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NEEDU Report released

On 2 May 2013, the first NEEDU Report (for 2012) was released. What follows is a selective, adapted summary of the report, which confirms that all is not well in the SA education system.   Background The National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) is a unit which is independent of that part of the [...]

The more things change … the more they stay the same!

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” Does this sound familiar to parents [...]

German International School Cape Town inaugurates new state-of-the-art library

Today the German International School Cape Town celebrated the official opening of their new state-of-the-art two-level multimedia library as part of their 130th anniversary commemorations. The library is one of the new additions to the school which recently underwent an R18 million upgrade to their facilities, partly funded by the German Government. In attendance at [...]

Preparing for failure

The Department of Basic Education announced at the end of last year that learners in the FET Phase (Grades 10 – 12) may only repeat a grade once.  What does this mean in practice? There are a number of scenarios: Learners who ‘fail’ Grade 10 will need to repeat the grade. However, if they fail [...]

Creating High Impact Learning Environments in Low Income Areas

Numeric is a South African based non-profit company interested in creating high impact learning environments in low income areas.  As the name suggests, we’re focused primarily on mathematics and in particular on how Khan Academy can be used to generate strong learning outcomes. In South Africa, as in many other countries around the world, there [...]

What do the ANAs tell us?

An in-depth look at the 2012 Annual National Assessments (ANAs) results  Tim Gordon CEO: The Governing Body Foundation timgordon@gbf.org.za   The Minister marketed her report under the slogan, ‘Celebrating our achievements, consolidating our advances.’  Sadly, one has to look very hard to find tangible and credible achievements to celebrate, and there is significant scepticism about [...]

The Year Of The MOOC

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been around for a while, but last year saw an explosion of online courses, with the launch of Coursera following Stanford’s pioneering offerings in the Fall of 2011. This trend looks set to continue with more Universities falling over themselves to offer courses online, and with ventures such as [...]