The Western Cape Department of Education will appoint 500 teaching assistants as part of its literacy and numeracy strategy.
Children and teachers in the foundation phase (Grade R to Grade 3) are set to benefit from the pilot project, which aims to improve the reading and mathematics skills in the vital first years of formal schooling.
‘Ensuring that our children can properly read, write and calculate is one of the priorities for this department,†said Cameron Dugmore, the Western Cape minister for education.
‘When we tested Grade 3 and 6 learners and found that only about a third of these learners could read, write and calculate at the appropriate levels, I was alarmed and we had to intervene,†he said.
The department increased the number of teaching posts by 292 this year and decided to use the budget of 100 teaching posts to establish the teaching assistant posts.
The teaching assistants will help supervise class activities, allow teachers to teach groups of learners, will help teachers to prepare, distri-bute, collect and store learning and teaching support materials.
A total of 160 schools will benefit from the project. They will include schools in poor communities, schools with poor performance in maths and literacy and schools with large numbers of children who are not learning in their home languages.
Paddy Attwell, spokesperson for the department, said the department was hoping to make the appointments by next month.