WENDY MOTHATA

THE South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) has indicated that it’s willing to accept the government’s offer of a 3% wage increase in the public service wage talks. Sadtu said it will not join the public servants’ strike action and it will make an announcement on Monday on the matter when it concludes its national council meeting.

This despite a deadlock with other unions over wage negotiations with the government.

Last week, Sadtu president Magope Maphila said most members were in support of the revised offer of 3% tabled recently at the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) by the department of public service and administration.
Sadtu has a membership of about 260,000.

Despite the prevailing difficult fiscal position, the government believes the 3% salary increase offer to
public servants is ‘generous’.

This is the view of the Acting Minister of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), Thulas Nxesi, and Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana.

The unions demanded a 10% wage increase when negotiations began in May but trimmed the figure down to 6.5% to match the headline inflation rate the Reserve Bank has forecast for 2022.

The government presented a revised and improved offer on the baseline of 2% plus the non-pensionable cash gratuity, amounting to an average of 4.5% of the R20.5 billion that is on the budget.

“The 2% amounted to an additional R8.9 billion over and above the budgeted of R20.5 billion, costing the government a total of R29.5 billion. Labour revised their demand to 6.5% across-the-board baseline increase, plus the non-pensionable cash gratuity,” Godongwana said.

“The employer further indicated that any further increase, above the 2% on the baseline, would require additional funding to be sourced from the Compensation of Employees’ budget and would require the introduction of cost containment measures in the Public Service,” said the Ministers.

While Sadtu has indicated that it may accept the offer, the same proposal has been rejected by other unions, including Nehawu, Denosa, Popcru, and the Public Servants Association.

The unions have since announced their plans to embark on industrial action unless the employer comes up with an improved offer.
Speaking on POWER Perspective on Wednesday, Sadtu spokesperson, Nomusa Cembi, said the majority of their members have accepted the government’s offer.

“Our members have decided to accept with reservation, the deal is nowhere near what we want. It is with heavy hearts that they accepted. Out of nine provinces, there are seven who have accepted and two did not accept. We operate on the process of democratic centralism, so we are going to accept. However, we have not signed.”

Some public service unions are on the verge of calling a national strike amid a wage dispute with the government.

Denosa has advised the members and structures of the union that the negotiations have reached the
dispute level.

“DENOSA and other COSATU unions filed for the joint dispute referral at the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC). This application will invoke the conciliation process in PSCBC. This happened after COSATU unions in the public sector reported in a joint meeting held on October 6, 2022, that their members were rejecting the final offer of the employer,” Denosa said.

In the meantime, Denosa indicated that it will embark on a consultation process through its constitutional structures to unpack the current processes taking place at PSCBC and the possible end results.

INSIDE EDUCATION

UCT council chairperson Babalwa Ngonyama has called for an independent investigation into the governance crisis at the university.

This comes after a meeting of the University Senate in late September, a Special Council meeting on Thursday and a statement issued on Friday by concerned members of the UCT Council.

In their statement, the 13 members of council said they were distancing themselves from a “flawed” and irregular process at a special meeting where a motion into an independent investigation by a retired judge was blocked.

However, in a meda statement released on Saturday evening, Ngonyama said she would ask the council to reconsider its decision.

The university has been in the spotlight over the past two weeks over claims that Ngonyama and the campus’ vice-chancellor professor Mamokgethi Phakeng misrepresented the reasons why UCT’s deputy vice-chancellor professor Lis Lang left the institution.

Lang departed from the university in March.

Lange has been described by academic commentator Jonathan Jansen as “one of the best deputy vice-chancellors this country has ever had”.

Her departure was widely felt to be a major loss to UCT.

Earlier this month, the council resolved to launch an internal probe into the matter. However, Ngonyama has since called for an external investigation led by a retired judge.

UCT spokesperson Elijah Moholola said: “There will be an ordinary sitting of council on Saturday (15 October) that has always been scheduled as a normal meeting. In that meeting, we expect the chair council will officially table this call, then council will deliberate on it and apply their minds and decide whether they want to resolve [and] adopt that as a formal resolution of council.”

Moholola said the investigating panel’s terms of reference must still be formulated.

“First, we have to go through the council meeting and council agreeing to head this call by the chair to go the independent route,” said Moholola.

INSDE EDUCATION

THE Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) awarded 71 study bursaries to Grade 10 and 11 learners while prize money to schools around South Africa as part of the departments Water and Sanitation Education Programme (WSEP).

Bursaries were awarded to learners to study fields rated in the water and sanitation-related sector, while the prize money will be used by schools to procure water and sanitation related needs for the sustainability of their projects.

“The learners get to study at the university of their choice in the country, in a field of study related to our sector. The comprehensive bursary programme covers full tuition fees, accommodation & food as per university guidance, books and stationery allowance & a monthly stipend” revealed the DWS.

The WSEP initiative aims to address the skills and knowledge shortage in the DWS by challenging Grade 10 to Grade 12 learners to compete and innovative solutions to support the department.

A total of 800 learners have been awarded bursaries to pursue careers in the water and sanitation sector while 3,500 schools have been supported through the programme since its inception.

One competition under the WSEP, the Aqua Enduro action project seeks to identify learners who are passionate and have the determination to pursue careers in the water and sanitation sector.

Nearly 500 schools participated in the programme. Competing schools demonstrated innovative ways to save water and develop sanitation infrastructure.

A further 27 bursaries were awarded for a public speaking competition hosted by the department. Learners debated topics around the state of water and sanitation in the country.

KUDZAI MASHININGA

CAMEROON national Loic Elnathan Tiokou Fangang concluded his master’s degree in mathematical sciences at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) earlier in 2022 and, as he awaits an opportunity to pursue a PhD in machine learning, he believes the dream of the institute’s founders – of producing the next Einstein – has already been accomplished.

AIMS is a network of six centres of excellence, which are based in South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania and Rwanda. Students who join the institute get to work on driving the continent’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) agenda.

The founder of AIMS, South African physicist Neil Turok, in 2008 gave a speech in which he declared his wish that the next Einstein would be from Africa.

In an interview with University World News, Fangang said that, each year, AIMS is producing African Einsteins as it invests in its students – and not just by equipping them with mathematical skills.

“Being Einstein is more like a concept [and] values, and that is who we, who attend AIMS, are. ‘Being Einstein’ entails using critical thinking skills, and any other skills, hard and soft ones, to effectively solve real-life problems.”

“We all have different backgrounds and, therefore, different ways to impact. On my own, my challenge is to change the narrative of Africa around technology and go beyond our limitations,” he said.

His studies at AIMS have cleared the path for him to be involved with organisations that work voluntarily to spread machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa.

For example, he is an ambassador for Zindi, which hosts the largest community of African data scientists and is working to solve the world’s most pressing challenges using machine learning and AI.

It connects data scientists with organisations.

“I am involved with several organisations across Africa such as AMLD Africa and Zindi, as their ambassador. I’m working in the core team of KmerAI, an association aiming at decentralising machine learning and AI in Cameroon. I’m working towards opening a start-up in order to sensitise and educate people and companies around the fields of AI and data science.”
Fangang said that, for a livelihood, he is providing services to companies through his marketing agency and is actively looking for a PhD opportunity in the scope of machine learning.

And why does he want to do a machine learning PhD?

“I believe that AI and machine learning are going to solve big challenges we have in Africa such as traffic, climate change, and so forth … It’s a must for Africans to be part of the revolution. Having a PhD will give me access to certain opportunities for a bigger impact in Africa,” he added.

Nurturing independent thinkers

Another AIMS alumna, Daphne Machangara, a Zimbabwean, was admitted to AIMS to study for a masters in industrial mathematics from 2017 to 2019.

In an interview with University World News, she said that, at the African institute, professors from across the continent promote independent thinkers and allow students to engage and solve real-world problems, by offering theory and application.

Machangara said everyone is offered a scholarship and there’s diversity of Africa’s best students chosen to represent different countries. When they meet, it’s all about sharing ideas, teamwork and problem-solving.

“Students per centre per intake are manageable numbers; [there are] not very big classes, funded by such foundations as [the] Mastercard [Foundation].

“AIMS is vital because it brings together talented African students who, together, try to tackle problems existing in Africa through the obtained skills from the programme. I think the next Einstein could be from Africa, because of the efforts and projects which students from the programme have engaged in or are engaging in after the programme has ended,” she said.

In terms of her contributions on the continent, Machangara said she is a central committee member of the Deep Learning Indaba and also of its local chapter in Zimbabwe.

The Deep Learning Indaba is an organisation with a mission to strengthen machine learning and AI in Africa towards the goal of ensuring that Africans are not only observers and receivers of ongoing advances in AI, but active shapers and owners of these technological advances.

Annually, the organisation holds a conference it calls The Deep Learning Indaba and, this year, it was held in Tunisia, bringing together more than 300 members of Africa’s artificial intelligence community for a week-long event of teaching, research, exchange and debate around the state of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Machangara said AIMS scholars are taught to give back to the community in terms of STEM.

“Firstly it’s about giving back to community … by trying to spread data science and strengthen machine learning in Africa. Attending AIMS prepared me so well in this direction, the reasons being that I got to know of the Deep Learning Indaba during AIMS.”

“Additionally, as AIMS scholars, we used to give back to the community weekly, through various activities at schools, hospitals and so on that prepared me well to do voluntary activities like the one I am doing now,” she said.

Machangara said, under the Zimbabwe chapter, they are bringing about networking among individuals and identification of mentors, as well as collaborations through their programmes.

“We have had chats with Data Science Zimbabwe and appreciate the work they also do in the community,” she said.

UNIVERSITY WORLD NEWS

WENDY MOTHATA

THE Mlumati TVET College has launched their Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) centre last week. The launch signals the second launch of the 4IR projects funded by the ETDP SETA for TVET colleges.

Delivering his speech, MEC for Education in Mpumalanga, Bonakele Majuba, said it’s an exciting day for the Department of Educaton, Ehlazeni TVET College and its stakeholders. 

“We urgently need to develop our capabilities in the areas of science, technology, and innovation. We will soon establish a Digital Industrial Revolution Commission, which will include the private sector and civil society, to ensure that our country is in a position to seize the opportunities and manage the challenges of rapid advances in information and communication technology.”

Majuba said the drive towards the digital industrial revolution will be underpinned by the availability of efficient networks.

The MEC said that the Minister of Higher Education and the Department took seriously the line of march from the President and worked collaboratively with the ETDP SETA to roll out the 4IR concept at TVET Colleges in the country.

“This constructive action by the DHET and ETDP SETA has its basis on the conviction that the 4IR represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to each other. It is inevitable that, as with any revolution, it will effect change in desirable and undesirable ways.”

The MEC said the nature of the labour required is likely to be more skill-intensive, “which could exacerbate the structural unemployment due to skills mismatch prevalent in South Africa.”

The World Bank has estimated that, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new jobs that don’t exist yet.

The same applies to TVET Colleges and universities.

It is anticipated that a wide range of occupations will require a higher degree of cognitive abilities, such as creativity, logical reasoning, and problem solving, as part of their core skills. 

“The 4IR is all about new solutions and new technologies that can provide new, better, and faster solutions,” Majuba said. 

“Consequently, as a department, we support projects such as these between the ETDP SETA and the ten identified colleges. We are confident that Ehlanzeni TVET College will optimally utilize the infrastructure and training of lecturers that this project has delivered for the benefit of our students.”

“We need students that will be able to compete with the best in the world. The Mpumalanga Department of Education, in line with the 4IR, has introduced a pilot project on coding and robotics starting with 17 schools for Grade R-3 and 111 schools for Grade 7. This will be incrementally introduced to other grades until grade 9 in 2024. This centre, therefore, truly resonated with our current plan of action,” MEC said. 

INSIDE EDUCATION

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA

THERE are few presidential activities more fulfilling than spending a morning in the company of small children. Last week, I attended the opening of the Little Flower early childhood development (ECD) centre in Bizana in the Eastern Cape, where I got to spend time with some of the future leaders of our country, reading to them and listening to them.

The centre was recently built by the development organisation Impande South Africa through the support of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

I was deeply touched by the dedication of the centre’s staff to supporting the community and its children. They told me how in the centre’s earliest days, staff struggled to get paid and yet still came to work. They also told me that even if families are not able to pay the R20 fee for their child, the children are not turned away.

The commitment of the ECD centre staff is so important because early childhood development centres play a pivotal role in our nation’s development.
These centres can be found in every village, town and city in the country. Most were started by women in the community to support parents who need their children to be cared for when they are at work. Many of these centres began as creches and day-care facilities. Many have subsequently grown and expanded to incorporate a basic learning curriculum into their services.

As government, we have taken up the task to improve the standards of care and make resources available for ECD centres to run suitable activities for young children to prepare them for formal education.

In April this year, we completed the move of the ECD function from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Basic Education.

This is to link early childhood development to the formal school curriculum and to provide training, education and development to staff in ECD centres around the country.

Because this foundational learning is key to a child’s success in later years, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill that is currently before Parliament proposes that it be compulsory for all children to receive two years of ECD before they enter Grade 1. It is at this stage that children should be taught, learn through play and receive at least one meal a day.

Early childhood development centres don’t just prepare our country’s youngest citizens to succeed in school; they are also an important source of entrepreneurship and job creation. These centres are an important part of the care economy. They sustain livelihoods, especially for women, which contributes to job creation in many communities.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, ECD centres were hard hit. Facilities that rely on school fees to keep running were unable to pay their staff and many parents who lost their jobs were unable to keep their children enrolled.

In response, government established the ECD Employment Stimulus Relief Fund to help ECD centres that had lost income as a result of the pandemic and to enable them to recover.

Preparing our youngest citizens with the tools they need to succeed in life is a responsibility we must collectively shoulder. We must continue to do all we can, as government, the private sector and development organisations, to support early childhood development.

With the many valuable services it provides, whether it is educating our children, providing childcare for working parents or creating opportunities for entrepreneurs, ECD makes a huge contribution to the achievement of many of our developmental goals.

Since the care economy is mainly driven by women, such support goes a long way towards helping women, especially in disadvantaged communities, to become financially secure and independent.

The young children in these centres are the next generation of South Africans who must be able to live up to their full potential as responsible, capable and outstanding citizens.

They must be able to pursue their dreams so that we all may achieve our shared dream of a free, prosperous and happy nation.

From the desk of the President

AS researchers with combined expertise in teaching computer programming and curriculum development, it’s clear to us that this curriculum is about computer programming, despite the fact that the province only uses the term “coding.” Coding is a most basic aspect of learning programming.

Ontario’s decision is in line with those taken by Nova Scotia and British Columbia, which were the first and only Canadian provinces to make learning computer programming compulsory at the primary and secondary levels in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

In the rest of the world, many governments have also made this change, such as Estonia as early as 2012, the United Kingdom in 2014, and South Korea in 2017.

But what are the arguments put forward to motivate the integration of computer science, and more specifically computer programming, into the school curriculum of students? Research highlights three main arguments on this subject that will be discussed in this article.

The lead author of this story, Hugo, is a researcher at the UNESCO Chair in Curriculum Development and a lecturer in the Department of Didactics in Educational Technology. His thesis project in educational sciences at Université du Québec à Montréal focuses on the impact of learning computer programming on young learners.

Meeting the growing needs of the job market

The evolution of the global job market represents one of the motivations at the heart of the integration of programming in school curricula. This motivation, widely promoted by policy-makers, is essentially linked to the need to train more people with programming skills. Indeed, technological knowledge, particularly in the high-tech sector, has been driving economic growth in North America and elsewhere in the world for over 20 years.

A growing number of jobs require a deep understanding of technology. This number of jobs is actually expected to increase in the coming years considering that data science, artificial intelligence and decentralization technologies (such as blockchain technology, on which cryptocurrencies are based) are becoming increasingly dominant areas of the economic sector.

Teaching coding from an early age could thus be a way to facilitate countries’ immersion and performance in the digital economy.
Some studies also argue that exposing students to computer programming early in the school curriculum could have a positive impact on the identity they develop with respect to this field, considering that there are many stereotypes associated with it (mainly that “computer science is only for boys”). In this respect, arguments that go beyond the economic benefits can be evoked.

Promoting social equity

According to several authors, greater exposure to computer science by teaching young people how to program could also help promote greater social equity in terms of representation and access to technological professions.

On the one hand, computer science skills can indeed provide access to well-paying jobs, which could help provide greater financial stability for marginalized groups who have not had the opportunity to accumulate wealth in recent generations. On the other hand, the increased participation of people from under-represented groups in computing (women, Indigenous people, Black people) could also promote diversity in the field, and ultimately result in an increase in the total number of workers.

In addition, there is a related argument that greater diversity within the workforce would lead to better products, accessible to a greater portion of consumers in the marketplace. Too much homogeneity among workers leads to the design of products and services that cater to a relatively narrow spectrum of individuals and problems, which may reinforce some inequalities.

Researchers advancing this equity argument argue that if early and intentional steps are not taken to foster greater diversity, this could result in a “digital gap” or an opportunity difference between dominant and marginalized groups, much more pronounced in the coming years. All youth learning to program could in this sense represent a measure to decrease this gap and promote greater social equity, which is in line with United Nations’ Goal 4 about inclusivity and equality in education.

Developing learners’ cognitive skills

Finally, the most commonly mentioned argument concerns the role programming would play in developing computational thinking in learners. Defined and popularized in 2006, the concept of computational thinking refers to the skills of “problem solving, system design, and understanding human behaviour based on the fundamental concepts of computer science.”

Several authors argue that the development of such computational thinking would be beneficial for the learners, as it would allow them to develop high-level reasoning skills that can be transferred to other learning, such as problem solving, creativity and abstraction.

For these reasons, computational thinking is often embedded within new programming curricula, such as in England’s curriculum, where it is stated that “high quality computer science education equips students to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world.”

The introduction of programming into the school curriculum could therefore have a benefit for all students, even those who are not destined for a technological career, as they could benefit from computational thinking in their daily lives in a more cross-curricular way.

It is important to note, however, that these beneficial effects for the learner, although widely discussed and increasingly documented, still need to be shown through more research involving comparative and longitudinal aspects. Hugo’s thesis project examines this perspective.

In sum, it appears that Ontario’s decision-makers have seen the potential triple benefit of youth learning computer coding for the future. However, the major challenge now facing the Ontario government is the lack of sufficiently qualified teachers to adequately introduce this complex discipline to students.

Adequate staff training will be a key requirement for successful integration, as demonstrated by a 2014 report about computer programming integration in the U.K. One potential solution could be to integrate programming into the initial university training of future teachers.

THE CONVERSATION

Columbia University and its hospitals announced Friday they had reached a $165-million settlement with 147 patients of a former gynaecologist accused by dozens of women of sexual abuse, including the wife of a onetime US presidential candidate.

The Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) said Robert Hadden — who separately pleaded guilty in 2016 to two charges of forcible touching and third-degree sexual abuse — has not worked as a doctor since 2012.

In a plea deal in 2016, Hadden lost his medical license and was registered as the lowest-level sex offender, but did not go to jail.

The agreement announced Friday establishes a compensation fund of $165,081,000 to be distributed to the women, including dozens who sued the doctor and the hospital network when victims came forward to reveal the extent of Hadden’s predatory behavior.

Hadden is currently awaiting trial in federal court on six criminal counts, unsealed in 2020, of taking women across state lines for the purpose of sexual abuse from 1993 to 2012.

“We deeply regret the pain that Robert Hadden’s patients suffered and hope that these resolutions will provide some measure of support for the women he hurt,” CUIMC and New York Presbyterian said in a joint statement.

“All those who came forward should be commended. We are committed to the safety and dignity of every one of our patients and have adopted policies to ensure they are protected and empowered while in our care.”

Among the patients was Evelyn Yang, wife of tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang who ran for president as a Democratic outsider in 2016.

In January 2000, Evelyn Yang told CNN she was assaulted by Hadden in 2012 while seven months pregnant with her first child, and had at first not even told her husband.

“This was a serial predator, and he just picked me as his prey,” she told the network.

The settlement comes after Columbia University announced a $71.5-million deal reached last year between the hospitals and 79 of Hadden’s patients who had been represented by a different lawyer.

Columbia said that over the past decade, CUIMC’s obstetrics and gynecology department has revised existing policies and expanded resources to improve patient safety.

AFP

THE number of South African employers reporting they are recruiting ICT skills overseas has increased dramatically in the past year – up from 38% to over 50%.

This is a key finding in the 2022 JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey – conducted by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), with the support of the Information Technology Association (ITA).

The study’s authors, Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA, and professor Barry Dwolatzky, director of the JCSE, highlight the growing trend to recruit foreign skills as “disturbing, given the continuing high levels of unemployment in South Africa”.

With pressures on business margins making employers less willing to wait for graduates to ‘get up to speed’, the number of enterprises saying it had become harder to recruit increased from 20% last year to 35% this year.

Employers recruiting skills overseas say critical skills visas are growing in importance and that changes to the critical skills list and critical skills visa (CSV) criteria have impacted many of them, with 25% saying the list amended in 2022 has made it harder to obtain the skills they need.

The study report notes that many holders of CSVs under the 2014 criteria will now not be able to renew or extend their visas.

Foreign skills markets have also become more attractive for local ICT practitioners, with almost 30% of respondents already working or planning to work remotely and more than 50% saying they are considering doing so.

“We do know that many highly qualified and experienced ICT practitioners are taking their skills overseas, to more stable social environments, to more lucrative economies, and to better futures for their families,” said Dwolatzky.

“This represents a massive drain on our education and training resources, as the return on our investment in these practitioners is gained by the foreign territory.”

MICT sector size in 2022

The Media, Information and Communication Technologies (MICT) sector now comprises 32,985 employers across five sub-sectors, representing a 7% decrease from the 35,569 in the previous financial year with the number of employees increasing to 228,990.

However, more than half of ICT practitioners work in non-MICT sectors, including retail, financial, services, public sector, manufacturing, mining and health, according to the report.

Changing enterprise skills priorities

The 2022 ICT Skills Survey tracked changes in enterprise priorities since 2008. It found that 14 years ago, the top priorities were Business Intelligence/ Knowledge Management, Application Development and Software as a Service, followed by Service Oriented Architecture, Web Development and Mobile Computing.

In the latest study, they include Information Security/Cybersecurity, Big Data/Data Analytics, DevOps, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things.

Top 5 hard-to-fill vacancies, slowing demand

The top five occupations reported by the SETA with hard-to-fill vacancies in the MICT sector are:

Software Developer (1,435 vacancies);Computer Network and Systems Engineer (1,070 vacancies);ICT Systems Analyst (1,036 vacancies);ICT Security Specialist (270 vacancies); andDeveloper Programmer (252 vacancies).

The study authors note that these vacancy numbers are lower than they were last year, indicative of “a severe slowing of growth in the sector”.

Schofield said: “The demand for skills generally, and for ICT skills in particular, is subject to a wide range of influences. These include the depressed state of the economy, uncertain political stability, fallout from exposure to crime and corruption and the introduction of new and improved technologies.”

The key drivers of change influencing skills demand and supply across the MICT sector in future include artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data analytics, 5G and internet of things.

In other sectoral SETAs, the study authors find growing demand for 4IR skills, particularly in areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, along with developer programmers and cyber security specialists.

The survey also found that the average South African ICT practitioner continues to perform multiple task sets, with only a few identifying their role as “specialist” in nature.

The survey highlighted an urgent and persistent need to raise the game in the education pipeline to close the local ICT skills gaps. It found that among ICT practitioners, only half of ICT graduates are able to find employment immediately after graduating, with around 25% taking 6 months to a year to find work.

“It continues to disappoint us that a significant proportion is still having to wait up to one year to become employed,” Schofield said.

BUSINESS TECH

PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has expressed concern about the increase in incidents of violence, racism, abuse and bullying at South African schools.

Ramaphosa was addressing members of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) on the third day of its National General Council.

Ramaphosa said incidents of violence, abuse and bullying in local schools are a grave concern.

“Incidents of racism are greatly distressing and show that there is still resistance among some people to the gains that this democratic order has achieved,” said Ramaphosa.

“We are concerned about the apparent increase in incidents of violence against teachers and learners, often perpetrated by criminals who come into schools.”

“We need to work together, across society, to ensure that our schools are safe. This means that SGBs, CPFs, communities, local businesses, unions and the police need to work together to ensure that every single school in the country is a place where educators and learners feel secure and safe.”

As the world commemorates World Teachers’ Day, Ramaphosa added that it was important to reflect and celebrate the important role teachers played in the world by advancing human progress overall.

“Teachers are responsible for the development of our country’s most valuable resource – our children,” said Ramaphosa.

“More than any mineral or natural asset, more than any product or industry, the children of this country will shape our future and determine our fortunes. That places a great responsibility on teachers to educate and prepare our children well.”

Ramaphosa added: “As with all the teachers of our country, the members of SADTU carry a great and noble responsibility. It is a responsibility that you continue to perform with pride, dignity and diligence. I wish you a successful and productive National General Council.”

The SADTU NGC is expected to look into the progress made by the union on resolutions taken at its last national congress in 2019, which include, among others, school safety, psychosocial support for teachers who experience serious challenges at schools, and digital learning.

The theme for this year’s NGC is: “Claiming our right to have our human dignity and safety protected and respected in pursuit of a decolonised quality public education”.

INSIDE EDUCATION