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Plans to get more children to school

July 26, 2010 in Education, South Africa | No comments

Government has unveiled plans to get more than 200 000 children between the ages of seven and 15 to school by 2014.

President Jacob Zuma, speaking after a mid-year Cabinet Lekgotla on Thursday, said the plan will be achieved by increasing the number of no-fee schools while widening feeding schemes to assist children from poor families.

“There will also be a drive to ensure that teachers are in class, teaching for the allocated school time. The delivery agreements have been negotiated with all the key stakeholders including provincial education departments and the trade unions,” Zuma said.

He said the Lekgotla, which was attended by Cabinet members, Premiers and MECs, agreed that to improve the quality of basic education, there was a need for a focus on the quality of teaching to improve results.

“In order to achieve this we will be providing all schools with appropriate learner and teacher support material such as lesson plans, work books, and textbooks to ensure proper coverage of the curriculum,” said Zuma.

Meanwhile, health authorities have reached about 90 percent of children under the age of five for polio immunisation across the country while 95 percent between the ages six months and 14 years have been immunised for measles.

Source: BuaNews, cap.org.za

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Extra lessons for Gauteng’s underperforming schools

May 20, 2010 in Education, South Africa | No comments


The Gauteng Education Department will provide extra lessons for matric students in underperforming schools to improve the matric results across the province.

The lessons, which will be run throughout the June and July 2010 mid-year break as well as during the September school holidays, will target learners from 276 underperforming schools and include classes in subjects such as Maths, Maths Literacy, Accounting, Physical Science, Life Sciences, and English First Additional Language.


Education MEC Barbara Creecy said the programme has been running on a pilot basis since 14 April this year and has attracted widespread support from learners in the affected schools.

She said that standardised lesson plans, including exercises and tests have been developed specially for the programme by experts and are distributed to each site for each session.


“Tutors selected to participate in the programme have a proven track record of good results in the six targeted subjects and the department has deployed special monitoring teams to ensure that the programme runs effectively and that quality teaching and learning happens,” Creecy said.

She said that the department conducted research in January to fully understand where it needed to target matric improvement interventions.


“Out of 30 397 learners who failed matric in 2009, two out of three came from the schools targeted by this programme, all these schools achieved a less than 70 percent matric pass rate last year.

“We further analysed subject pass rates for all subjects offered by the department at matric level and out of 79 subjects offered, six subjects accounted for the bulk of the failures,” Creecy explained.


She added that if a greater number of learners were to further their educational and career opportunities, the department needed to focus on 276 schools and provide assistance to learners in the six subjects.

The programme will run over a four-year period while the department increases the capacity of the schools and educators to improve learner performance.

Source: BuaNews, e4africa.co.za, businessdailyafrica.com, myhero.com

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Walk with your kids to school

January 29, 2010 in Environment Tips | No comments

Many children live close enough to school to walk, but time constraints and safety concerns put parents off. Instead of driving your children the few blocks, create the time to walk with them. You could double this up with walking the dog, or getting some exercise. You and your child get to spend quality time together, you save money on fuel, and you save the environment by reducing emissions.

Source: enviropaedia.com

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Less is more for South African schooling

November 26, 2009 in Education, South Africa | No comments

Teaching and learning is set to become simpler and more effective in South Africa’s state schools from 2010, as the government introduces a number of changes to reduce the administrative burden on teachers while providing them with more support.

The changes follow a report by a task team appointed by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga to investigate the obstacles to implementing the curriculum in South Africa’s classrooms.

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga

“Our focus is to strengthen curriculum delivery, and thus we have identified those steps that can be taken immediately to streamline delivery, and others that will take slightly longer to implement,” Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said in Cape Town this week.

Changes that will come into effect in January 2010 include:

•    Discontinuing the use of student portfolios.
•    Requiring teachers to keep only one administrative file.
•    Reducing the number of subjects in the intermediate phase from eight to six.
•    Giving priority to English as a first additional language in the lower grades.

Changes welcomed across the board

Development Bank of Southern Africa education policy analyst Graeme Bloch has welcomed the moves, saying that teachers’ administrative burden “has been one of the major teacher complaints, as it keeps them from their primary job of teaching.

“It also enhances unnecessary control by junior officials over experienced teachers. Rather, officials need to think how they can more effectively support teachers in the classroom.”

National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa president Ezrah Ramasehla said the task team’s recommendations were about making improvements to education in the country without making compromises.

“They are about making the lives of teachers easier so that they have more time to do that which they are already doing better.”

Ramasehla praised the government for embarking on a process of listening to classroom teachers. “The findings and recommendations are based on evidence presented by teachers themselves about the kinds of problems they are experiencing, and there has been remarkable consensus about what these problems are.”

South African Democratic Teachers Union spokesperson Nomusa Cembi said the discontinuation of learner portfolios would give learners and teachers more time to focus on more beneficial day-to-day classroom activities.

At the same time, the reduction of the number of subjects in the intermediate phase “will enable teachers to focus on developing deeper conceptual understanding than was previously possible,” Cembi said.

South Africa’s Cabinet has also welcomed the changes, saying they would go “a long way towards improving the quality of education across all our schools, as they address concerns from various stakeholders, particularly teachers, parents, learners and academics.”

Source: BuaNews, nytimes.com, sasix.co.za, realgap.com

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ArcelorMittal SA to build 10 schools

September 15, 2009 in Education, Skills Development, Social Responsibilty | 1 comment

ArcelorMittal South Africa is to build 10 new schools over seven years at a cost of R250-million, the first being a new primary school in the township of Mamelodi outside Pretoria.

Mamelodi Primary is scheduled for completion by the end of the year, and the remaining nine schools, two in the Eastern Cape and one each in the rest of the provinces, will be built to guidelines provided by the Department of Education.

South African first

In a first for South Africa, Mamelodi Primary School will be built using insulated panels technology, which relies heavily on steel as a building material. It can withstand extreme weather conditions, is fire-resistant and 10 times faster to erect than using conventional building technologies.

“The role and participation of the private sector is critical to the success of our quest to provide resources to our schools,” Education Minister Naledi Pandor said at the sod-turning ceremony in Mamelodi earlier this month.

“Public-private partnerships are important in order that basic services reach all communities.”

She voiced her department’s support for such initiatives, saying that they improved the quality of the education system, while also being an investment in the country’s future.

“This donation clearly illustrates the commitment of our business community to education,” she said.

Investing in education, training and skills

For ArcelorMittal, the Mamelodi project is part of its strategy of investing heavily in education, training and skills development. This includes promoting maths and science at high schools, an extensive bursary programme for artisans, engineers and other technical skills, and upgrading the skills of its own employees.

The investment not only ensures that the company has a pool of skilled resources for its own operations, but also towards addressing the country’s skills shortage in general.

ArcelorMittal is one of the companies that have committed themselves to producing more artisans than they needs for its own businesses, as part of the government’s Jipsa programme.

“ArcelorMittal is focused on developing a strong mathematics, science and technology culture amongst schools,” said ArcelorMittal South Africa CEO Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita.

“The company’s array of education initiatives is geared towards improving education within targeted communities, promoting scientific literacy and enhancing performance at secondary school level in order to benefit the wider economy.”

Centres of science, excellence

Over the past three years, ArcelorMittal has invested some R22-million in a Science Centre and a Centre of Excellence in a renovated teacher’s college in Sebokeng township near Vanderbijlpark in the Vaal Triangle.

The centre offers facilities for both learners and educators to upgrade their knowledge of science, mathematics and information technology (IT), and is offered to 43 secondary schools in Gauteng province’s Sedibeng West District.

In December last year, the steel maker signed a memorandum of understanding with the Western Cape Department of Education for the development of a science centre in the Vredenburg and Saldanha Bay area at an estimated cost of R6-million, to be operational by the second half of 2009.

Thank you ArcelorMittal SA!!!

Source: southafrica.info, arcelormittal.com

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