THE new school year got off to a dramatic start with Education Minister Professor Kader Asmal wielding a big stick during his surprise visits to schools where he found educators and learners still idle on the first day.
The Minister visited schools in the Northern Province and Gauteng during opening day to ascertain whether learning and teaching had started.
Gauteng MEC for Education Ignatius Jacobs also got in on the act with visits to schools surrounding Johannesburg. Jacobs threatened to shut down a poor performing school in Soweto, featured on page 2, and went all out to ensure first day blues at schools where educators and teachers were still in holiday mode.
Jacobs accompanied Asmal on a similar visit last year to Meadowlands High School in Soweto where pupils and teachers were reprimanded for loitering.
Asmal certainly has perfected the art of keeping people on their toes, but is it sufficient to ensure that the idle practices do not persist long after he has left the premises?
Restoring a learning campaign will take much more than high-profile visits by Asmal. The Schools Register of Needs in 1997 offers a stark reminder of the essential elements for restoring a culture of learning. Learning and teaching, inevitably, will suffer when it takes place in venues which are not conducive to learning. Can one really expect educators and learners to take pride in their school if it resembles a dump-yard?
However, both the Minister and the MEC deserve praise for the hands-on, media-grabbing efforts, which not only show absence of a culture of learning at some schools but also highlight the severity of the problems.
Unfortunately, the majority — if not all — the schools targeted during Asmal and Jacobs’s visits were disadvantaged institutions in black townships and rural areas. Were the Minister and the MEC absolutely confident that schools in middle class areas were operational from day one?
Asmal’s on-the-spot visit gives him intimate knowledge of the status at schools. It should also provide him with more substantial reasons he could submit to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel on why the government needs to find more money to make schools resemble centres of excellence.
The drawing up of the national budget is in process and although education receives a major share of the spending, it is not enough.
The government appears to ignore demands for redress, especially in the case of tertiary institutions, but needs to understand that bulky documents and lofty words will not restore the culture of learning. A workable plan and a meaningful injection of cash will go a long way towards remedying the situation.
No Connection
Full marks to the cellular phone company behind the MTN ScienCentre in Cape Town, featured in this month’s Edutech Puisano, our technology supplement. The centre aims to educate pupils, educators and parents on the wonders of science, making it accessible.
However, despite its good intentions, the company which claims it has the better connection ought to consider making the entrance fee, particularly for scholars, free. The R18 entrance fee is beyond the reach of majority of South Africa’s school children, especially in rural areas. Many go to school on an empty stomach and would battle to find that fee, when the next meal is on their minds.
Something had better be done about the price if the centre really wants to reach more than just the pupils at middle-class, urban schools.
– The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, February 2001.