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/ 15 December 2005
Sectarian infighting swamped academic considerations in the controversial selection last week of Ihron Rensburg as the University of Johannesburg’s new vice-chancellor. This is the view of several senior academics, at the university and beyond, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity.
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/ 14 December 2005
Its a debacle — thats the judgement of the countrys largest teachers union on the governments attempt to make schooling more affordable by introducing no-fee schools next year.
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/ 2 December 2005
A school curriculum for the few, not the many — that’s one of the most serious concerns teacher unions and educationists are voicing about the new further education and training curriculum for grades 10, 11 and 12. The curriculum is due to be implemented in grade 10 next year, leading in 2008 to a new school-leaving exam called the National Senior Certificate, which will replace matric.
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/ 18 November 2005
Teachers spend less than half the working week actually teaching, with administrative tasks taking up more than half their time. And more than three-quarters of teachers say their workload has increased ”a lot” since 2000, with 90% ascribing this increase to the demands of the new curriculum.
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/ 7 November 2005
Students at North-West University’s Mankwe campus toyi-toyied and burned tyres recently in protest against the university council’s apparent plan to relocate some of Mankwe’s academic courses to Mafikeng, about 200km away. But confusion reigns over exactly what the council intends for the black campus near Sun City.
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/ 17 October 2005
Less than 5% of pupils receive exemptions from school fees, while the poor borrow R2,7-billion a year to spend on education, it emerged from Human Rights Commission(HRC) hearings recently. The points are contained in a submission by the Education Law Project of Wits University’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies at HRC hearings on the right to basic education, which the Constitution guarantees.
President Thabo Mbeki told university vice-chancellors of his deep dissatisfaction with tertiary education and demanded a ”short-term emergency plan” to remedy its failure to meet the country’s ”social and economic” needs. The message is conveyed in a document co-written by Mbeki, Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin and Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena.
The Mikro Primary School case has generated astonishing levels of noise and mud-slinging, ostensibly over language rights, in schools. Last week the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the Cape High Court’s judgement in February that the Mikro school governing body had acted lawfully in arriving at its language policy — namely, instruction in Afrikaans.
The government’s chronic inability to spend education funds at its disposal continues to disadvantage poor learners and communities in particular. This emerges from A Review of National and Provincial Education Budgets 2005, released by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) last month.
Rural schooling is in crisis — and rural education should be resourced and organised differently from that in urban schools. ”The state’s commitment to social justice in all matters and especially to universal access to education … remains unfulfilled for large numbers of children, youths and adults living in rural areas,” says a ministerial committee report on rural education, due for release next week.