Committee to assess school readiness

THE provincial legislature portfolio committee on education began visiting schools across the province this week, with the Queenstown district to be visited today.

Legislature media liaison senior manager Bulelwa Ganyaza said this was an annual programme. Eight teams comprising MPLs, legislature officials and provincial and district officials of the education department make the visits to assess the readiness of schools to embark on teaching and learning.

“The committee will focus primarily on the pressing issues, the provision of Learner Teacher Support Materials and educator provisioning. The availability of learner transport and school nutrition to qualifying learners and the state of school infrastructure will also form part of the focus,” Ganyaza said.

The committee will consider updates regarding the performance of schools in the matric exams. Portfolio committee chairman Fundile Gade said, “This programme will give us an opportunity to evaluate the turn-around plan of the department which they have just adopted, to assess whether it speaks to real issues constituting the fundamentals in the schooling system we have in the province.” Examples of such issues were unviable and small schools.

He said the committee would also have to look at the curriculum diversification offered by schools and whether it was in line with the key policy choices the province had made in terms of human capital investment. The schools set to be visited in the Queenstown district are John Noah High School, KwaKomani Comprehensive School and Edlelweni Primary School.