part a: strategic overview - Department of Education

the relative share of the South African population accounted for by the Eastern Cape in 1996,
which was 15.5%. Migration impacts on the development of curriculum and the increased
demand for services and the delivery thereof. A system is required to manage rapid
urbanisation.
Table 26 shows the relative provincial populations according to the 1996 and 2001 Censuses.
The province that has most increased its share of the total South African population is
Gauteng, which went from 18.1% in 1996 to 19.7% in 2001. The decline in the Eastern
Cape’s share is the most significant of all provinces. There are several possible reasons for
this including outward migration in search in better economic opportunities, decreased fertility
(although there is no apparent reason why the Eastern Cape specifically should have
declining fertility) and perhaps a different methodology in the 2001 Census that led to reduced
counts. Overall, the population of the Eastern Cape grew by just 134 000 from 1996 to 2001,
an increase of 2.1%.
Table 9: Total Population by Province, 1996 and 2001 Census
Province Population 1996
% share of
National
Population
1996
Population 2001
% share of
National
Population
2001
Change in
National
share 1996 -
2000
Eastern Cape 6 302 524 15.5% 6 436 764 14.4% -1.2%
Free State 2 633 503 6.5% 2 706 774 6.0% -0.4%
Gauteng 7 348 425 18.1% 8 837 174 19.7% 1.6%
KwaZulu-Natal 8 417 020 20.7% 9 426 015 21.0% 0.3%
Limpopo 4 929 365 12.1% 5 273 639 11.8% -0.4%
Mpumalanga 2 800 710 6.9% 3 122 991 7.0% 0.1%
Northern Cape 840 323 2.1% 822 729 1.8% -0.2%
North West 3 354 824 8.3% 3 669 353 8.2% -0.1%
Western Cape 3 956 876 9.7% 4 524 341 10.1% 0.3%
Total 40 583 570 100% 44 819 780 100%
Since a national population census was conducted by Statistics South Africa in both 1996 and
2001, this allows for several interesting comparisons to be made over the six-year period.
Graph 1 compares provinces in terms of their population growth over this period, showing
which provinces experienced the greatest increase. The fact that the Eastern Cape has
experienced a relatively low rate of increase has implications for the provision of education in
the province – it implies that, unlike Gauteng, the demand for education has remained relatively
stable during this period and that there is unlikely to be a need to build new schools to meet
new demographic demand. This does not detract from an ongoing need to address existing
backlogs and, in some cases, to build new schools to improve access to education.
A challenge for the education system is to improve access to schooling, more especially to
secondary and further education and training facilities for the high number of non-urban.
5 Year ECDoE Strategic Plan for for 2005/06 2005-06 to to 2009/10. 2009-10. March 21 F (3) 2006 Page 58
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part C: background information