Extra-Mural Education Project's (EMEP) "Beyond the School Wall" teachers'
graduation, Sid G Rule Primary School, Grassy Park, Cape Town
21 April 2007
HoD Mr Ronnie Swartz
Mr Gevisser
Graduates
My congratulations to the educators who decided to take on new learning and
fresh approaches. Joining a programme of innovation such as this one can be a
daunting enterprise as challenging and new ideas are difficult territory for a
mature professional. The EMEP candidates are to be congratulated for their
perseverance and enthusiasm.
I am excited to be here.
This is a very unusual event. EMEP seeks to change schools into spaces of
creativity and development. They want us to optimise the school and to change
schools from under-utilised unimaginative spaces to busy places of learning
energy and imagination.
In 2004, we met the EMEP team and I decided to find out more. We agreed that
a pilot be attempted and the Western Cape Department of Education (WCED)
bravely agreed to serve as the experiment. I am hopeful that after the success
of this pilot we may see further take up in other provinces. Today's qualifying
class should use their alumni status to share the EMEP model with teacher
organisations and colleagues in the education sector.
No other non-governmental organisation (NGO) project has done as much to
make full use of school spaces after and during school hours.
It is also unusual because of the special course that EMEP has designed to
teach teachers about extra-mural practice. There have also been important
benefits spin offs from the project that have fitted into the WCED's thinking
about improving schools and learner performance.
It is appropriate to acknowledge Mr Gevisser's role in this success. He has
cheerfully and persistently pursued education authorities with exciting new and
imaginative ideas for many years now.
EMEP has adopted the slogan, "Schools as community hubs".
What EMEP actually says in its literature is that it "helps schools grow as
learning and recreational hubs within their communities". Through its work in
the extra-mural learning zone, they help "to energise the curriculum", they
lift the curriculum from a tool of learning into a tool of empowerment and
development. A tool "to tackle inequality, build social inclusion and develop
healthier and more creative lifestyles".
Community involvement and parental participation in schools, that idea of
schools as community hubs, has featured in a wide range of education
literature. It was a particular and powerful impulse in and through the African
National Congress (ANC) policy. It was one of the key policies in the ANC's
Yellow Book, that education blueprint we prepared before we came into
government.
EMEP has taken the concept of schools as community hubs further in practice
than we did in theory in the Yellow Book.
EMEP focuses on 12 areas of activity, one of which is the arts which
includes music.
This focus is important for several reasons, it recognises the potential
available in communities to enrich the talent and creative skill of learners
and teachers. It creates the possibility for acknowledging and utilising
community based individual to tap and hone these talents. It also creates the
opportunity for schools in marginalised communities to offer music for the
first time. Few of our poor schools are able to teach children how to play an
instrument, even though learning about music is in the curriculum. At present,
if you want a child to learn to play an instrument he must learn to do so after
hours.
Beyond curriculum the programme links into several other imperatives that we
are busy implementing.
First, there is the promotion of safe and caring schools. The limited use of
school spaces has led to extremely instrumentalist notions of schools. We see
as spaces we occupy for a brief time for specified purposes only. We have no
real ties to them. This is why we conduct ourselves in a negative fashion in
schools, it is the reason we allow theft of school property, the reason why
learners and teachers cannot feel confidently safe and protected. Using schools
as community hubs for learning beyond the curriculum makes them our spaces and
thus enhances the potential for caring about them.
A second imperative is building caring and learning school communities.
Imagine a context in which a school has parents attending a legal aid class,
learners at youth HIV workshop and educators surfing the web researching the
latest education theory all in one space after three o' clock. We would have
for the first time a unity of generations in education. A unity that has been
elusive since 1976.
A third imperative is South Africa's commitment to promote lifelong
learning. A commitment to ensure that no one is left behind. Such opportunities
should go beyond Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) and incorporate
skills acquisition for adults. Such programmes at our schools will provide
adults with the chance of entering the economy as capable skilled social
actors.
A fourth imperative is supporting quality for the entire school community,
creating reading clubs where daily newspapers are read and analysed textually,
politics and economics debated joint replies to editors and youth columns
crafted by budding young writers.
The fifth is promoting sport and physical activity in all schools. Sport
beyond the curriculum, sport involving local soccer giant's enthusiastic
retired coaches and locally based competition.
Both music and sport are collective or community excises whereas reading or
learning by their nature usually are private and internal. It is the community
oriented aspects of schooling that have been given short shift in the past and
our children today are the poorer for it.
What EMEP has put its finger on is that extra-mural activity that motivates
children. Learning by sitting on a classroom bench may well excite the minds of
many schoolchildren, but it is the chess club or the breakfast club or the
museum outing that children look forward to during the day. We have to use that
enrichment of their lives that extra-mural activity brings to motivate children
to perform better in their schoolwork. It can. It does.
In closing, teachers graduating here today have learned what it is like to
be taught. It is important for teachers to learn again. It is an important
lesson, a lesson that learning never comes to an end. Call it lifelong learning
or continuous professional development, what it means is that times have
changed and that in order to succeed in the future teachers need constantly to
be finding new ways of inspiring and motivating their children. I believe that
EMEP may be that inspiration.
Issued by: Department of Education
21 April 2007
