It has become evident that most school infrastructure in South Africa is in dire need of a facelift, and to ensure that learners are schooled in a proper learning environment, the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Council (PICC) has launched a national school build programme, Strategic Integrated Project 13 (SIP 13), which is driven by uniformity in planning, procurement and contract management, as well as by the provision of basic services.

Department of Basic Education (DBE) chief director for communication Panyaza Lesufi explains: “SIP 13 comprises two programmes: a suite of provincial programmes funded through the Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG) and the Equitable Share (ES) grant, and the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (Asidi), which is nationally driven.

“SIP 13 combines these two programmes into a comprehensive integrated schools build programme, with provincial and national levels of accountability more expressly defined and agreed on, and addresses the targets of the DBE’s sector plan, Action Plan to 2014: Towards the Realisation of Schooling 2025.”

SIP 13 was launched to deal with the major challenges that schools face through inter- ventions like replacing inappropriate school structures, providing basic services and addressing basic-services backlogs.

The programme will also focus on the national classroom, library, computer lab and administration building backlogs. Improving the learning environment will strengthen outcomes, especially at rural schools, and reduce overcrowding.

Publics Works Minister Thembelani Nxesi has expressed his commitment to working with the DBE and other stakeholders in rolling out SIP 13.

“The national school build programme aims to replace inappropriate school buildings, which have been a continuous issue that the DBE has been struggling with, to address the backlogs in refurbishing and rebuilding schools and classrooms and to provide basic services, as well as to ensure access to libraries, inform- ation and communication technologies, laboratories and sports facilities,” says Nxesi.

Over the next three years, the specific targets of the Asidi programme include rebuilding 510 schools that were built using inappropriate construction materials, providing basic sanitation and electricity for 939 schools and providing basic access to water for 1 145 schools for the first time.

In the 2011/12 and 2012/13 Budget years, the Asidi programme identified 49 inappropriate mud schools, which were to be replaced with new schools. Since 2012, the department has completed only 17 of them.

The programme also aims to provide electricity for 190 schools and has managed to electrify 131 schools nationwide thus far. It also aims to provide sanitation facilities for 237 schools, of which 196 have now received such facilities, and to provide 173 schools with access to water – to date, only 107 have received such access.

“In a very real sense, SIP 13 gives concrete expression to government’s commitment to prioritise education. While the building of safe and effective modern schools is an end in itself, we have also been reminded that SIP 13 forms a part of a much larger national infrastructure roll-out plan,” says Nxesi.

Budget and Funding
The suite of provincially planned and driven programmes, funded by the EIG, is underpinned by a national budget of R9.5-billion for the 2012/13 financial year, with 9 454 projects already at varying stages in the planning and delivery pipeline.

Over the past three years, the original allocation of funds was R24-billion and the budget has been adjusted to R23-billion.

“In certain provinces, there were instances of consistent underspending. The intention is to allow flexibility so that those provinces that perform can continue to do so, but greater intervention may be introduced where there is poor performance. This intervention could progress from increased capacitation to stronger monitoring and, where necessary, the centralisation of funding,” explains Lesufi.

The nationally driven Asidi programme is funded through a Schedule 7 conditional grant – the School Backlogs Infrastructure Grant. The programme targets the provision of water, sanitation and electricity for schools lacking any of these services and the eradication of inappropriate structures that include entire mud schools.

A total of R8.2-billion is allocated to the programme, of which R3.1-billion has been committed within the programmes being implemented through an expanded range of implementing agents.

The infrastructure focus is on basic safety issues, but learning, with regard to introducing and executing programmes of accelerated delivery, can be expanded to other programmes dealing with other infrastructure issues and targets. The programme intro- duces a holistic approach to school building, where the construction of a new school includes all the necessary equipment, furniture and range of facilities.

The DBE has been allocated a Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) budget for 2012 to 2015, with some pro- visional measures put in place, which covers the 2015 to 2016 period.

“Each budget allocation addresses the project targets recorded by the funding source and is monitored in the infrastructure reporting model,” says Lesufi.

Critical Areas
“Critical areas that the DBE should be looking at with great focus are the quality of school buildings; we are aware of the fact that school infrastructure that has been built in the last decade has not been able to sustain learners’ needs.

“The poor quality that many learners are subjected to is something that government needs to deal with. Toilets that were recently constructed in Limpopo were not built on proper foundations and during the rainy seasons the toilet structures collapsed. There has to be a proper assessment of quality during the roll-out of the national school build programme,” says public interest law centre Section 27 activist Mark Heywood.

He notes that another area that requires vital monitoring by government is the number of schools in each province. A monitoring system is important for government, especially for a project of this scale, he avers.

“During the course of our textbook litigation last year, we discovered that government did not know how many schools there were in Limpopo and that points to the fact that there is not a proper system for monitoring. Government cannot run such a programme on an ad hoc basis – there has to be a whole unit that will be set up especially for this, if it is to be a large-scale programme,” says Heywood.

In addition to infrastructure being a critical area for the DBE, the South African education system still faces challenges regarding a shortage of teachers and a lack of access to the Internet and reading material outside the school curriculum. These are necessities that many schools do not have.

In a VIP Executive Business briefing earlier this year, Heywood drew attention to a census conducted in 2009 by Stats SA, which showed that only 69% of schools had a maths teacher, less than 25% had a library, only 53% had computers and only 15% had access to email or the Internet. Work still had to be done, therefore, to ensure that all learners enjoyed proper facilities to ensure a proper learning environment and standard of education.

“Clearly, infrastructure within the schools is of the most critical areas that needs to be dealt with. You cannot have high-quality basic education in the modern era and still have schools that do not have Internet access.

“Honestly, we know how many schools have libraries and books outside their immediate curriculum. If we are unable to bridge this gap to cover some of these basics of haves and have nots, then we cannot provide a well-rounded, modern and globally competitive education system,” says Heywood.

Infrastructure Delivery
Infrastructure delivery management is being guided by the Infrastructure Delivery Management System (IDMS) toolkit. This IDMS toolkit constitutes the latest updated version of a set of how-to guidelines for infrastructure delivery and procurement management necessary to plan for, deliver, operate and maintain infrastructure, capacitate delivery managers and facilitate a uniform approach to infrastructure delivery management.

A key feature of the IDMS is the Gateway System, which has been designed to improve efficiencies in the management of infrastructure delivery. The system provides several control points in the infrastructure delivery life cycle, where a decision is required before proceeding to the next stage.

The Gateway System ensures that a project involving the design, construction, refurbishment, alteration, rehabilitation or maintenance of school buildings remains within agreed mandates, that it is aligned with the purpose for which it was intended and that it can progress successfully from one stage to the next.

With all these delivery structures in place, one can only hope that it runs according to schedule, as government is notoriously shy about setting targets because it seldom meets them, says Heywood.

He says government has no agreed norms and standards for school infrastructure and this will be a hindrance to effectively roll out the programme.

“How do you build a school if there is no agreed norms on how many toilets there should be? How do you build schools if there is no clear agreement on the amount of space that should be allocated to the building? The norms and standards for various aspects of school infrastructure are not a luxury, but a critical necessity for questions surrounding this school programme.”

In a written comment on the DBE Draft Regulations Relating to Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure, which was submitted on March 31, nongovernmental organisation Equal Education (EE) raised the issue that the Draft of Norms and Standards was neither legal nor appropriate.

The EE raised several concerns: the draft does not have figures relating to classroom sizes, the number of toilets required, the type of electricity and water supplies to be provided, and does not clarify or specify numerous other essential aspects of school infrastructure.

The draft does not provide provinces with clarity as to what is adequate and does not provide clear timeframes or mechanisms for accountability. The EE submission clearly states that these and other aspects of the draft fall short of the requirements of the Constitution, the South African Schools Act, the National Education Policy Act and the settlement agreement reached between the Minister and EE.

But the DBE says a programme of this magnitude has its challenges. Having two programmes that are nationally and provincially driven and funded through two different conditional grant funding streams can be difficult.

“The challenges that the education sector is faced with arise from the fact that SIP 13 falls under different areas of control and administrative responsibility and each challenge or family of challenges has been addressed by the DBE and its national and provincial sector partners by means of mitigation strategies and actions.

“For example, to address the varying degrees of capacity required by the nine provincial departments of education, a funding framework and an organisational framework approved by the Department of Public Service and Administration has been introduced to prime the establishment of those specific skills considered essential for each provincial department to carry out its functions in meeting the planning and delivery of educational services and facilities in line with the IDMS,” says Lesufi.

One challenge that is being addressed by the DBE is the quality of the information contained in the National Education Infrastructure Management System. The database was established during 2006/7 and has been progressively verified and updated through several interventions. The database will be up to date by September, after the completion of a major update.

“The Asidi programme, for instance, has been hampered by professional service providers having been liquidated. Similarly, whenever there is a massive construction project taking place, ‘enterprising’ businesspeople tend to see short-term opportunity leading to higher prices than planned for by contractors, which impacts on cash flow. Worse, shortages of good-quality building materials, such as bricks and doorframes, also hamper progress. This means that work stops while a termination and, sometimes, an arbitration process takes place or while procurement processes are followed,” explains Lesufi.

The DBE, in implementing the SIP 13 programme, engages with numerous other line-function departments. These include the Department of Water Affairs for the provision of water in education facilities; the Department of Human Settlements for the provision of sanitation and forward-planning information pertaining to the introduction of new human settlements that require new schools; the Department of Energy for energy requirements, especially where the grid is not readily accessible; as well as the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs for integrating all services and planning for schools at municipal level. The DBE is also working with power utility Eskom for the provision of electricity in schools.

Numerous implementing agents are also appointed by the DBE and its nine provincial departments of education. These include the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Department of Public Works through the Independent Development Trust, the Coega Development Corporation, the Mvula Trust, the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research, Umhlathuze Water and Ithala, concludes Lesufi.