‘Parents must be more involved’
GREATER Giyani mayor Pat Hlungwani said parents needed to be involved in their children's education and to help teachers groom the children to achieve better matric results.
GREATER Giyani mayor Pat Hlungwani said parents needed to be involved in their children’s education and to help teachers groom the children to achieve better matric results.
Speaking during his recent back-to-school campaign at Gawula High School, the mayor said the community had to understand that it was not solely the responsibility of the teachers to ensure that their children performed well in their grade 12 examinations.
“Preparing learners for their exams is the collective responsibility of both the parents and the teachers,” he said.
He stressed the importance of community involvement in schools.
“Education cannot be complete without the involvement of the community. We need to get parents and the community to understand that they need to play role in the shaping of their children’s future rather than leave the whole responsibility in the hands of the teachers at schools,” he said.
“Some parents only know how their children performed academically at the end of the year when they are presented with poor results, because they never bother to come to school during the course of the year to see how their children performed,” he added.
Gawula High School achieved a 92,2% matric pass rate last year. This achievement won the school a third place out of the 66 schools in the Greater Giyani district in terms of academic performance.
Hlungwani praised the teachers for a job-well-done and asked them to continue working as team in order to achieve even better results in future.
“The performance of one teacher outside the confines of teamwork is like a soccer star that shines alone in the soccer field and keeps the crowd cheering during the match, but the team loses the game,” he said.
The mayor later promised the teachers that he would adopt their school and help Gawula to excel to greater heights.
“Apart from adopting your school, I want to make a commitment to help any of your learners with university registration fees if they pass well,” he said to the gr. 12 learners and their teachers.
