Thabo Mohlala

A Cape Town-based NGO, Gold Peer Education Development Agency, has designed a programme for the youth to educate their peers on how to prevent further spreading of HIV/Aids. This saw the agency winning the first prize of the inaugural Commonwealth Good Practice Awards — held in Cape Town late last year.

Education Minister Naledi Pandor enjoyed the honour of hosting the 16th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers held in Cape Town in December last year. This triennial gathering brings together education ministers from the 53 Commonwealth member states.

Hundreds of people will soon be heading to various beachfronts, rivers and dams to cool off as part of the summer holidays. Sadly, many will return home in body bags. According to the Medical Research Council’s latest data, drowning is the second-highest cause of death by injury, and 61% of drownings occur in the sea, lakes and dams.

Schools should be run like businesses with principals playing the role of chief executive officer, said Clem Sunter of the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund. Sunter was one of the speakers at the South African Principals’ Association annual conference held in Bloemfontein, Free State, last month.

The Open Learning Systems Education Trust (Olset) received a double boost for its ground-breaking initiative of using radio as a tool to support teachers and promote multilingualism in classrooms. Its interactive radio-learning series English in Action is broadcast to schools through the SABC’s regional radio stations.

Schools could soon be dishing out indigenous meals to hungry learners. The Indigenous Foods for Poverty Alleviation project, a joint venture between the department of arts and culture and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, seeks to encourage communities, especially in poor rural areas, to grow their own traditional foods.

The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) held its sixth national congress, in Midrand, Gauteng, in a politically charged environment owing to the ongoing succession battle within the ANC. Sadtu has been very vocal about where its sympathy lies regarding who should lead the ANC. With its massive following of 230 000 members, it is key in deciding who wears the crown come 2009.

When Nico Wiggil, a mathematics teacher at Laer­skool Secunda in Mpumalanga, was told he was among the teachers who had won a trip to a prestigious United States-based space and rocket centre in Alabama earlier this year, he thought he was dreaming. “Incredible, overwhelmed, too good to be true” were the words Wiggil used to describe his feelings.

Every teacher should be competent in HIV/Aids education and skills by 2015. This was one of the resolutions reached following a three-day meeting held in Boksburg on Gauteng’s East Rand. About 40 delegates from Commonwealth countries attended. The aim of the event was to share ideas on how to address the growing negative impact of the HIV/Aids pandemic on the education sector.

An ambitious “high performance programme”, aimed at identifying young, talented soccer players and enabling them to reach their full potential, has swung into action. Part of the programme will focus on strengthening the life skills of the players, and teachers will be enlisted to help achieve this.

He used to be one of the stars in your classroom, an energetic and hard worker who always achieved top marks. But suddenly his performance slumped; he is aloof, arrives late at school, visits the toilet endlessly, is untidy and rebellious. You sense there is a problem, but you just cannot put your finger on it. "Dig deeper," urged Captain Jan Combrinck, "as these are some of the tell-tale signs of drug abuse."

The last thing Elijah Mathibela expected when his phone rang on Easter Monday was to be told of deaths in the community. The broken bodies of three young women were lying behind a shopping centre in Mamelodi West, Pretoria. They were murdered. Mathibela, the principal of Jafta Mahlangu High, could not help but wonder whether they were among his charges.

The classroom looks like any other, its walls adorned with an assortment of charts and posters. On the chalkboard are notes, probably scribbled during the last period on the day the school closed for the Easter holiday. A few cream-white chairs, which have been arranged in a circle in the room, seat a group of casually clad youths, aged around 18, and a few adults.

Three teachers who impressed the judges with their ability to inspire learners and achieve consistent results for up to 20 years won the seventh annual Aggrey Klaaste Maths, Science and Technology Educator of the Year awards, sponsored by Sowetan and the Telkom Foundation.

Once you have found your perfect home and the right financial package to go with it, you start on the rather complicated and annoyingly long process of making an offer and waiting for transfer to take place. The first step is to sign an offer to purchase, which the seller can accept or reject within a period you specify.

Long-awaited legislation to allow schools cheaper access to the Internet has been approved — more than four years after the Department of Education and the Department of Communications introduced the idea in a policy document. A bungle involving the departments and telephony parastatal Telkom has delayed the introduction of an e-rate, a discounted rate for Internet services.

In the east of Gauteng, the Phumlani Secondary School is nestled in the centre of the densely populated Katlehong township with its untarred streets and a dusty, open sports ground. This week, the school scooped top honours in the national Department of Education awards for home language improvement.

A Montessori school in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, has been accused of operating illegally. The independent school, which offers classes from nursery to junior primary, is also alleged to have problems with hygiene, security and parking. The school denies the allegations, claiming that some parents simply have "an axe to grind".

Experts and practitioners involved in early childhood development have raised serious concerns about the government’s lack of early childhood interventions in the years preceding Grade R. Their main gripe is that, despite compelling international evidence that the provision of ECD education plays a significant role in preparing children for schooling in their formative stages, the government continues to focus the available ECD resources on Grade R.