Racial representivity among teaching staff is lacking in most Gauteng public schools. And close to half of formerly whites-only schools have less than 20% black learner enrolment, probably because of language and fees policies at these schools. At the same time, deracialisation in schools is increasing – but not in former Department of Education and […]
Learners who have to walk several kilometres to school in the most rural parts of the former Transkei are to benefit from a pilot project to provide bicycles as a means of transport. The Eastern Cape education department, in conjunction with the provincial Department of Transport, is engaged in a pilot project aimed at supplying […]
The lucky winner of the cricket pitch in the Teacher/ Stumped Competition is Makopale 1 Secondary School in Limpopo province. About 400 learners will soon have the opportunity to play a sport they have to date only seen on television. ‘We have always wanted to introduce cricket,” says sports teacher Mahlare Masha. ‘We encouraged our […]
Education is widely acknowledged as a key element in alleviating poverty. It is also important, especially in developing countries, to advance the democratic transformation of society. As Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni put it, ‘It [education] expands abilities and opportunities. It is a great freedom in itself, and opens the doors to other freedoms.” The […]
Clayton Sherry was having a jol with his friends, smoking dagga and sniffing glue at their usual corner, when suddenly a police van stopped in front of them. Fearing arrest, they fled in different directions, but the uniformed men caught up with them. This was the day that Clayton’s life changed forever. It was the […]
A tin shack in the dusty forsakenness of a Freedom Park squatter camp, south of Johannesburg, is all that keeps Tshidi* (19) and her 11-year-old brother,Patrick*, from the streets. I arrive to interview her on a Friday and Tshidi and Patrick should be at school. Instead they are selling cigarettes to get a few rands […]
A regional court magistrate in the former Transkei has dispelled claims by the office of the Minister of Education Kader Asmal that his ‘lenient” sentencing of five Qumbu teachers, charged with the assault and crimen injuria on a Little Flower High School learner, was an effort to undermine the girl’s dignity. Convicted by magistrate Ephraim […]
Thirty percent of primary school children have tried alcohol, with 10 being the average age at which alcohol is first consumed. More disturbingly, 23% of these children are repeat users, with 12 being the average age of children who habitually drink. These were some of the findings of a Medical Research Council (MRC) poll conducted […]
Recent predictions of a shortage of educators are to be reviewed by a newly appointed ministerial committee. The committee on teacher education was appointed ‘to develop a National Framework for Teacher Education, which aims to develop coherence around existing policies and strategies to sustain a continuing professional development culture among teachers,” says Michael Samuel from […]
A retired school principal with more than four decades of teaching to her credit has received a meagre, one-off pension pay-out of just R15 000. Fourteen years have passed since principal Mildred Adkins’s retirement from Tsolo Primary School and still she awaits her proper pension. Adkins (78), who lives in East London, says it came […]