FOLLOWING a 9% decline in the matric pass rates in the province last year, KZN MEC for Education, Neliswa Nkonyeni, claims this year will be the department’s ‘busiest’.
At a meeting on Tuesday with Education Department senior management and District Directors at the Provincial Teacher Development Institute in Durban, Nkonyeni said she was satisfied by the ‘upbeat’ response to the implementation of plans to improve Grade 12 results.
Essentially, the plan is to go ‘back to basics by emphasizing things teachers overlook without realising their impact’.
Nkonyeni listed teacher punctuality, ensuring they teach the right class and spending the whole seven hours teaching as examples of important issues being overlooked.
‘Our commitment and desire to attain good results is evidenced by the clear and forward looking turnaround strategy that we have come up with as a department,’ said Nkonyeni.
The strategy tackles areas such as basic school functionality, effective curriculum delivery as schools lack dynamic teaching methods and teacher development, as teachers lack knowledge of the subject content.
‘We have found many weaknesses in some of the schools we have visited and our teams have done a great job so far to turn things around,’ she said.
The lack of sufficient explanation on examination guidelines delivered to schools, the disregard for the policy of subject changes by transferring pupils from ‘difficult’ subjects to ‘easier’ ones to show better pass percentages, were highlighted as serious problem areas.
Failing to cover the curriculum, which according to Nkonyeni is probably the most neglected area in the system, was listed as an urgent matter in need of attention.
