Teacher unions are threatening to declare a dispute, as disagreements with the Department of Education (DoE) over the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) continue. The DoE is being accused by the unions of attempting to act outside of the IQMS collective agreement.
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.
In the same way that Neil Armstrong’s famous moon walk marked the 20th century in history, biotechnology will no doubt leave its signature on the 21st. Broadly speaking, biotechnology is the industrial use of living organisms or biological processes. Examples of biotechnology products are antibiotics and techniques such as those used in waste recycling.
After a decade of living with our new Constitution, most South Africans are well aware of the strong stand it takes against unfair treatment because of one’s sex or sexual orientation. Similarly, most South Africans are only too well aware of the abuse and violence that women continue to suffer.
Last month, I briefly traced the evolution of the outcomes-based education (OBE) movement over the past 35 years: from its focus on "expanding the conditions of success" in schools and classrooms during the 1970s and 1980s, to the strongly learner-centred, future-focused, personally empowering emphasis of "the five Cs" in today’s "transformational" models.
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where you should be. Now put the foundations under them." What I like about these words by Henry David Thoreau is that he reminds us of the value of having dreams to work towards.
As a generation of young Swazi women ended a five-year vow of chastity in a traditional ceremony this week, health officials are debating the impact of the custom on reducing the risk of HIV infection.
After 47 days on a hunger strike, Iranians Azita Aslami and Mohammad Mehdi Neshat may finally get what they want: a residence permit to stay in The Netherlands. The Dutch government says Iran is a safe country, but Aslami and Neshat don’t agree. On June 30, eight Iranian asylum seekers had embarked on a hunger strike to protest the Dutch asylum-seeking procedure.
Richard Maponya’s face glows when he talks about his latest project, a new mall he says is the first one-stop shopping facility in Soweto. "This excites me more than anything else I have done. It will be an achievement of a dream and it will create so many job opportunities." If you didn’t know that the Maponya name is synonymous with black business, you might think that the mall is his first venture.
Voices of opposition are mounting to some of the changes to education laws proposed by the Department of Education (DoE). The Education Laws Amendment Bill, which was presented to Parliament’s education portfolio committee earlier this month, seeks to amend certain aspects of the South African Schools Act (Sasa) and the Employment of Educators Act.