Chalk and blackboards in township and suburban schools will soon be a thing of the past in Gauteng.
This is if Panyaza Lesufi has his way. The Gauteng Education MEC is a man with a vision who is on a mission to transform the school system in the province.
The MEC said that as of next year, all schools in the province would ditch the chalk and blackboard system in favour of embracing technology in the form of iPads for pupils and laptops for teachers.
“This will need an investment of huge resources, but the Gauteng Department of Education has already budgeted for this,” he said without disclosing how much it would cost. The MEC said if the province wanted to produce top technologically-savvy young people, then it should ditch the archaic methods of teaching in favour of modern technology.
Lesufi also wants the segregation of schools between township and suburban, inherited from the apartheid era, eradicated in favour of twinning the ‘have with the have-not’ schools.
“I would like to see a school in Alexandra being combined with a school in Sandton so that a child who has no laboratory at a school in Alex can have a laboratory in their twin school in Sandton,” said Lesufi during the launch of Smart Bucks Mind Your Moolah financial literacy campaign.
“I want a child who aspires to become a swimmer in Alex to be able to live and fulfil his or her dream of becoming a top swimmer at a school that has all the resources in Sandton.”
Lesufi said combining the schools would not just address the distribution of resources but would ultimately lead to social cohesion within communities as “we get rid of racial segregation elements of our apartheid past”.
“In our 20 years of democracy, we are yet to see a white principal applying for a post in a township school in order to spread the skills knowledge to all our schools in the province,” he said.
This should all come into effect next year, and he said he hoped the look and feel of the schools at the end of a five-year period would mirror this new vision.
“Quality education for all should happen in our lifetime,” said Lesufi as he jumped off the podium and went straight to his car, leaving journalists and the audience gasping for clarification.
