Minister Pandor
30 October 2007
On Thursday, 1 November 2007, the Minister of Education, Mrs Naledi Pandor
will visit the greater Bitou Municipality in Plettenberg Bay, where she will
launch the Bitou 10 Education and Development Foundation. Bitou 10 is a
private-sector intervention whose support and enrichment programmes is aimed at
improving the 10 public schools in the rural parts of the greater Bitou region
from Kranshoek to the Crags.
The Bitou 10 schools educate some 6 250 children and serve a total local
population of 59 000 people living in a regional council area measuring 1 000
square kilometres. In the high holiday season the Plettenberg Bay population
swells dramatically to 130 000 for six weeks and again in April to some 80 000.
The Bitou 10 schools represent a microcosm of the South African schooling
system, two of the schools serve relatively well-off communities and their
performance is good to excellent, while the remainder are poor.
Over the past seven years the Bitou project has provided literacy, numeracy,
and school leadership mentorship to the 10 rural schools. The Joint Education
Trust (JET) evaluated the project in 2003 and 2007. JET's school-improvement
guru, Nick Taylor, says there has been a huge improvement in reading skills at
grade three: "The 2005 report predicted that those schools which had benefited
from the Bitou reading intervention were likely to exhibit strong gains on the
2006 Western Cape Education Department (WCED) test. However, the actual gains
made exceeded even these very optimistic predictions. Indeed, in 20 years of
evaluating programmes of this kind, the author has never seen gains of this
magnitude."
There is great excitement about the Minister's visit to Plettenberg Bay for
the Foundation launch. The Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, said:
"We need to strengthen early reading programmes and the commitment of parents
to teaching their children to read. We also need to look at how we include
parents in these learning processes. It is important for parents and caregivers
to support their children in learning, in instilling discipline and positive
attitudes."
Western Cape Education MEC Cameron Dugmore says of the Bitou project:
"Whilst government is making interventions and whilst our interventions have
shown what can be done, I think at the end of the day, government alone will
not make a difference. We shall never succeed without working together, and all
of us must put the interests of our kids first.
"I am sure the schools in this area, like so many other schools, are very
appreciative of the support of organisations like the Bitou 10 Foundation. I
really want to thank all of them for the support they provide to the schools,
without which our task would have been even more difficult." The Foundation has
assisted in the formulation of an integrated education development plan for the
Bitou region. The Mayor of Bitou will present the first draft of the plan to
Minister Pandor at a dinner on Thursday evening. The plan is the result of work
undertaken by some 87 community organisations.
Issued by:
Lunga Ngqengelele
Ministry of Education
Ministerial Spokesperson
Tel: 012 312 5538
Cell: 082 566 0446
E-mail: ngqengelele.l@doe.gov.za
