The Eastern Cape is the worst-performing province in most of the categories covered by the 2017 School Monitoring Survey (SMS) released on Monday 8 April.
The province recorded the second highest percentage of teacher absenteeism in the country, with 12% of teachers marked absent daily. This means that of the 54 026 teachers in the Eastern Cape, an average of 6 483 is bunking school every day.
Meanwhile, a substantially lower proportion of primary and secondary schools in the Eastern Cape (64%), compared to the national average (78%), have all their teaching posts filled.
The survey showed that Eastern Cape teachers spent just 24 a year on professional development, way below the national average of 40 hours. Teachers in Gauteng (50 hours) and the Western Cape (76 hours) exceeded the national average, with the Western Cape the only province where the national target of 80 hours was nearly achieved.
School principals on average spent 43 hours per year on capacity development, with large variation evident among the provinces. Figures for principals from schools in Gauteng (77 hours) and the Western Cape (99 hours) were substantially higher than the national average, while those for principals from schools in the Eastern Cape (24 hours) were the lowest.
Across the country, approximately 62% of learners had access to a school library/media centre. Access to a library was much lower in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, and North West than in Free State, Gauteng and Western Cape.
The presence of the minimum set of 10 management documents was observed in just 13% of Eastern Cape schools. These same documents were present in 65% of Western Cape schools
Almost 60% of South African schools comply with nationally determined minimum physical infrastructure standards, compared with just 42% of Eastern Cape schools.
You can download the summary report of the 2017 School Monitoring Survey (SMS) released on Monday 8 April 2019 below. And you can read some local reaction to the survey here.
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