Japanese and South African universities are expected to formulate joint projects in science and technology at a high-level meeting in Cape Town later this month. From these meetings a South Africa-Japan Universities’ Forum was set up to identify priority collaborative areas that would be of benefit to both countries.
To combat flailing literacy and numeracy rates, the government will introduce national tests at primary schools. A study has shown that South African children are the worst performers in literacy and mathematics. Learners in grades R to six will be the first batch to benefit from the roll-out of the new tests.
When University of Pretoria vice-chancellor Callie Pistorius visited a male residence a few years ago, he came across a wall adorned with pictures of Boer generals. ”I asked them: Where are the pictures of other South African heroes — like King Cetshwayo who beat the British at Isandlwana?” he told the Mail & Guardian.
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.
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/ 29 February 2008
The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) has been accused of creating a conducive climate for the production of a video by white University of the Free State students protesting against the university’s decision to re-integrate its residences. On Thursday FF+ deputy leader Corne Mulder claimed that he “knew nothing of this mess”.
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/ 22 February 2008
Higher Education South Africa, the association of university vice-chancellors, has rejected the idea of the capping of tuition-fee income by the education department. Hesa asserts that the sector’s autonomy could be at stake. Instead, it wants a strengthening of the government’s contribution to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
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/ 13 February 2008
Universities should use the quality audit as a developmental tool and can make it work for them, says a senior manager who was involved in the audit process of a Gauteng university. She says: “People hear the word ‘audit’ and they think high stakes, big consequence or that it’s a financial audit."
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/ 13 February 2008
In the past four years, several universities and private providers of higher education have been quality audited by the council on higher education’s subcommittee, the higher education quality committee (HEQC). The audits follow a worldwide trend and enable the HEQC to have a national picture of quality arrangements in higher education and to monitor system- and sector-level quality improvement.
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/ 4 February 2008
The chickens have come home to roost for Aubrey Mokadi, the fallen vice-chancellor of Vaal University of Technology (VUT), almost two years after a government inquiry described his management style as dictatorial and ”delusional”. A Council on Higher Education quality audit found that graduation rates at VUT have, in the past decade, fluctuated between 10% and 14%.
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/ 25 December 2007
Had I been two shades lighter, I would have turned red with embarrassment when strangers inquired if I was ”Ronnie Pillay’s daughter. You’re that reporter at the Natal Witness newspaper. How was your scholarship to America?” they asked. It was the late 1990s and my father had been telling his friends about his eldest daughter’s exploits.