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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
Tags: Environment Tips, school, walking
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
Tags: administration, curriculum, school, South Africa education
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
Tags: ArcelorMittal SA, building, bursary, investment, school, Skills Development, Training
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has highlighted the importance of maths literacy among school children, especially under the current economic climate.
“I think that we understand that the complexities in the economy will require higher mathematical skills,” Manuel said on Monday at the launch of the Census@School project at the Pro Arte Alphen Park High School in Pretoria.
The objective of the project, which targets learners between grades 3 and 12, is to enhance the statistical and numerical literacy of learners as well as raise awareness of the national population census.
The project will also teach pupils how to gather information about themselves. They will have to fill in a questionnaire as part of a schools census, answering questions about their shoe size, height and favourite sport and subject.
The census will be conducted on a sample of 10% of South African schools between April 14 and 24, and the data will thereafter be evaluated.
By 28 April, information relating to three areas – namely personal, household and school information – will be collected from the various selected schools. A preliminary report is expected by the end of July.
Manuel said it was important for learners to be involved in the project because the outcomes of the questionnaires would help the government take certain decisions.
While mathematics was a “tough” subject to learn and teach, he said it was an important proficiency to have. “So much of what we do in life needs some unit of measurement,” he told learners.
Responding to a question from a learner about how well he had done in mathematics at school, Manuel said he had battled and did not have high marks until he came across a teacher who helped him.
The Census@School project, first launched in 2001, was initiated by Statistics SA in collaboration with the Department of Education after a similar initiative in the United Kingdom.
Source: southafrica.info, donateabook.co.za, operationhope.org, imaginationwins.com, satsuka.blogspot.com, eriding.net, rd.com, pamlo.org, unesco.org, familyliteracyproject.co.za, huffingtonpost.com,
Tags: mathematical skills, numerical literacy, school, statistical literacy
South African state spending on education remains its single biggest investment, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told Parliament in Cape Town on Wednesday.
“Education spending has grown by 14 percent a year for the past three years and accounts for R140.4-billion in the spending plans of provinces and national government for 2008/09,” Manuel said during his 2009/10 Budget speech.
The government’s key priorities in education included extending the no-fee school policy from the current 40 percent to 60 percent of schools, expanding the school nutrition programme, reducing average class sizes in schools, serving lower income communities, and increasing expenditure on school buildings.
There would also be a strengthening of training colleges and a recapitalisation of technical schools over the next three years, Manuel said.
An additional R700-million would be allocated for higher education subsidies and to accommodate anticipated growth in student enrolment from 783 900 in 2008 to 836 800 by 2011.
A further R330-million would go towards to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, while funding was also available for the establishment of a new National Education Evaluation Unit, which would evaluate a new salary dispensation for teachers, linked to school and teacher performance.
President Kgalema Motlanthe, in his state of the nation address on Friday, said he was concerned at a trend of schools in rural and impoverished areas lacking infrastructure and capacity.
“Ironically, precisely where education is most needed to help break the cycle of poverty is where infrastructure, administrative and teacher capacity are least impressive,” Motlanthe said during the opening of Parliament.
The President also raised concerns about the drop-out rate, particularly at secondary and tertiary levels, and challenged the country’s education system to produce the kind of skills needed by society.
“Trends in performance, both in terms of teaching and learning, show a worrying persistence of the social divisions of the past,” he said.
Source: southafrica.info
Tags: Education, financial aid, higher education, school, South Africa, technical school, trianing college
