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.
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.
"Let the foreigners go back to their own countries and sort out their own problems." So said a principal last year while rejecting an invitation for his school to participate in an event that explored xenophobia.
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 […]
Where were you born? Yeoville, Johannesburg. Where and when did you go to school? I started at Yeoville Boys Primary and matriculated from King Edward VII High School in 1957. Who was your favourite teacher? Teddy Gordon who taught me history for matric. His lessons on the French Revolution opened my eyes to South African […]
Private institutions offering Christian theology or religious higher education qualifcations are adapting their course contents to respond to the demands of the changing world around them. While their courses still have a strong Christian content, they are also structured to equip learners with a variety of life-skills that are relevant beyond the confines of the […]
Girls do not yet perform as well as their male counterparts in maths and science, according to a situation assessment and analysis carried out by Unicef in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. The report notes that although the gap is slowly closing between boy and girl learners who are taking these subjects, boys still […]