This letter is a response to the front page story of the February 2004 edition, ‘Lawlessness rules”. As an educator myself, I empathise with the educators at Gelvandale Senior Secondary School in Port Elizabeth. Obviously they are doing something right if they have been enjoying a near-100% pass rate. They must be committed, conscientious and […]
Thank you so much for the important story in your April edition about the contraceptive injections being given to young girls in schools in the North West province (Girl-learners’ reproductive rights outrage). This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as difficulties experienced by poor people in rural areas go. Services and rights, […]
When I was first given this book, I thought, ‘Here’s another one of those boring books on famous people’. You get a lot of books like this one and they all look the same and are written in the same sort of way. This book on Archbishop Tutu is different though. It’s written with so […]
This is the way to respond to these titles — Face It!, Cool It!, Stop It!: ‘Got it!†This series of critical school support tools communicates well. I certainly got their message about managing school problems clearly. The text is fluent and the layout and colour use are appealing. I looked forward to opening these […]
In the right hands, the Catholic Institute’s Education Services handbook Together Now will be indispensable. Its focus is the implementation of inclusive education – a challenge that is being grappled with by educationalists around the world. Inclusivity has significant resonances in a South African context. The subject of a recent government policy White Paper, it […]
I am a teacher in a township school in Port Shepstone. I always teach my learners acceptable behaviour and ways of protecting themselves against abuse. I found out that one of my learners had allegedly been raped by her uncle and I reported the matter to the school principal, who then told me to do […]
Being a manager of Makukhanye Primary, one of the best performing Imbewu schools in a district of Jeffreys Bay, has been one of my highlights as an educator. Of course, things seldom go according to plan. Take, for example, the second day of Imbewu Reading Week. We were expecting some grandparents to come in to […]
I didn’t believe earlier that an educator could get into trouble for doing their job. It happened to me. In my school in Kwa-Zulu Natal (Msinga District) NSP had come to build new classrooms. We had a problem with water, the nearest source was a 500 metre walk away from the school. We had to […]
”There truly is a sucker born every minute. And when being a sucker collides with vanity, you have yourself a whole lot of emperors walking around in their birthday suits. Take the multitudes who bought some of what were purported to be Nelson Mandela’s art works, specifically the handprints”.
Getting Schools Working has its roots in research commissioned by the Presidents’ Education Initiative published in 1999 as Getting Learning Right. This new book addresses the methodology and shortcomings of the previous book. The authors provide a sustained reflection and analysis through their detailed review of the stream of research between 1998 and 2002. Getting […]