Tomorrow 12 January marks the beginning of a brand new schooling year. We are indeed ready to begin the 2011 school year. We enter this New Year with renewed vigor and excitement, after the encouraging results achieved by the Class of 2010. I am indeed hopeful that the standard set by the Class of 2010 will spur all of us to work even harder to sustain the pass rate of 67,8 percent we achieved last year.
In order to keep this momentum going, and to ensure a continuously improving education system that we all envisage, the national Department of Basic Education, along with its provincial counterparts will do the following as from this year:
We have already made great strides to ensure success in these five key areas: Workbooks, Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), Introduction of First Additional Language (FAL), Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM) and Annual National Assessments (ANA) for Grade 3, 6 and 9.
Workbooks
Workbooks are designed to assist learners to master the skills required for quality literacy and numeracy development. All literacy and numeracy workbooks for Grade 1 to 6, in all eleven languages are being delivered to schools in order to strengthen these foundational skills of learning. These are high quality books created by the department at half of the original cost.
The distribution of workbooks has already started and will continue until the end of January. We distribute them with due consideration of the number of learners in every school, the administrative issues, available storage capacity and the recent natural disasters/floods that may have caused migration of learners in certain areas.
We have also established a call centre for any school that experience challenges in the delivery or dispatch of the workbooks. The number to call is 086 136 3600.
Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS)
The CAPS process is in full swing for finalisation for full implementation in 2012. There Foundation Phase CAPS and FET CAPS have been finalized and will be submitted to publishers incrementally at the end of this week in order that they can develop textbooks. We have appointed a team of experts to version CAPS in all languages, and by next month, we will publish the CAPS for. Once finalised and gazetted CAPS will be printed and distributed to all teachers in the system. Teacher training will also take place in 2011.
Annual National Assessment
We are rolling out a massive examination this year, the annual national assessment which will provide us with information on the actual levels of literacy and numeracy performance across the system. The Annual National Assessment (ANA) will be written next month in all our schools, followed by a rigorous analysis by March 2011. Between July and November this year, we will be engaging in an elaborate process to make interventions where necessary, as we will be in possession of critical information about the type of intervention needed.
LTSM
One of the goals of the Action Plan 2014 is to ensure that every learner has a textbook for every subject they have registered for. Provinces have given us information about their challenges to achieve 100 percent coverage of LTSM in their schools. For instance the Eastern Cape has informed us that only about 70 percent of their learners will have a book in front of them when they re-open next week, while Gauteng has confirmed that every learner will have a textbook by tomorrow.
Based on the reports we received from provinces so far, it is clear that not every learner will have a textbook by day one of schooling. This is a challenge that we are confronted with along with our provincial departments, hence we are moving towards a centralised procurement of textbooks in the coming years.
Teachers
For our schools to succeed our managements needs extensive planning to ensure the availability of qualified teachers for each class, subject and phase. Indeed I am glad to announce that a total of 2 500 new teachers will be joining the profession this year. These are teachers newly qualified in languages, mathematics, accounting and physical science, who will be placed in areas with the most need.
The training of teachers already in the system begins this month to prepare them for the implementation of the CAPS document as well as workbooks to strengthen Literacy and Numeracy teaching in Grades 1 to 6. A total of R566 million has been set aside across all provinces for this purpose.
Infrastructure
We continue to receive reports from our provincial education departments about their readiness to provide a chair for each learner on day one of schooling. Some provinces have borne the brunt of recent floods and hail damage. Provinces have assured me that there are funds available to ensure that the infrastructure challenges in most of these provinces will be in place.
The situation Eastern Cape has grabbed many headlines with regard to the mud schools in that province. The province has informed me that they will go to tender, to have contractors on site by April to build these schools from scratch.
I’m indeed very encouraged by the progress we have made, and the several programmes we put in place since 2009 and even before. Let us as a nation continue the support we have shown to the Class of 2010.
We also encourage those Grade 12 learners who failed two subjects and therefore did not make it in 2010, to register to re-write in the upcoming supplementary examinations that begin on 7 until 11 February.
Enqurieis:
Hope Mokgatlhe
Cell: 071 680 6849
