THE Eastern Cape Education Department is pulling out all the stops to ensure that it improves its ailing education system.
The province once again finished at the bottom of the nine provinces in the senior certificate examination results, failing to reach the 70% target it had set.
Education MEC Mandla Makupula wants to reduce the number of education districts.
This move would see the 23 districts in the province reduced to 12.
He told Daily Sun: “We will realign our districts to be more educationally viable and aligned with government demarcation.
“Before the end of this financial year I should have approved a reduction of the districts.
“We can’t have two districts in one municipality like in Nelson Mandela Bay, where we have Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, which includes the Sarah Baartman Municipality,” he said.
“Although education is not the responsibility of municipalities, such alignment is in line with government’s wish to streamline and co-ordinate service delivery across the three spheres of government: national, provincial and local.
“In all these efforts, we are making sure that we match up to the expectation of our communities,” said Makupula.
DA shadow MEC for education Edmund van Vuuren said: “The DA welcomes the move but with some reservations and conditions.
“We are not opposing the move but are concerned that government wants to merge districts geographically.”