PRIMARY & SECONDARY EDUCATION NEWS

What to look for in an Early Childhood Development centre

The City of Cape Town's Social Development and Early Childhood Development Directorate would like to appeal to parents and caregivers to do their homework in their search for an Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre for their children, as thousands of children are reliant on educare facilities or day-care mothers every year.

© Gennadiy Poznyakov – 123RF.com

"Unfortunately, too many people still view ECD as little more than a babysitting service. They simply do not understand the importance of constructive learning and personal development required by young children. There is a massive scrum to get children into good primary and high schools, but cognitive development starts long before Grade 1. So why are we not putting the same effort into a good pre-school education?" asks City's Mayoral committee member for Social Development and Early Childhood Development, Councillor Suzette Little.

Checklist

The Directorate urges parents and caregivers to check that their choice of the ECD centre meets the necessary requirements. They should have:

• lease/rental agreement 
• relevant zoning certificate
• approved building plans
• health clearance certificate
• emergency evacuation plan
• ECD centre registration certificate
• business plan and basic conditions of employment for staff
• copies of qualifications and identity documents of staff responsible for the ECD programme
• ECD daily programme
• child nutrition and wellness programme
• person trained in first-aid and a first-aid kit on site

"I understand that many ECDs face obstacles in their quest to become registered facilities. We work closely with the Western Cape Government, which is responsible for registering facilities. The City's role is to help address the health, fire and planning requirements for ECDs. We also provide training to ECD staff and operators on a number of aspects and we provide safety equipment and learning materials. We host regular registration drives in partnership with the Western Cape Government, but I want to challenge ECD operators to help create enabling environments for the children in their care. Ultimately, that is what matters but it requires everyone to do their part,' concludes Little. 

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INCLUSION & EQUALITY NEWS

Girl power takes to space

 BY: NICCI BOTHA

Africa's first privately owned satellite will be launched into the atmosphere later on in 2016, with a payload designed and built by South African schoolgirls.

The launch will be the culmination of an ambitious programme created by MEDO (Meta Economic Development Organisation) to get girls interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers, a sector which is both currently struggling to find suitable entrants and that is very much male-dominated.

Too cool for school

Science and maths are losing traction as subjects in high school, yet it is becoming increasingly evident that technological fields are where employment opportunities will flourish in the future.

"Many corporates MEDO works with experience a lack of skilled STEM employees. By 2020, 80% of all future jobs will be STEM related, with almost double the pay of non-STEM related careers. So what we are trying to do is to give young women the best chance out there," says MEDO CEO, Judi Sandrock.

The bigger picture

"South Africa does have a challenge because only 7.6% of learners passed maths with more than 60%. This means that unless you are in those very low percentiles you won't get into university or technikon."

"We can't blame the government, the education system, what we need to do is find a solution. What the programme and the satellite is all about is to inspire so that we have more people doing well in science and maths at school not only to become engineers, but teachers and a whole array of other professions," Sandrock explains.

The space programme

So what more exciting way to introduce young women to STEM careers than to design and build a payload for a real live satellite?


The Women in STEM programme, which was developed in partnership with Morehead State University in Kentucky, USA, a highly recognised research and development centre in nano-satellite technologies, comprises three phases.

SpacePrep on the move

The first phase kicked off in June 2015. Known as SpacePrep, MEDO took to the road in a mobile lab, which hosted workshops for high school girls, teaching them the basics of electro-mechanics by building a mini robot or Jiggybot from scratch.

So far 120 young women have attended SpacePrep, with the hopes that as its popularity grows, 600 learners will be reached annually.

Bootcamp for boffins

From there, 14 of the best and brightest young women were selected to attend SpaceTrek, a week-long bootcamp held from 5-11 January in Worcester. Here they were given an intensive introduction in telecommunications, satellite construction, calibration and data analysis, led by an all-woman team of experts in their respective fields from South Africa and the States.

What the girls say

Before joining the bootcamp, some of the participants had this to say:

Ayesha Salie, Grade 12, Pelican Park High School: "I'm excited to learn more about satellites and space as it isn't something which I am (completely) familiar with yet."

Nikiwe Jela, Grade 12, Dr Nelson Mandela High School, on why she thinks more women don't follow careers in stem: "In the past, women were only supposed to do housework where men were given the honour to study and work."

Amanda Litshetu, Grade 12, Siphamandla Secondary School: "I want to be an engineer because I love working with machines, electricity and everything that is technological."

Sesam Mngqengqiswa, Grade 11, Phillipi High School: "I want to be part of SpaceTrek because I think it will help me explore science in a way that would benefit my future."

Chirps from the edge of the atmosphere

The highlight of the SpaceTrek experience for the girls was undoubtedly building and monitoring their own weather data collection satellites via weather balloons known as CricketSats.

The name derives from the response of crickets to the weather. In hot weather, their chirps are closer together, while in cold weather they are more drawn out and languid. So using the frequency with which their CricketSat was emitting chirps, the girls could track the temperature their satellites were travelling through as high as 30kms up from their ground stations.

...And we have lift off

MEDOsat1 will be launched from the Mojave Desert in the United States in the second quarter of 2016. Prior to that, learners will be involved in the brainstorming as to the payload for the satellite, as well as a post-launch programme where they can communicate with the satellite and experiment with communication and data gathering while it is in orbit.

"We have plans of launching one satellite a year until 2019, so after this satellite has fulfilled its function and has burnt out, we are not going to disappear into the sideline with this issue," Sandrock concludes.

MEDO delivers economic development prorammes by acting as a conduit between big businesses with entrepreneurs and start-ups - which are at least 50% black-owned.

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ABOUT NICCI BOTHA

Nicci Botha has been wordsmithing for more than 20 years, covering just about every subject under the sun and then some. She's strung together words on sustainable development, maritime matters, mining, marketing, medical, lifestyle... and that elixir of life - chocolate. Nicci has worked for local and international media houses including Primedia, Caxton, Lloyd's and Reuters. Her new passion is digital media.

Education News

High-level meeting on the Education 2030 Framework for Action

The Incheon Declaration, which was adopted in May 2015 at the World Education Forum 2015, represents the firm commitment of countries and the global education community to a single, renewed education agenda - Education 2030 -  which is holistic, ambitious and aspirational, leaving no one behind. Calling for bold and urgent action to transform lives through a new vision for education, the Declaration entrusts UNESCO, as the United Nations’ specialized agency for education, to continue its mandated role to lead and coordinate the Education 2030 agenda. The heart of Education 2030 lies at the country level and governments have the primary responsibility for successful implementation, follow-up and review. Country-led action will drive change, supported by effective multi-stakeholder partnerships and financing.
 
Subsequently, at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit Member States formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, committing ‘to providing inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels - early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary, technical and vocational training’ and underscoring that all people ‘should have access to lifelong learning opportunities’. The Agenda comprises a set of 17 bold, global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recognizing the important role of education, it includes a strong goal on education (SDG 4), encapsulating Education 2030.
 
The Education 2030 Framework for Action outlines how to translate into practice the commitments made at Incheon at country, regional and global level and provides guidance for implementing Education 2030. A High-Level Meeting adopted the Education 2030 Framework for Action. It was held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 4 November 2015, concurrent to the 38th session of UNESCO's General Conference.
 
Organized jointly with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and the World Bank, this important event is the culmination of a broad and thorough consultation process, the aim of which was to develop and set in motion a new universal education agenda for the next 15 years. Read more

PRIMARY & SECONDARY EDUCATION NEWS

Tablets are not toilets

There is a direct correlation and a causal relationship between school infrastructure and attendance. Tablets can’t replace roofs, walls, electricity.

By Mail and Guardian - March 29, 2015 

This week we report from iNciba in the Cofimvaba district, Eastern Cape, where computer tablets are being innovatively used in teaching and learning.

This can only benefit the children of this isolated area. The technology works but, as with so many schools in South Africa, it’s working in a constraining space.

In one Cofimvaba school, Zamuxolo, some pupils are crammed into mud rondavels. Their ablution facilities are pit toilets.

They often have no electricity. Textbooks are kept in a corrugated iron kitchen to save precious classroom space for pupils.

The Zamuxolo children enjoy using their tablets and learn a lot from doing so. But such technology is a poor and, at best, temporary distraction from an environment that is not conducive to learning.

Zamuxolo is no exception. Nationally, four out of five schools are dysfunctional. Last year’s annual national assessments found the average maths mark among Eastern Cape Grade 9 pupils was 11%. It was 6.5% in Limpopo.

And those numbers are for the pupils who attend school. Other studies show that in areas with bad sanitation girls start dropping out soon after the onset of puberty, because of unsafe and inefficient toilets.

There is a direct correlation and a causal relationship between infrastructure and attendance.

Tablets in schools are a great way to alleviate many of the ills that stem from bad governance: a failure to deliver textbooks, teachers who lack either the skill or means to teach children, and a lack of basic teaching equipment.

But tablets are not toilets. They cannot replace roofs or walls or electricity. They do not provide clean water, nor do they function as desks.

In education spending relative to gross domestic product, South Africa is in one of the top positions worldwide.

We spend, but implementation seldom happens. None of our post-apartheid governments have been able to change things much. We are still losing generations to bad education, when education was supposed to help lift people out of poverty.

We have made all the mistakes we can afford – and then some. We certainly cannot afford, for another school year, a president or education minister or provincial education MEC unable to fix this education catastrophe.

Source: Mail & Guardian