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Brothers Still Not in School Just Three Streets Away

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 01 Feb 2012   |   

Two brothers have not yet opened a book at school this year because of a legal battle to establish whether they should be allowed into a school in the south of Johannesburg.

The mother of the two boys and her brother-in-law took the school, its principal, its administration clerk, the school governing body and Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga to court to get the children admitted to the school.

The mother claimed that the school failed to admit the children even though they lived only three streets away from it.

The complainants and the respondents, who were expected to appear before Judge Kathy Satchwell, failed to reach an out-of-court settlement but agreed to meet again at the court on Friday.

• Read complete articel at Timeslive

Jonathan Jansen Finds a School That Still Cares

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 26 Jan 2012   |   

It is early Monday morning and, after rising at 4am for the early flight from Bloemfontein, I was not in the mood for small talk. I expect the teachers on their first day back from the holidays to exhibit that semi-depression that we all go through on returning to hard work.

Exactly the opposite; these teachers are bristling with excitement, almost literally jumping for joy.

“Are you people on uppers?” I ask the one smiling face after the other as they pass by with their joyful countenances.

There are no children yet, but the place is busy. The principal rushes a few to a management meeting. Others read earnestly from what seems like planning books. Nobody is lazing around, and then the shock: one teacher after another comes to tell me how excited they are about teaching and what a great principal they have as leader. This is not choreographed; they really mean it. Time to find out why.

The first thing that strikes you is that nobody talks about academic results. The emphasis at Leicester Road is on caring, and the vision and mission statements on the school website are filled with words of compassion and belonging.

Two teachers tell me with great passion about their love for the children and how hard they work to make every child feel accepted. They raise money to feed hungry children. They employ additional teachers as specialists to guide and counsel troubled children.

The school is basic but clean, efficient and welcoming. The ethic of care is everywhere.

• Read Complete Article at Timeslive

Matric Student Refuses to be Set Back by Crushed Leg

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 25 Nov 2011   |   

Matric pupil Zanele Zondo had every excuse to throw in the towel when she was knocked down by a bus on day two of the matric exams.

But, despite a broken leg, the 18-year-old has refused to give up.

The teenager, from Orlando West, in Soweto, wrote three papers while being treated in hospital and had to be picked up by the school bus and taken to class to sit for other exams.

A bus hit her in Dobsonville, Soweto, while she was walking home after extra maths and science classes. Her leg was crushed between the bus and a parked car.

“It happened so fast. I was screaming,” the pupil of Chris J Botha Secondary School, in Bosmont, Johannesburg, said yesterday.

She was taken to Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital where she was operated on.

School authorities advised Zondo to write her exams next year, but she refused.

“I have plans. I want to study next year. You have to do what you have to do. It’s life.”

Zondo, who with 12 relatives survives on her grandmother’s pension , wrote two maths papers and an Afrikaans paper during her time in hospital.

“I had to study in hospital. It was difficult. I told myself to ignore the pain, but you can’t.”

Zondo said nurses told her to study using the light of her cellphone after they switched off the lights at night. Other patients in her ward were very supportive.

• Read complete article

SA Children Perpare for Exams Without Learning

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 09 Nov 2011   |   

With these ubiquitous examinations upon us once more, it is a good time to ask a very unsettling question: how much learning actually goes on inside South African schools and universities?

I do not mean how many facts are memorised at short notice to regurgitate in the final exam. I mean learning, variously defined as a transformation in the meaning of a student’s experience; the altering of beliefs; the changing of behaviour; the things we think we actually send our children to school for.

Sometimes seismic shifts in education take place without anyone noticing. It kind of sneaks up on you so you take what happens in school and classroom life for granted. One of those shifts, I dare to say, has been the move away from a concern for learning to a preoccupation with testing.

The next time you have a child in school, simply tick off the number of times the child writes tests and examinations. In many high schools teachers early on begin to focus on “what is required for” the upcoming examinations; this obsession takes on feverish proportions as children move from Grade 10 to Grade 12.

To understand this obsession with writing tests you have to understand what propels the school system in this direction.

There is enormous pressure on students to do well in these often mindless tests because of an often misplaced interest in the children’s future.

The smartest children pick up on this cue that doing well in academic subjects is good for them and draws praise from all quarters. So what did some of them do?

They took more than a dozen subjects. I remember a child at a Pretoria school who somehow got more than 20 distinctions in what was then called “matric”. Such a child is not only a danger to society, but a danger to higher education. Can you imagine the kind of stress this child must have passed through to attain this ridiculous feat?

What does this say about the overall health of a child when obviously all the time available for living was consumed in this senseless game of impressing adults? When, in fact, did learning take place?

But, of course this pressure on children to do well in school examinations is good for the school. Principals obsess with looking good in the eyes of their peers, the parents and their province.

I endlessly hear principals claiming things like a 99.3% pass rate in Grade 12. So what? Did the children learn anything? Now that would be something worth boasting about. The teachers have a stake in the results as well.

I remember how an anxious mathematics teacher told me that if she had a failure in teaching this subject, she would be “demoted” (her words) to teaching mathematical literacy. And imagine as a parent being able to boast that your Sipho or Sanna got straight As in the senior certificate examination; the genes do wonders! And there you were, thinking that this whole game was about the children or about learning. It is, let me be honest, simply a game.

Nothing demonstrates the demise of learning in our society more powerfully than what happens to poor children in serially disrupted schools and classrooms.

Somewhere around June of the school year, mindless bureaucrats and politicians decide you can cram into weekend and vacation ovens thousands of little facts that children will remember long enough to give back on the date of the dreaded examination.

You do not need to be an educational psychologist to recognise this is not learning; it is the education equivalent of force-feeding an undernourished patient on junk food.

• Read complete article at Timeslive

Celebrating South African Teachers

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 10 Oct 2011   |   

The little girl knew something was wrong. As she came home from school, the sight of police cars around the house alarmed her. The intense voices of her parents arguing frightened her.

The truth would scar her for life. Her father was a paedophile.

Enter a teacher, who took the hand of this young soul and patiently walked her through the trauma, leading her to healing and wholeness. That girl, now a young woman, found the strength to submit her story, in honour of that teacher-healer, for the Great South African Teachers book.

This is not a book about failing schools, troubled children or bad teachers. It is a collection of stories from current and former school children who celebrate the outstanding South African teachers who transformed their lives. From affluent schools and poor, from former-white schools and still-black schools, from the big cities and the small villages, come powerful stories about great educators.

They are great in different ways. There are the subject artists who dazzle young minds with their teaching craft. There are the life performers who help children make the connection between classroom learning and preparation for life. There are the extended parents who care not only for the minds of children but for their hearts as well – these are the “extra-mile” teachers who take on pastoral duties of care beyond their job descriptions. The courageous activist stories tell of teachers who risked their jobs to teach outside the official curriculum during the years of apartheid education. The words and actions of the inspiring mentors have remained with their students long after they left school.

Great teachers have one thing in common: they leave an indelible imprint on the lives of young people.

The book started with a simple invitation in the Sunday Times: “Submit a story about the teacher who made the greatest impact on your life.” Within days, scores of stories flooded in – it seemed people had been waiting a long time for the chance to share their memories of educators who changed their lives. This was an idea whose time had come. The stories came from every province: about young teachers and older teachers; from the World War2 era to recent months; from children still in school to octogenarians; about tough-love teachers and gentle, gracious teachers; about teachers of subjects inside school and teachers of life outside school. The rich mix of class, colour and creed in the stories entranced the review panel and the editorial team.

• Read complete article at Timeslive

Dana Stokvel Fixing Ailing State School System in SA

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 13 Sep 2011   |   

Afro-jazz musician Simphiwe Dana has a novel idea for drawing young professionals into fixing the ailing state school system — a black education stokvel.

Launched in Johannesburg and Cape Town in the past week, the stokvel concept aims to mobilise private money to aid poor black schools. It is part of Dana’s Black Culture Education Tour, during which she has visited 26 schools in five provinces on a fact-finding mission that began in March.

More than 30 potential members attended the stokvel’s inaugural meeting in Johannesburg last Friday, including the national director of public prosecutions, Menzi Simelane, business leader Bobby Godsell, former higher education director general Mary Metcalfe, radio and TV personality Penny Lebyane, comedian and actor Eugene Khoza and IT entrepreneur Chief Ntshingila.

Dana identifies with the problems facing rural pupils because she faced similar issues growing up, she told the Friday meeting.

The songstress, who achieved fame after the release of her debut album Zandisile in 2007, described herself as a self-ordained education ambassador who has “endeavoured to garner support from society to patch things where government fails”.

Dana spoke about the obstacles to improving education in rural areas and townships, with one of her criticisms being the general use of English as a medium of instruction, which was “producing horrifying results”. “Our children believe they’re dumb because they do not understand what they’re being taught.

“Even the teachers are not well versed in the language,” Dana said. She wants to “start small” by helping procure textbooks and fixing school infrastructure.

“As we grow bigger, we’ll start building schools, building boarding schools in rural areas.”

• Read Complete Article at MG

National Book Week to Mark a New Culture of Reading in SA

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 08 Sep 2011   |   

January 8 2012, the beginning of the year-long celebrations of the centenary of the ANC, is around the proverbial corner. In spite of what agenda might be brewing in some hideous crucible to attempt to destroy the ANC or besmirch its image, Africa, the diaspora and the rest of the international community are busy with preparations to celebrate the centenary in solidarity with the ANC and South Africa.

What does our National Book Week have to do with the above? It is worth noting that the first secretary-general of the ANC, Solomon T Plaatje, was a major literary figure, a prominent translator and an outstanding publicist, to name just a few of his contributions to the development of our culture. And that is an integral part of our heritage.

But even before the existence of the book, storytellers were the custodians of a people’s collective experience and memory, which informed and influenced their cultural values. In short, even before the book, literature was, and remains, a major repository of a people’s memory and cultural values, one of the most important components of a people’s heritage.

So at what point are we today in relation to literacy and the reading habits required to open “the doors of learning and culture”?

It is not a secret that reading is not anywhere near being one of our favourite national pastimes. For instance, in Soweto, the largest township in the land, there are more spots where people spend many hours and a lot of money drinking than there are libraries where people could spend time developing and recreating themselves to be more productive members of society.

Alcohol abuse is a national problem and concern for those who care about the health of the nation.

The young, and others not so young, are more familiar with, and more readily excited by, trends in fashion and the whims of celebrities than they are with books and writers. They consume more fashion than knowledge and culture, a friend and colleague of mine observes.

One of the shops selling designer clothes at Maponya Mall, in Soweto, is among the more profitable ones in Gauteng, I’m told. Yet (it makes you want to holler from the rooftops), the first shop to shut down at that mall was a bookstore!

• Read Complete Article at Timeslive

Fixing the South African Education Crisis

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 13 Jul 2011   |   

No other African country spends as much as 5.4% of gross domestic product on education. No-fee schools constitute 64% of all South African schools in which, theoretically, learners do not pay.

Despite this substantial investment, the evidence is consistent over a number of years that our education system is one of the least productive in the region. The most common indicators show a repeat pattern of low productivity: enrolments drop sharply from near-universal attendance up to age 15 to only 78% for 18-year-olds; grade repetition remains high, starting in the first grade and with 51.5% of pupils repeating one or more years in grades 10 to 12; more than 4% of students across grades miss a year or more of school; close to 20% of learners in the senior years of high school are above the age-grade norms for their grade; and drop-out rates are very high as learners move into high school, with 20% of 18-year-olds not in school and not completing grade 12.

The picture looks much bleaker when performance outcomes are taken into account. It must be emphasised that senior certificate (formerly matric) results are almost irrelevant as a measure of the effectiveness of the school system. Take the 2010 results: 173030 candidates who wrote the grade 12 exam failed; less than a quarter of the candidates (23.5%) qualify, on paper, to do a first degree at university; fewer pupils (by a margin of 8756) passed mathematics than in the previous year; and fewer than half the pupils who start grade 1 reach grade 12.

• Read complete article at timeslive
  

• East Africa Children Poorly Taught

  by Nonikiwe - Editor on 12 Jul 2011   |   

  While three East African countries have achieved on school enrolment levels, majority of pupils continue to demonstrate incompetence in the two most important aspects of basic education.

  A report dubbed “Are our children Learning” shows that children in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda perform poorly compared to the established curriculum standards. The report appears to hold a different tone than another one from Uganda’s examinations body, which points to a slightly brighter outlook.

  Uganda boasts of approximately 8.3 million children in primary school, compared to 2.3 million before the programme in 1997. But as the report, prepared by Uwezo, an initiative to improve competencies in literacy and numeracy in East Africa, indicates, there is nothing to be proud of if majority of pupils, though in school, are not able to read and later on deal with numbers.

  The tests were for Primary Two and administered to 145,730 children from 79,286 households in 2009/2010. The assessment was done on children between the age of six and 16. But findings indicate that investing in inputs alone has limited impact, and that fresh thinking focused on incentives for learning is needed. Further, it shows that children in the three countries perform poorly compared to established curriculum levels.

  • Read complete article at monitor

• Technology in the South African Classroom

  by Nonikiwe - Editor on 06 Jun 2011   |   

  Teachers in a South African primary school are using Microsoft’s interactive hands-free gaming systems, Xbox Kinect, to improve English literacy among learners. Microsoft says both learners and teachers have embraced the new technology in the classroom. Victor Ngobeni, Manager of Microsoft’s Africa School Technology Innovation Centre, will present a workshop about the study, which is a world first, at the upcoming African Education Week in Johannesburg from 6-8 July.

  Games used in all three learning areas
  The study is taking place at the Lakeside Primary School in Vryheid, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and six Xbox Kinect units were installed in the school’s Grade 1, 2 and 3 classrooms in March. Says Victor Ngobeni: “Teachers integrate it into formal lessons for 2 to 3 hours three times a week. The other time spent playing is purely for enjoyment. Although the games are used in all three learning areas, it appears that numeracy (maths) is being integrated more often than the other two as all the games have scores and these are being used in lessons on counting, number concept, basic operations and data collecting. Games like Kinect Sport, Kinectimals and Joyride have also been used in lessons on road safety, transport, wild animals, pets, diminutives and good sportsmanship.”

  • Read complete article