Johannesburg - Parents should buy books as gifts for their children, and take them to the library in order to do their bit to instil a reading culture, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says.
“We are not a reading nation,” the minister said, citing a global survey which put South Africa bottom in the rankings which showed 95 percent of Russians to be avid readers, while 95 percent of South Africans are not.
“If you (as parents) don’t buy books for your kids as gifts to read... Siyadlala! (We are playing!) We are not serious,” a clearly passionate Motshekga said. “The culture at home is not helpful.”
Encouraging reading, making donations to support extra-curricular activities even at non-fee schools, and checking children’s bags to ensure homework was given by teacher, and done by pupils, were all part of parental responsibilities towards children’s education.
Recently the department published guidelines to encourage parents’ financial contribution to schooling, even in no-fee schools which account for more than 60 percent of the country’s about 25 000 schools.
The guidelines “in support of the concept of schools raising funds” are aimed at ensuring they can secure money for additional activities, while ensuring there is no victimisation or exclusion of pupils unable to contribute – and that schools wouldn’t ask for “R1 000 per household in a poor area”.
Motshekga said parents “sometimes feel aggrieved” when schools asked for R20 a family for school activities, or as a contribution towards acquiring a school bus.
“Parents can buy kids cellphones, but they don’t pay for a calculator when the school says ‘please’,” the minister said, or had enough money for cool-drinks, but would not contribute R20 towards a sports field.
And if families didn’t have money, she said they should think about contributing “sweat equity”.
Basic Education is conducting an inventory of schools in the country’s best districts, excluding Gauteng and the Western Cape which are deemed to be well-placed to deal with infrastructure challenges.
The survey is under way in most school districts in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo; in one district each in Mpumalanga and North West; while in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal, the department is working with existing civil society partnerships.
“It’s quite an amount of work... We will not be able to do it all,” Motshekga said.
Meanwhile, the period for public comment on school norms and standards closes on October 11.
The draft document was published earlier this month after protracted and, at times acrimonious, interaction and litigation between Basic Education and civil society groups.
As part of a new regimen, the government is also reviewing whether, from next year, to do away with the various quintile categories which determine financial support levels.
The quintile system would continue in respect of teacher allocations and school nutrition schemes.
Provincial education departments have already been told to realign their budgets to accommodate this.
The norms and standards, which must be finalised by the end of November, propose:
- “some form of electricity”, whether from the national power grid or green energy sources like solar or wind;
* “sufficient basic water supply ... which is available at all times for drinking, personal hygiene and, where appropriate, for food preparation”;
* sanitation, setting out numbers of basins, toilets and urinals according to enrollment figures in both primary and high schools;
* library facilities, or a media centre facility, which could be a mobile library;
* science labs for those schools offering the subject;
* sports and recreation facilities, including agreements to use another school’s facilities;
* “some form of wired or wireless connectivity for purposes of communication”
* security fencing up to a height of at least 1.8 metres, burglar proofing, security arrangements and an alarm;
* natural lighting, ventilation, background noise reduction are also included. - Saturday Star
* The draft document is available in a link off this page: http://www.education.gov.za/Home/MinimumUniformNormsandStandards/tabid/1013/Default.aspx. - IOL