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The Gauteng Department of Education has officially launched the twinning of Hoërskool Bastion and Madiba Secondary schools in Krugersdorp on Wednesday.
This comes as the department continues with the twinning programme as part of its wider strategic framework and its “re-organisation of schools” strategy.
The objection of the programme is to improve pupils’ outcomes and foster social cohesion. It is meant to nurture more holistic development by allowing cultural exchange and the sharing of expertise and resources across suburban and township schools.
Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said: “We are proud of the outcomes witnessed from the first phase of the twinning programme and grateful for the support received from the four pairs of schools, which opted for Section 17GB status during the pilot phase.
“Our greatest respect goes to our first pair of schools, Bovet Primary and Lyndhurst Primary School. We have witnessed improvements and the schools benefitted from our partnership with Honeywell, which exposed their teachers to the aviation world in America.”
The department said the programme was in place to ensure that pupils were exposed to peers from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, to improve equality of access to high-quality education, and to strengthen the quality of education delivered compared to global best practice.
It has also developed an implementation plan to support schools during and after twinning to ensure the achievement of potential benefits. These benefits, among others, include the cultural exchange as pupils integrate, improved cultural awareness, the sharing of resources, and resultant efficiency gains.
“It is important to note that, this programme offers opportunities to school governing bodies to rethink the opportunities for change embedded in the twinning, as the future is now to increase private partnership investment to the benefit of our schools,” Lesufi said.
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