Johannesburg – The MEC for Education in North West, Mmaphefo Matsemela, said she was impressed with the outcomes of coding and robotics since they were introduced.
“I am definitely pleased with these outcomes. Rural schools have been marginalised for so long and are now taking rapid strides to administer progressive and quality education for our learners.
“We are the first province to introduce reading for enjoyment from early grades and some of our primary schools have authored their own books. Coding and robotics is another buzz word in the education sector and seeing schools in the province administer it with so much enthusiasm makes us all believe the future is headed towards better outcomes,” she said.
This follows after the North West Department of Education hosted a two day Inter-Provincial Rural Education Committee (IPREC) meeting in Brits on November 17 to 18 to improve the rural education for learners and teachers.
Matsemela stated that meetings like IPREC were what they needed to foster quality education in rural as well as multi grade schools.
The initiative is part of the national Department of Basic Education (DBE) where rural education practitioners converge to share best practices on improving rural education for learners and teachers.
The meeting was led by the Director for Rural Education directorate at the DBE, Phumzile Langa, joined by provinces such as North West, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga who shared myriad improvements to close the resource gap in rural schools per province.
The provinces shared their deliverables on private funding of schools by communities, improving infrastructure of schools in disadvantaged areas, providing scholar transport; providing school nutrition through NSNP and developing intervention programmes and strategies for improving learner attainment.
The NW highlighted that among other improvements on piloting the Enabling Rural Schools Project (ERSP), the first of its kind in rural and multi-grade teaching in the country.
“The project aims at enriching a ‘reading for enjoyment’ culture in the foundation phase and uses it as a strategy to promote positive learner wellbeing and education outcomes.
“Another deliverable for rural education in the province is the introduction of coding and robotics at Koster Intermediate School in the third quarter which they piloted from Grade 3-4 learners and later introducing it to Grade 7 to 8,” the department said.