Tomorrow, the 5th of October the whole world will be celebrating World Teachers' Day under the theme, "A Call for Teachers."
I take this opportunity to join the people of the world in paying tribute and appreciate the outstanding contribution of teacher’s in changing the lives of our people for the better through education.
Teachers are and will always remain the backbone of our ongoing struggle for people emancipation and socio-economic development.
The pride of every nation is its children and more importantly the education of children is used as a gauge and tool to make future projections for socio-economic progress and development.
As a nation and province we also take pride in the education of our children and more significantly our teachers who are driving this education project forward against all odds.
This day therefore provide us with a platform to focus public attention on the positive aspects of Education thereby raising the public image of the teaching profession. It also is a special day to individual and groups of teachers who have the interest of our children and the future of our country at heart.
We are honoured to be associated with teachers who pursue excellence not just for themselves but for their learners and communities they serve as well.
Our intention for this day is to celebrate with our esteemed teachers as well as to recognise and promote excellence in teaching performance. We also honour dedicated, creative and effective teachers and schools to encourage best practices in schools.
As we honour excellence in education delivery, we are reminded of the selfless role that our teachers play in taking our nation forward.
As a province we are grateful of the opportunity to say thank you to all our teachers for the noble job that they are doing.
We thus make a call to all our teachers to strive for improvement in the quality of teaching and learning, particularly in public education as well as to develop learners' abilities to build a sustainable future with citizens who are able to take action in their own communities and contribute to developmental challenges.
The department will continue to work side by side with teachers' labour formations to accelerate all efforts aimed at creating an enabling environment for teaching and learning to take place in line with the progressive policies of this country.
We are proud as a province to be amongst the first to resuscitate the Teacher College which is now to be integrated into the University of Mpumalanga.
We therefore make a clarion call to learners who harbour intentions of becoming teachers to look out for admission information so that they could take advantage of the existence of this institution at their door steps.
Equally, we urge parents to add impetus by encouraging their children to make teaching a career of choice for without good teachers all other professions will suffer.
Sisonke sifundzisa sive.
For more information contact:
Mr Jasper Zwane
Cell: 083 743 1804
E-mail: j.zwane@education.mpu.gov.za
