Schools in rural areas urged to participate in science fair

KEETMANSHOOP – //Kharas Regional Director of Education, Arts and Culture, |Awebahe ||Hoeseb, has said more schools from the rural areas should participate in the annual //Kharas Regional Science Fair. ||Hoeseb made the call at the awards ceremony of the 2019 science fair here last week Thursday. The science fair is an annual event organised by the //Kharas education directorate and is sponsored by Skorpion Zinc Mine. “Only five rural schools participated in this year’s science fair, which is disappointingly low since there are more than 20 rural schools within the region,” the director said. ||Hoeseb urged principals, heads of department of rural schools, and even some urban schools to encourage the learners to enter projects for the science fair. He noted that there are also schools that previously partook in the regional science fair, but failed to submit an entry for this year’s event, adding that this regrettably deprives learners of an opportunity to apply higher order thinking skills in their quest to gain more knowledge and understanding about the way nature and humans act. The total number of projects entered for the 2019 science fair stood at 140, comprising 131 projects of learners from the //Kharas Region and nine projects from learners of the Northern Cape Province in South Africa. “The number of projects entered by the learners from our region for 2018 was 115, which implies that 16 more projects were entered bringing the number to 131 projects,” observed the director. Another concern is the lack of proper mentorship and guidance to the learners when formulating hypotheses and conducting research on their assumptions, executing experiments and documenting the findings stemming from the studies. ||Hoeseb said even though the quality of the projects improved compared to the previous years, there is room for improvement. Charlenique Jantjies from Schmelenville Combined School topped the junior primary projects category, while Likius Ngesheeya from Minna Sachs Primary School received the first prize in the senior primary projects. Deja Coetzee from Oranjemund Private School was the overallwinnerforthejuniorsecondary projects and Vitalis Haupindi from Suiderlig Secondary School for the senior secondary projects.