A cultural and development organisation is taking on the challenge of improving the education of the children in Alexandra.
This after the poor performance of secondary schools in last year’s matric results. Botle Bo Afrika said this is in the interest of advancing African values, cultural respect and unity through an enlightened citizenry. They are partnering with the Region E’s library services and others to first assess the nature and magnitude of the challenge before engaging the department of education on an improvement plan.
Mmapelle Beea said it was disheartening to see children fail because their learning challenges were not diagnosed at the right time and remedial measures were not taken to help them progress and become professionals. “Those who are not academically inclined should be assisted to get technical opportunities with some level of academic support to help them excel.”
Beea said membership also included teachers, nurses and others with experience of children’s development. “This is to get input which will make our submission technically sound and convincing to the department.”
Beea also expressed concern that, weeks after schools had opened for the first term, some children were still not enrolled due to shortage of space. This despite the department of education addressing the matters from a temporary facility at Iphuteng Primary School. “This left many parents distraught and uncertain if their children will catch up with others.”
She called for additional schools and a review of the use of the language policy for admissions. “Children should be given latitude to learn other languages for their own advantage in the future. Strategies can be devised to still teach them their home language.” she said.
She also said the policy of condoning children to higher classes was counter productive as they could not perform better at a higher level after not doing well at a lower level. This she said, was done by awarding additional marks creating the impression they had passed only for them to struggle and drop out when it became tougher in higher grades.
Beea expects parents to also be involved in the initiative and challenge school governing bodies to be more proactive by supervising children who remained for afternoon studies and extra classes. She urged for the return of reading culture and the use of libraries to avoid children depending on Google to download information. “This denies them research skills and reading ability,” she concluded.
