The department of basic education will save more than R20m on the reduction of stockpiling of food items.

This was announced by minister of basic education Angie Motshekga in Pretoria on Monday following her meeting with the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) which took place on Thursday last week to discuss a number of topics affecting the basic education sector.

Motshekga said among the things that were approved by the CEM was the reduction of orders for school nutrition for pupils in high school by 10% during examination times.

"It is estimated that the reduction of stockpiling of food items will save the department a whopping R20.6-million per year. This amount could be re-allocated and re-invested into the national school nutrition programme.

"The money can be used for purchasing food utensils or during the support programmes mid and at the end of the year. However, the reduction of food stock will not apply to quintile 1 to 3 [no-fee schools] and farm schools," Motshekga said.

She said the decision was in line with the government's objectives of ensuring efficiency in using available resources. It has also been approved that in the 2022 school calendar that schools will close a week later than the previous year to ensure the protection of learning and teaching time.

"Learners will be subjected to entrepreneurship and employability education where learners will benefit from core skills of critical thinking and problem solving and creativity and innovation, collaboration and teamwork, communication and digital literacy which are skills for a changing world," Motshekga said.

Motshekga said the implementation of the quality management system was well under way. "This system is designed to measure the performance of educators in line with their respective roles and responsibilities," Motshekga said. She also warned public schools not to turn away undocumented pupils as they may be faced with litigation.