THE Mpumalanga Department of Education is once again mired in controversy, with the head of department fired for suspected involvement in falsely inflating the 1998 matric results being awarded a R2,6-million settlement by the high court. Former head of department Faith Sithole earlier this year launched an urgent application to have her dismissal declared unlawful. […]
A new diversity directorate is set to look at values and difference A RECENT incident at a school in Gauteng has once again brought the challenges of managing diversity in our schools back under the spotlight. What really transpired between two students at Sutherland High school near Pretoria last month is far from clear. Even […]
One woman could no longer stand by and watch the children suffering. Julia Grey went to see what her efforts produced It all started because Theresa Mkhwanazi couldn’t carry on just witnessing the daily abuse that children face in the miserable squalor of Cato Manor, an informal settlement packed on the hillslopes of Durban. Mkhwanazi […]
Educators due to teach in the new reception-year classes have been promised a pittance by the department. Julia Grey reports Picture this: an educator at a public primary school gets down to the business of teaching grade ones, while in the classroom next door, the grade R teacher guides the five- and six-year-olds through their […]
The past is far from over as an online database revisits South Africa’s past. Julia Grey reports History’s a funny business: the politics of capturing the past can lead to so many interpretations of one event that you would be forgiven for wondering if any of it really happened at all. Omar Badsha, director of […]
Julia Grey found uncertainty on the ground about what it means to be a dedicated maths and science school Letsibogo Girls Secondary school in Meadowlands, Soweto, is one of the 102 schools identified nationally to specialise in maths, science and technology education. In many ways, the school is an obvious candidate for the role, according […]
The long-awaited policy on early childhood development (ECD) is not all it was hoped to be. Julia Grey reports Critics of the ECD white paper, released in May, believe weaknesses in the government’s plan ”takes provisioning backwards rather than forwards”. So says Salim Vally from the Education Policy Unit at Wits University, who identifies ”children […]
Forty-five years after thousands marched in protest against pass laws, women are still second class citizens, write Julia Grey and Edwin Naidu South African women are still fighting to be accepted as equals and given the same opportunities as males in the workplace, including in the teaching profession. Discrimination continues to undermine the status of […]
Julia Grey visited a school for the severely mentally handicapped that is special in more ways than one: it not only caters for learners with special education needs, but does so with flying colours On the second floor of the school building, a vision fit to dazzle stands out with the swirls of colour and […]
Catering for school-going criminals is one of the many challenges facing special-needs education, writes Julia Grey Running a school where the only admission requirements are that learners are convicted criminals and of school-going age has it’s own special demands. Ethokomala in Mpumalanga is one of only two reform schools in the country that caters for […]