Education officials surprise schools

MATRICS in South Durban were hard at work at winter school yesterday when education officials paid a surprise visit to see howpreparations were going for their end-of-year exams.

KZN education superintendent-general Nkosinathi Sishi visited schools in Umlazi and Umbumbulu, where he told pupils to work hard.

Winter school is part of the department’s broader matric intervention programme, in- volving more than 35 000 pupils attending 130 learning centres in the province. It has a special focus on maths and science.

“Most of the pupils failed exams in these subjects. The programme is also trying to prevent weak teachers from teaching pupils during the intervention programme,” Sishi said.

He explained that the programme had identified expert teachers from South Durban schools that were performing well, and they had been sent for five-day maths and science training at the Mangosuthu University of Technology.

Umlazi education district director Bheki Ntuli said teaching should continue and should not wait for the third term.

Two weeks ago, the department announced a plan to improve on last year’s 69 percent matric pass rate. This included a one-week boot camp for teachers – and no school holiday breaks for pupils.

It is aimed mainly at the province’s estimated 500 underperforming schools that scored a pass rate below 60 percent last year.

Dumisani Dlamini, a department science subject adviser, said the training agreement reached between the department and the university was in response to concerns that first-year students from the area weren’t up to scratch academically.

Last year, the matric maths pass rate was 39.5 percent in KZN, while physical science was 51.87 percent.