Changes in South African society and family structures are responsible for the increase in teenage violence in the country, experts believe. Murders committed by young people at schools and in the home are on the increase in South Africa, but the numbers can be reduced if there is more parental vigilance. – In 1999, Andreas […]
The national Department of Education recently launched the Crime Buster campaign, which aims to make training in self-defence techniques widely available to schoolgoers. Also known as the Ikusasa Lethu campaign (a Zulu term meaning ‘Our future”), the aim is to teach all girls learners, as well as boys under the age of 10, to defend […]
Schools are supposed to prepare children for the real world. Entrepreneurs day at St John’s Preparatory School in Johannesburg gives pupils a taste of what real trading is all about. On July 15 there was an air of anticipation at the school. As the bell rang, the relative calm exploded into activity. Footsteps pounded on […]
Trees are closely interwoven with our heritage and history. The Kwa-Thema Indaba Tree, for instance, is the spot on the outskirts of Springs in Gauteng where elders met and negotiated the start of the township founded nearby. There’s also a tree stump near the Tugela River Mouth that marks the spot where the Anglo-Zulu war […]
The existence of humans and trees is as intertwined as the gnarled roots of the thousand-year-old wild fig tree, a giant called the Wonderboom. Those who sit peacefully watching the hypnotic swaying of the kelp forests in Cape Town’s Two Oceans Aquarium or those who have watched the mist rise over the Knysna forest can […]
Reverend JJ Scholtz is creating an Oklahoma utopia in Mpumalanga’s agricultural heartland of Ermelo and plans to churn out gangly-legged cowboys and cowgirls armed with lassoes, chaps and the Bible. ‘If you look at what makes the United States the great nation it is today, it all goes back to the grass-roots principles of the […]
If there’s one thing the students at Sommersle Combined will know by the time they’ve left school, it’s the many hardships and obstacles that are thrown their way on a daily basis. This farm school, outside Harrismith in the Free State, is one of those that seems to have been left behind. Started in 1949, […]
Livhuwani Mutsharini insisted on being allowed to go to school, despite its being in deep rural Venda, Limpopo, with no facilities for disabled children. ‘We just have to live with the situation. It’s almost impossible to change,” says Edith Mikosi, principal of Mikosi Primary School in Gondeni village near Thohoyandou. The children use pit toilets, […]
When you look into the beaming face of any of the happy children at Tsoga O Itirele, a school for the mentally disabled, it’s difficult to understand why anyone would be afraid of them. Some of the children here were found wandering the street, dirty and half naked, because their parents didn’t know how to […]
Since January 2001, a ministerial project committee, about 150 educationists representing all stakeholders and a team of administrative staff have been involved in the production of a National Curriculum Statement (NCS) for Grades R to 9 (General Education and Training). The NCS specifies learning outcomes and assessment standards for each learning area on a grade-by-grade […]