Results columns eye-opener
The day school starts in South Africa this year is 9-1-19, and I take a moment to think of those 2018 matric without a plan of study, travel or work.
Today will be the first day of reality – of waking up without a purpose.
On Friday, I spread the newspaper on the floor and looked at the EC crop of matric results. It tells a story in its printed form.
Columns of letter and numbers, randomly interrupted by school names – each letter before the number determining a future, a place in academia.
Some numbers have bracketed abbreviations next to them, swarmed together, followed by columns and columns with very few.
The brackets denote distinctions, the subject abbreviations within.
It would appear that we are not fighting hard enough for equal quality education.
Our well-resourced schools manage, year upon year, to produce a crop of youngsters who are high achievers, mostly from families who have been fortunate enough to have provided quality early childhood development and solid primary school foundations.
These young people are able to go on to university, obtaining bursaries for their academic performance, and will reap the future benefits. But what about the columns and columns of numbers without these advantages, those denied an education which allows them to proceed academically?
Why is it not a national priority to ensure quality teaching and learning in ALL schools? What should we be doing?
As parents, we can ensure that our child attends school, gets enough restful sleep and eats sufficiently. We can provide a uniform and stationery, and make sure we connect often with the teacher.
As teachers, we can be in class, on task, prepared for each lesson. Remembering that we are in competition with DSTV channels, Facebook, Intagram, Netflix etc, ALL the time…
As management, we can ensure the subject choices in our high schools cater to the needs of the community and the skills of the teachers.
An English teacher being forced to teach matric Geography is not going to work. We need to also limit redeployment of teachers to every three years. One cannot build a strong team when teacher allocations fluctuate year on year, bringing instability and the additional drama of identification of the excess teachers.
The provincial department of education can ensure our schools are properly and equally resourced, and that the allocated resources are used properly. And national government can ensure that early childhood development programmes are well monitored – we need to start preparing now for the matric class of 2032!!
Teacher: pupil ratios need to be kept low, so that every child gets individual attention and the allocation of R1,300 per child per year needs to be looked at realistically and kept up with inflation (Eskom etc).
We can donate any stationery, supplies, text books, readers, to our disadvantaged schools – it can make life so much easier for a teacher when there is enough for everybody.
Our social clubs, book clubs and stokvels can adopt a high school and offer to contribute sandwiches at extra classes for matrics.
Help where you can! Whether you feed, clothe, inspire or pray for our children, you are doing something.
“It takes a village to raise a child.” Let us be that “village”.
‘ ... we are not fighting hard enough for equal quality education’