruiting and training teachers, especially in rural schools to improve education levels.
Infrastructure backlogs still present a major problem in KZN. Although the education department receives a significant slice of the pie - around R28 billion - the MEC said improvements to infrastructure must come from outside sources.
"We have got to put pressure on ourselves and address the backlog," said Mchunu.
The level of managerial skills at schools is a problem that needs to be tackled immediately. The MEC said he received a phone call on Thursday with complaints that as early as 9am learners were playing cards at school as opposed to attending classes.
"Learners' core business is to learn and the teachers' core business is to teach whether it's raining or not and whether teachers have a small or full class," said Mchunu.
Last year, South African schools suffered as the public servants went on a devastating strike.
The MEC said while he understands that educators have a right to expect salary increases, all stakeholders namely government and the unions must work together to ensure there are no disruptions at schools.
He raised other issues that the education system faces, which includes nutritional and transport needs of children which keep some of them at home. Government has introduced programmes to deal with these advertises.
But Mchunu said the summit must still raise the effectiveness of these programmes and deliver sustainable solutions in problematic areas.
He also listed some of the goals set by the department for 2011.
He wants the overall pass rate for maths and science at Grade 12 level to be at 60 percent by the end of this year. The department is expecting this year's matric pass rate to sit at nothing less than 70.7 percent and higher.
The MEC said the summit intended on reflecting on points that President Jacob Zuma made about education in his State of the Nation Address on Thursday.
Zuma said government would focus on the three "Ts" - teachers, textbooks and time.
