Business Day *Motshekga hails Sadtu approach at congress* *Sue Blaine, Business Day, Johannesburg, 8 October 2010*BASIC Education Minister Angie Motshekga yesterday praised South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) leaders for emphasising the importance of teaching at the start of the union's congress in Boksburg.
Sadtu president Thobile Ntola --- in an unusually harsh tongue- lashing --- chastised teachers for ill-discipline and selfishness when he opened the congress on Wednesday.
Time is running out for SA to set to rights its weak education system, Ms Motshekga said.
The Department of Basic Education and South African society face a "major" challenge in their quest to provide SA's children with quality education, she said.
"It is not by accident that the (African National Congress) decided to make education an apex programme. It is precisely ... (because) this is still an outstanding business," she said.
The ruling party made education one of its three top priorities at its seminal 2007 Polokwane conference, and President Jacob Zuma 's Cabinet has reasserted this goal.
Quality education should be the norm, Ms Motshekga said.SA performs poorly in international tests of prowess in maths and reading, and at least one study shows 70% of SA's public schools are dysfunctional.
SA needs to "claw back" the broad social interest in education those opposed to apartheid had in the 1980s, when parents, pupils, teachers, academics and general society were united on the issue of SA's education future, Ms Motshekga said.
She called on Sadtu members to comment on her department's new curriculum and its assessment rules, and said plans drawn up separately by Sadtu and her department should be used to devise a comprehensive plan.
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