Faced with mounting pressure and financial incentives to improve matric results, government high schools with a history of a high failure rate are resorting to controversial measures to improve their averages. One tactic such schools are using is so-called ‘gate-keeping” in Grade 11. Learners who performed poorly in Grade 11 are not promoted to Grade […]
In the dust bowl of rural Nongoma, deep in the heart of Zululand, the Grade 5s and 6s at Kamsweli Primary School have an unusual dignitary as their teacher: the youngest of the five wives of Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini Ka Bhekuzulu. An educator since 1997, Queen Nompumelelo (28) describes some of the more […]
Growing up in Durban, she started her schooling like most other children until she started to lose her hearing at age seven. She struggled for a while because she wasn’t sure what was happening to her – and nor was her family. ‘My grandmother thought I was a stubborn girl because I wouldn’t respond when […]
The boys, aged between nine and 13, were allegedly also selling drugs at the school. They handed over 56 mandrax tablets they’d hidden in the school toilets to police, later leading them to two dealers at a nearby train station. Although the school’s principal refused to speak to the media about the matter, he confirmed […]
Re-elected president, Willie Madisha, told the 1 050 delegates representing Sadtu’s 515 branches across 51 regions nationwide, that the congress had taken place while the country’s labour movement was ‘under attack from sinister anti-working class forces and smear campaigns by faceless people through the media”. Thulas Nxesi, who retained his position as Sadtu’s general secretary, […]
In its final submission to Minister of Education Kader Asmal, the Univen council has described the proposed merger with the two institutions as ‘flawed” and ‘defective”. It says the proposals, if implemented, would be disastrous for Limpopo province in that they do not take regional equity into account. The Univen council is chaired by Barney […]
Her life took a shocking turn for the worse two years ago when a blood test confirmed that she was HIV-positive. Her initial reaction was to run – from her work and from her husband. ‘I was furious because I didn’t know how I became HIV-positive. I knew that I had never cheated on my […]
School principal Jackson Hadebe says he has about 60 orphans at his school. ‘Most of them are children whose parents died either of Aids-related diseases or just natural deaths, while others are children whose parents left to look for work in Johannesburg and haven’t returned since,” he says. Hadebe says some of these orphans have […]
A Magaliesburg African National Congress councillor who started an independent school for underprivileged children is embroiled in a protracted legal battle after he allegedly failed to pay his teachers’ salaries. In May this year, the Teacher reported on Cornelius Cloete’s Magaliesburg Group of Schools, which has 275 learners. The 12 teachers currently employed at the […]
A KwaZulu-Natal educator has not had a school to report to since March 2001 and his salary had been frozen since last November. He blames witchcraft and the incompetence of a district manager for his problems. Duduzela Yeni started teaching in 1986 and in 1992 was promoted to deputy principal of Mkhaliphi High School in […]