The Chairperson of the Select Committee on Education, Sciences and the Creative Industries, Mr Makhi Feni, has said there is a need for emphasis on qualitative approaches in the passes for Grade 12.
He said: “For too long our focus had been on securing a high average percentage mark and no follow up on what happens after. A functioning education should allow for monitoring even post school where progress of children could be reported on.”
“The progression should apply even at higher education institutions where universities are not boggled down with bridging learners on learning areas that should have occurred at the basic education level.” He said the time for matriculating for the sake of passing Grade 12 is long gone.
“Our children should be equipped for opportunities be they academic or workplace related. We should not matriculate and then no one knows what happens after,” added Mr Feni. He also said even opportunities at TVET colleges ought to be coordinated and linked up with real skills.
Mr Feni emphasised: “Failure to do this makes a mockery of the government’s progressive stance to expand NSFAS opportunities to fund college students. Let us meaningfully and qualitatively build on these opportunities; it starts with the quality passes at Grade 12.”
The committee wished all the learners awaiting their results well and good passes.
Mr Feni said those who do not pass should not be despondent, but use the hurdle of repeating a Grade as another opportunity to jump higher in the system. The Grade 12 results will be announced on Monday and will be published in major daily newspapers on Tuesday, with schools scheduled to open on Wednesday.
Africa Fact: Winwood Reade described his visit to the Ashanti Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s palace, which consists of many courtyards, each surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and having two gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare . . . But the part of the palace fronting the street was a stone house, Moorish in its style . . . with a flat roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the first floor. It was built by Fanti masons many years ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of Wardour Street. Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many languages, Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old furniture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets, pictures and engravings, numberless chests and coffers. A sword bearing the inscription From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A copy of the Times, 17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.”
Achilles Mountain
Fun South African Fact: South African Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant on 3 December 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The groundbreaking surgery was carried out on Louis Washkansky and Dr. Barnard was assisted by a large and exceptional team of surgeons, nurses and technicians. One of Dr. Barnard’s assistants was Hamilton Naki, a black laboratory assistant who had worked previously as a gardener and went on to work in the animal laboratory at the University of Cape Town. He had assisted Dr Barnard with research leading to the transplant. In the apartheid days, Naki had no access to higher education due to his race. Despite being unable to access formal training, he learned from and assisted university researchers and went on to do unbelievable work.
Scuffs
Is SA\’s former President, Jacob Zuma still a free man?