On March 10, the MEC for Education in Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, urged parents to elect new members of the School Governing Bodies (SGB) based on the learner’s interest.
“We call on parents to select the best candidates among those who will be nominated. What we know is that schools perform better where parents participate in the affairs of the school and take charge of the education of their children,” said Lesufi.
Parents and guardians of learners in Gauteng will, between March 15 and April 30, take to the polls to elect new members of the SGBs.
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The new members will take over once the elections have been declared free and fair at the end of the process.
Lesufi made the call during the official virtual launch of the 2021 School Governing Body elections that parents must ensure the elected SGB is capacitated with the correct skills to help principals run their schools.
“The new SGB must work with the department to create an environment where Gauteng children can receive a quality education, whether at school or at home. We would be looking to work with the SGBs on three key areas, including infrastructure, information, and communications technology (ICT), and human capacity. Because of the coronavirus, we have no choice but to review our infrastructure stock, but, most importantly, the utilisation of our infrastructure.”
Lesufi indicated that schools will be relying more on the use of ICT as they try to find a balance between the provisions of quality education and protecting and saving the lives of learners and teaching staff at schools.
“We can no longer meet as we used to. We are now compelled to use gadgets and connectivity. In using ICT, we may regress in terms of accessibility and we may regress because of excluding other people purely because they don’t have access to these resources,” he said.
“But now, education must take place, even when learners or educators are at home.
We have no choice but to invest heavily in ICT to ensure that we provide learners and teachers with the support they need for teaching and learning to continue during this pandemic.
“The matter of human capacity was also emphasised by Lesufi during his keynote address, stating that human capacity is needed within the education sector.
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“The sector is growing due to the number of learners that prefer to come to Gauteng.
“This year alone, we have a total number of 31 000 learners that came to Gauteng to continue their studies.
“This means we need additional teachers, administrative staff, and staff that need to do oversights at our schools. Indeed, our human capital and human capacity are overstretched, but we urge SGBs to ensure that only the best teachers and school staff are employed.”
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