The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture is teaming up with its Basic Education counterpart to revive the school sport programme.

This follows a written parliamentary reply in which Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie was quizzed about his plans to tackle the slow pace of transformation within rugby, cricket and other sporting codes, which were not a true reflection of the country’s demographics.

In his reply, the minister said he would like to change the approach of doing the same things that were done before, otherwise there would be the same results.

“There has been an overemphasis over the years of focusing on what I might call ‘equality of outcome’ when it comes to transformation in sport – meaning that our society tends to look at the demographic profile of people who succeed at the upper and professional levels of sport, but by then it is already too late.

“What matters more is ‘equality of access’, which speaks to young people being able to participate and train in various sports from an early age on,” he said.

He said equality of access was the critical challenge.

“Already I have started the discussion with the department around building sporting facilities that can be located within accessible distance of clusters of schools, in such a way that we begin to turn around a statistic that shocked me when I first took on this role, and that is that only one in 10 schoolchildren are participating in sport.”

McKenzie noted that his department had held an indaba years ago where the sports sector adopted the National Sport and Recreation Plan as well as the Transformation Charter for South African Sport.

Nineteen targeted national federations signed agreements committing to meeting self-set transformation targets.

“Through an independent transformation committee, referred to as the Eminent Persons Group (EPG), the department has been monitoring and evaluating progress made by these 19 national federations in terms of their self-set transformation targets.”

He said the EPG reports have highlighted common areas that require attention to fast-track transformation in sport.

These were the revival of physical education and the school sport system.

The indaba had resolved that the Department of Basic Education should ensure that physical education was revived in schools.

McKenzie said his department has attempted the implementation of a School Sport Programme in partnership with the Department of Basic Education through a memorandum of understanding (MoU).

“However, this MoU expired last year, in May 2023, and underwent a review, which culminated in the hosting of a national school sport indaba. It was clear at the indaba that there has been little to no progress in establishing sustainable school sport leagues in less-privileged communities, which constitutes the vast majority of where our children are affected.

“A new MoU is currently being discussed between the two departments that will see intensive focus on the establishment of school sport leagues and setting of structures to manage those leagues,” he said.

National Teachers’ Union general secretary Doctor Ngema said the revival of school sports was a good initiative.

“It will help to keep youngsters away from the streets who have nothing to do after school.

“It may assist them to avoid getting into those things such as drugs. We appreciate it,” Ngema said.

Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie chief executive officer Paul Sauer said one of the reasons extramural activities were not diverse in public schools was due to emphasis on the Grade 12 pass rate.

Sauer said available time was used at public schools for additional classes in the form of weekend recaps, winter camps and Saturday classes.

“It means there is no necessary time for extramural programmes,” he said.

“We find the MoU to be positive, but extra-curricular and extramural programmes are non-negotiables. That is what we need to be able to get,” Sauer said.

Cape Times

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