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.
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I’ve had it with elections. Zimbabwe has been in election mode since 1999. No fundamental change seems to come from any of it. So I am changing tactics. I have looked at everyone’s manifesto for 2008 and it’s all same old hot air. I am tired. But I am still going home to vote: this time for the man who will rev my engine, writes Everjoice Win.
A wave of attacks across Iraq on Sunday killed 51 people, while insurgents fired a barrage of mortars at Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, sending United States embassy staff scurrying into bunkers. The deadliest attack was in the city of Mosul where a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden truck into an Iraqi army base.
The small, if noisy, crowd at the Oppenheimer Stadium in Orkney on Sunday afternoon was indicative of what those who stayed away anticipated from the soulless zero-all Premier Soccer League draw between Moroka Swallows and Jomo Cosmos. The teams stuttered their way through 90 minutes of ungainly soccer.
Just before kick-off on Sunday at the Seisa Ramabodu Stadium, Bloemfontein Celtic supporters shouted at Santos substitute players to move off their team’s bench, and they obeyed. After the Premier Soccer League game — in which Celtic lost 1-0 to Santos despite a spirited showing — angry Celtic fans had to be closely watched by police.
A 114-year-old woman, considered the oldest person in Texas, has died at a Dallas retirement home. Arbella Perkins Ewings celebrated her birthday on March 13 with a proclamation from mayor Tom Leppert and speeches by friends and family. She blew out all 114 candles on her birthday cake.
Defending drivers’ world champion Kimi Raikkonen bounced back to form and back into the scrap for this year’s title when he won the Malaysian Grand Prix for Ferrari on Sunday. But the Italian team’s hopes of a dream one-two finish were wrecked by Brazilian Felipe Massa spinning off while running second.
The internet has profoundly changed journalism, but not necessarily in ways that were predicted even a few years ago, a study on the United States media industry has found. It was believed at one point that the net would democratise the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives.
Mieko Kawakami, a former bar hostess and bookstore clerk, was just another obscure singer until she started a blog. Her poetic, street-wise writing stood out so starkly among internet diaries in Japan — which, like those around the world, tend to be more informative or gossipy than narrative — that she is now Japan’s biggest literary star.