Nineteen of the state-employed educators involved in last year’s Mpumalanga matric cheating scandal were found guilty of misconduct earlier this month. The chairperson of the disciplinary committee, Walter Kutumela, says each was fined R3 000 and issued with a written warning.

A Cape Town event that links learning to the world of work will take place for the third time early next month. The annual Learning Cape Festival is the brainchild of the Western Cape’s department of economic development and tourism, but much of its success lies in its involvement of other key players — other government departments, as well as civil society and labour organisations.

Sports facilities are notoriously dodgy at most township schools, with soccer and netball usually played on dusty and bumpy surfaces using well-worn equipment. A possible solution to this — at least in the short term — would be for schools to use existing municipal sports facilities nearby to them, many of which lie dormant during weekdays.

One of eight recognised indigenous sports codes, jukskei is an all-South African game devised by white settlers as far back as 200 years ago. As they travelled across the land, they spent their spare time competing to see who could throw the pins of the yokes of the oxen closest to the target, which was a stick planted in the ground.

Maria Mogotsi* works as a domestic worker in Johannesburg and is responsible for the education of seven children — her own five plus two of her deceased brother’s children. While Mogotsi is determined that all seven should get a decent education, the total monthly school-fees bill takes a huge chunk of her salary.

Vryburg Hoërskool made head–lines in the late 1990s when it became a symbol for a South African obsession: racism. Located in a predominantly conservative Afrikaner town in the North West province, the resistance by white parents to racial integration at the high school erupted into open conflict in 1998 when a group of black learners organised a protest march against the school’s management.

Poor support from district and regional structures is being blamed for sinking teacher morale and falling matric pass rates in a neglected area of the North West province. The Bophirima region, close to the border of the Northern Cape, encompasses 472 schools.

In one of the most shocking incidents in the teaching profession in recent times, an educator based at eMachakwini Primary School on the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal allegedly forced a five-year-old boy to drink his own urine.

Where were you born? I was born in Durban, back in 1949. When and where did you start school? My father was in the navy, so we moved around a bit. I started school in Pretoria at Sunnyside Primary. Then we moved to Simonstown and I went to Fish Hoek Primary. Finally, from Grade 6 […]