Thabo Mohlala

The Eastern Cape sprung a surprise on the country by being the only province to record an improvement in its 2005 matric results. The province’s performance rose from 53,5% to 56,7%. The results in other provinces, however, showed a decrease, dragging the national figures down from a 70,7% pass rate in 2004 to 68,3% last year.

A snap <i>Mail & Guardian</i> survey of schools in and around Johannesburg on Wednesday suggested that the quality of pupils’ back-to-school experiences still depends largely on where they are located — in other words, how well resourced they are.

Mixed reports are coming in about school and teacher readiness to implement the New Curriculum Statement (NCS) for grades 10 to 12 next year. While most agree that the NCS is an improvement on the old curriculum, poor teacher training and delays in the distribution of new learning materials for these grades have been identified as problematic.

Parktown Girls’ High School, north of Johannesburg, this month says goodbye to five out-of-the-ordinary Grade 12s. The school enrolled five deaf learners in 2001, but has been forced to decline any further applications from disabled learners because the cost of teaching them is prohibitive.

"I love teaching and I do not think I can swap it for any profession, however well it pays," says Mavis Shongwe. After a career in teaching spanning 30 years, she is currently deputy principal at Emmangweni Primary School in Tembisa in Gauteng, where she has been teaching since 1979.

Teacher unions are threatening to declare a dispute, as disagreements with the Department of Education (DoE) over the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) continue. The DoE is being accused by the unions of attempting to act outside of the IQMS collective agreement.

Nineteen of the state-employed educators involved in last year’s Mpumalanga matric cheating scandal were found guilty of misconduct earlier this month. The chairperson of the disciplinary committee, Walter Kutumela, says each was fined R3 000 and issued with a written warning.

One of eight recognised indigenous sports codes, jukskei is an all-South African game devised by white settlers as far back as 200 years ago. As they travelled across the land, they spent their spare time competing to see who could throw the pins of the yokes of the oxen closest to the target, which was a stick planted in the ground.

A Cape Town event that links learning to the world of work will take place for the third time early next month. The annual Learning Cape Festival is the brainchild of the Western Cape’s department of economic development and tourism, but much of its success lies in its involvement of other key players — other government departments, as well as civil society and labour organisations.

Sports facilities are notoriously dodgy at most township schools, with soccer and netball usually played on dusty and bumpy surfaces using well-worn equipment. A possible solution to this — at least in the short term — would be for schools to use existing municipal sports facilities nearby to them, many of which lie dormant during weekdays.

Maria Mogotsi* works as a domestic worker in Johannesburg and is responsible for the education of seven children — her own five plus two of her deceased brother’s children. While Mogotsi is determined that all seven should get a decent education, the total monthly school-fees bill takes a huge chunk of her salary.

Poor support from district and regional structures is being blamed for sinking teacher morale and falling matric pass rates in a neglected area of the North West province. The Bophirima region, close to the border of the Northern Cape, encompasses 472 schools.

Vryburg Hoërskool made head–lines in the late 1990s when it became a symbol for a South African obsession: racism. Located in a predominantly conservative Afrikaner town in the North West province, the resistance by white parents to racial integration at the high school erupted into open conflict in 1998 when a group of black learners organised a protest march against the school’s management.

In one of the most shocking incidents in the teaching profession in recent times, an educator based at eMachakwini Primary School on the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal allegedly forced a five-year-old boy to drink his own urine.

Where were you born? I was born in Durban, back in 1949. When and where did you start school? My father was in the navy, so we moved around a bit. I started school in Pretoria at Sunnyside Primary. Then we moved to Simonstown and I went to Fish Hoek Primary. Finally, from Grade 6 […]

Where were you born? Yeoville, Johannesburg. Where and when did you go to school? I started at Yeoville Boys Primary and matriculated from King Edward VII High School in 1957. Who was your favourite teacher? Teddy Gordon who taught me history for matric. His lessons on the French Revolution opened my eyes to South African […]

Private institutions offering Christian theology or religious higher education qualifcations are adapting their course contents to respond to the demands of the changing world around them. While their courses still have a strong Christian content, they are also structured to equip learners with a variety of life-skills that are relevant beyond the confines of the […]

Girls do not yet perform as well as their male counterparts in maths and science, according to a situation assessment and analysis carried out by Unicef in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. The report notes that although the gap is slowly closing between boy and girl learners who are taking these subjects, boys still […]

As South Africa gears up for national elections, political parties have made their stands clear on all important issues, including education. Thabo Mohlala examined the policies and plans for education set out in the manifestos of all the major political parties and some of the smaller parties. There are many areas of commonality – but […]