November 12, 2008
By Gabi Khumalo
Johannesburg - The Gauteng Education Department has put in place a multi-pronged strategy to address poor literacy, numeracy and learner achievement at schools.
Briefing the media on Tuesday, Gauteng Education MEC Angie Motshekga said the strategy consisted of four elements which include getting schools to work, getting resourcing right, getting learning right and developing teachers to support the new curriculum.
"By getting the resourcing right, we would be optimising what we already have by making more informed and better choices with schools and teachers including the optimal utilisation of schools," Ms Motshekga said.
With regards to getting schools to work better, Ms Motshekga said the department was improving the quality of public participation through improved governance by governing bodies and improved resources and learning programmes for school management teams.
The department is also focusing on improving classroom interaction by teachers and learners to get learning right.
Ms Motshekga further said the role out of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) introduced new challenges where educators across the province had to go through the orientation programmes to enable them to facilitate the learning and teaching process within the framework of the NCS.
She said although educators in the foundation phase had been implementing the NCS for the past five years, majority of the educators still experienced challenges with regard to the implementation of the curriculum across the three learning programmes as from 2005 up to 2007.
On Grade 12, Ms Motshekga said the department had over the past 12 years improved learner performance in Grade 12 exit examinations by over 23 percent and currently invested 80 percent of the education budget on providing public schooling.
Ms Motshekga said the matric pass rate had shown a steady increase from 1998 to 2003, but had declined in 2004 and 2005, increased in 2006 and decreased in 2007.
She, however, noted that the quality of passes with regard to endorsement has improved in the last two years adding that since 1998, the provincial average had been substantially above the national average.
In supporting the Early Childhood Development (ECD), Ms Motshekga announced that the department would be establishing an ECD institute to ensure that a coordinated strategy is delivered for pre-Grade R ECD.
The institute, to be launched soon, will support the Gauteng Provincial Government to regularise the provision of ECD across the province and local government.
The department has already reached over 45 000 children through its Grade R programme in over 1 200 public and community based sites.
The department has also increased the projected target of 470 000 learners benefiting from the National School Nutrition Programme in 2008/2009 financial year.
A total of 508 319 learners in 1 250 schools across the province are currently benefiting from the programme. - BuaNews