NYAKALLO TEFU| 

The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) said the North West Department of Education has failed to provide schools with educators two weeks into the new term.

George Themba, SADTU’s Provincial Secretary said what concerns the union most is that schools that have submitted their snap surveys within the 10-day deadline period given, have still not been provided with educators.

“The conduct by the [North West] officials responsible for finalising the Post Provisioning Norms [PPN] is unbecoming and highly unacceptable.

“It denies the learners the opportunity to be taught and surely that is against the spirit of Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign,” said Themba.

Snap surveys are surveys conducted by schools in the province which they then submit to the national department. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) is then supposed to use these surveys to assess school needs and Post Provisioning Norms information – these are requirements used by the national department to determine the number of teachers needed at a school.

According to the Department of Basic Education Rights Handbook PPNs are a name given to the process of assigning teachers to schools across South Africa.

The department explains this process as a mechanism that aims to ensure that each school is allocated the correct number of teachers.

“Once the whole teacher-post establishment is determined for the province, posts are then allocated to schools,” reads the handbook.

But according to Themba, the North West Department of Education continues to have large numbers of learners and not enough teachers to teach them.

Themba said with the magnitude of work and tasks schools are faced with, it is not feasible for  teachers to provide learners with quality education if they are short staffed. 

This is not a problem the national department is unaware of.

In February, DBE Minister Angie Motshekga announced that there was a shortage of 24 000 teachers in schools across the country. 

Motshekga said the North West province had an allocation of 26 556 posts for the current academic year of which 433 posts were vacant. 

At the time the minister said her department together with the provincial education departments would work on redeploying teachers to schools before the end of the first term. 

Inside Education spoke to North West Education spokesperson Elias Malindi who confirmed that there was indeed a delay in terms of allocation of the teachers for schools in the province.

Malindi said there would normally be a submission of a snap survey from the schools to determine the number of teachers needed in a school.

“I can confirm that the DBE has approved the snap surveys and provided the provincial department with PPN’s. We are in the process of providing teachers to all those schools where teachers have more than the proper ratio of learners to teach,” said Malindi. 

 Malindi said a problem experienced by the provincial department is that they do not have the exact statistics on how many teachers are needed. This is despite DBE having received snap surveys from schools, said Malindi.

Malindi told Inside Education he cannot confirm the number of teachers approved by the national department to be allocated at schools in his province. 

The post Not enough teachers at North West schools appeared first on Inside Education.

NYAKALLO TEFU| 

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga told parliament on Thursday that her department has prioritised the strategic implementation of a curriculum that will include fourth industrial revolution (4IR) material in all public schools.

The new curriculum will include skills material on Coding and Robotics for Grades R-3 and 7. Motshekga said the curriculum will also include a new level subject, Marine Sciences.

Motshekga was addressing the National Assembly where she presented her department’s 2021/22 budget vote.

The minister told the assembly that adjustments that were effected to the 2020 MTEF budget allocations, which changed the baseline allocations for the ensuing three to five year period, have a direct bearing on the 2021/22 budget allocation she was presenting.

“Firstly, the overall 2021/22 MTEF budget allocation R27 billion, an increase of 15.5% from the 2020/21 revised overall baseline budget allocation. Secondly, the overall allocation for Condition Grants is R20.7 billion, an increase of 20.2% from last year’s revised baseline,” said Motshekga.

Motshekga added R16.2 million was allocated as the general budget support for the department’s systematic improvement of language and numeracy in foundation phase as well as another R19.9 million allocated for technology for Grade 7-9.

“These new allocations will go a long way to ensuring the roll-out of these two strategic programmes,” she said.

Other allocations include R3.7 billion allocation for earmarked funding and transfer payments of R1.6 billion.

The Minister said a state-of-the-art digital platform had been developed for training of teachers for Coding and Robotics. 

“Orientation materials, lesson plans and coding programmes, have been uploaded onto this digital platform,” said Motshekga.

Coding is essentially written instructions that a robot or computer program can read and then execute. 

Robotics allows students to see their thinking in a real way as they go through trial and error until the task is accomplished and the robot’s motions are performed as originally intended.

She said the draft Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) documents for Grades R-9 for Coding and Robotics has been submitted to Umalusi for appraisal and quality assurance.

“Preparation for training of officials, the appointment of service providers by ETDP-SETA has been concluded, and Service Level Agreements have been signed,” said the minister. 

In March, DBE gazetted the draft Coding and Robotics curriculum for public comments. Motshekga said the Sasol Foundation funded the orientation of the Coding and Robotics National Training team held the same month.

In response to the announcement of Coding and Robotics, the Democratic Alliance’s Shadow Minister of Basic Education Baxolile Nodada said the party welcomes this announcement by the Minister. 

“The DA has been calling for a lot of advancement in basic education, we are pleased that the principle of taking innovation forward is going ahead in basic education,” said Nodada. 

Nodada said the party’s only concern is that the minister only prioritised 18 schools which means other learners will not get this opportunity. 

“This means only 2 schools per province can be piloted for this particular curriculum on Coding and Robotics,” said Nodada.

The Minister also announced the introduction of a new Further Education and Training (FET) -level subject, Marine Sciences. 

“This is a very welcome addition to the bouquet of subjects we already offer; and it is particularly relevant to our National Development Programme (NDP) goals, since the Ocean Economy contributes over $6 billion toward our country’s Gross Domestic Product,” added Motshekga. 

This year, the first cohort of 13 grade 12 learners from South Peninsula High School, will be writing Marine Sciences as part of their 2021 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination. 

“Since the 2019 pilot, we are happy to report that the intake in Marine Sciences has since increased to more than three hundred (300) Grades 10 and 11 learners,” said Motshekga. Motshekga said South Africa can be proud that the offering of Marine Sciences is a world first as other countries only provide for Marine Biology and Oceanography to tertiary level students.

The post 2021-22 DBE Budget Vote: Minister announces additions to the curriculum appeared first on Inside Education.

The Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Dr Blade Nzimande, said his department will in the coming weeks submit to Cabinet a proposal looking at funding options for the “missing middle”.

Nzimande made this announcement when he tabled the department’s Budget Vote during a mini plenary of Parliament this week.

Nzimande said his department and stakeholders are examining new mechanisms, possibly backed by both public and private sectors, to support students in the so-called “missing middle” income bracket.

He said revised options for student funding will be considered.

The term “missing middle” has gained currency in the higher education sector and refers to those students who come from working class households that do not qualify for the National Student Finance Aid Scheme (NSFAS) while at the same time, they cannot afford higher education.

In an interview with Inside Education, University of Johannesburg Vice-Chancellor Professor Tshilidzi Marwala said students who fall under this category are not necessarily from poor families.

“These are people who are not poor enough to qualify for NSFAS, but they are not rich enough to afford higher education. Say for example, the father is a teacher, the mother unemployed with four children, three of whom are at university. This family cannot afford higher education for their childen,” said Marwala.

Adding that, “For some reason, NSFAS does not take into consideration the number of children within one family”.

“They look at how much money the family actually earns. And teachers probably earn around R350,000 per annum. There is no way this family is going to qualify for NSFAS. This is why they are the missing middle,” he said.

Adding that most in society do not seem to realise that these children sit at home after finishing matric because of lack of access to finance. They do not qualify for bank loans and other sources of funding, he said.

Marwala said to help with the issue, UJ launched a fundraising campaign in support the missing middle students.

He told Inside Education that about 5 000 academically deserving students at UJ are currently classified as part of the missing middle.

“The University has assisted almost all of them by paying their registration fees for the academic year. And yet, they still need more support because they need basics like devices and the ability to pay for transport,” he said.

Last month, Nzimande made a presentation to the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) where he spoke about the crisis of the missing middle at institutions of higher learning.

Nzimande said the South African government still does not have a clear way to deal with those students who do not meet NSFAS’ financial eligibility criteria, but still struggle to afford higher education.

According to the minister, in 2016, a ministerial task team was appointed to develop a funding and support model for poor and the missing middle students.

In his presentation made to the NEC, Nzimande said in an attempt to solve this crisis, the ministerial task team developed the Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme (ISFAP) which assumed that government would cover full or part of the equity required to cover bad debt incurred by students.

“But this assumption was not supported by the National Treasury,” said Nzimande.

He said his department’s engagement with the National Treasury concluded that a loan-based system would be very difficult without government support.

This is because in all the modelling done, the bad debt, capital repayment, and capital interest was always bigger than the repayments and interest paid by the student, said Nzimande.

In his budget vote presentation this week, Nzimande said there is now added pressure to find a solution this problem. He said this pressure was accentuated by thousands of students who submitted appeals after their NSFAS applications were rejected.

The post South Africa to examine new mechanisms to support the “missing middle” appeared first on Inside Education.

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