Education Minister Naledi Pandor is setting up a new unit in her department to run its R6,1-billion Kha ri gude — Masifunde (Let Us Learn) literacy project. Unisa’s director of the Adult Basic Education and Training Institute, Veronica McKay, is on a shortlist to head it, the Mail & Guardian has learned.
Pandor told the M&G she will recommend a name for the unit’s chief executive for Cabinet approval. ”The person will be very senior, on the level of a deputy director general. We did not want a junior. This post is linked to the education director general [Duncan Hindle] and myself and the person must be able to move with the project.” The unit is a focused attempt to stamp out illiteracy.
Prior to its launch, however, the unit was dogged by controversy. Educationists considered the resignation of adult-education expert John Aitchison in November last year a blow to the project.
Aitchison feared the new project was going the same route as the old one, the South African National Literacy Initiative, which was launched in 2000 by then education minister Kader Asmal. One of the problems was that operational control was given to a small education department directorate that was short on the necessary expertise.
A private company, SAB&T, has been appointed to provide financial and administrative support for the project. It will operate independently of the education department to ensure that up to 80 000 volunteer teachers are contracted and are paid a stipend.
The training of 100 master trainers, many of whom have experience in literacy teaching and in writing training material, started on Friday. The master trainers will train supervisors (who are all qualified educators). The supervisors will then train volunteer teachers.
It is expected that in the next three years, 80 000 people will be involved in teaching the illiterate. NGOs will be sub-contracted to do the training and will be paid per learner.
”We will be going to villages, churches and from street to street to recruit learners,” said Pandor. Venues will include homes, clinics, schools and tribal offices.
The learning materials are interactive. Learners will learn to read in their mother tongue. They will learn to write letters and do basic maths. The duration of level one of the project is expected to be six months, with learners meeting three times a week. Each area will have a coordinator and there will be 1 200 supervisors countrywide.
The department’s Gugu Ndebele said there will be internal and external monitoring, while the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has also expressed an interest in assisting.
Hindle said youths who become trainers may be singled out for teacher training bursaries under the department’s Funza Lushaka Bursary Scheme. ”This is one of the landmark projects of Minister Pandor and if it works it will contribute to a more skilled workforce with huge economic and social benefits.”
Andrew Miller, CEO of Project Literacy, welcomed the creation of the separate literacy unit.