By Angelique Serrao
From 2009 every Grade 9 pupil will be writing a national certificate whether they are leaving school or not.
This was one of five major policy changes announced by Minister of Education Naledi Pandor on Monday.
Other changes include proposals to:
Lower teacher pupil ratios;
Rearrange districts into smaller more manageable areas;
Get Internet into every school in the country by 2013; and,
Expand Further Education and Training Colleges.
But an education expert says that while these changes are positive they will make little difference to the poor academic performance of children in schools.
Through the new policy, Pandor hopes to ensure that every Grade 9 pupil will get a general education certificate if they decide to leave school after the grade.
Continues Below ↓
The exams, which will take place at the end of the Grade 9, will see pupils writing a national paper set for both English and maths and internal exams for other subjects.
"We want to ensure young people have a certificate on how they have achieved. Now they will be able to have a measurement on how ready they are to proceed to Grade 10," Pandor said.
The department also announced that it wanted to reduce class sizes, particularly in underprivileged areas so that classes have less than 40 children to one teacher.
Education spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele said the ideal was a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:35 but currently some classes had as many as 60 children in one class. The new policy will now allow up to 5 percent of teacher posts to be distributed in a "pro-poor" manner.
Another policy which is set to shake up the education sector is the rearranging of districts.
Each school district will now be based on a smaller geographical area, along municipal lines and will comprise 300 schools.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
