It’s back to school
After a lengthy five-week holiday, pupils may struggle to slip back into their early morning rising routine, but they should not struggle with exam preparations.
That’s if they’ve been attending the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) winter school classes, established to improve the province’s pass rate at 276 under-performing schools while ensuring that valuable learning time was not lost as a result of the extended mid-year break to accommodate the World Cup.
GDE spokesman Charles Phahlane said an average of 8 000 matriculants had attended the extra classes each day of the programme, which ran for 14 days in June.
And now that schools have reopened for the third term, the extra classes held every Saturday will resume in preparation for the matric preliminary exams.
Dubbed the secondary school improvement programme (SSIP), the department has pumped R100 million into the programme, created in response to last year’s low matric pass rate.
The programme, Phahlane said, had been running as a pilot since April, with classes run every Saturday during the school term and over the June and September holidays.
Teachers selected to tutor the pupils have a “proven track record of good results”, having attained an 80 percent pass rate over the past three years.
“Standardised lesson plans, exercises and tests have been developed specifically for the programme by experts, and these are distributed to each site for each session,” he added.
The SSIP focuses on six subjects: maths, maths literacy, accounting, physical science, natural science and English.
While the programme is focused on matriculants and their preparations for the final exam, Phahlane said it also extends to Grade 10 and 11 pupils.
Here is a check list and important dates for parents with children returning to school:
Ensure that your child’s holiday projects and assignments have been completed.
Quickly get your children back into an early bedtime routine.
Don’t forget to pack a lunchbox.
Third term: July 13 to September 23.
Fourth term: October 4 to December 10.
Source: IOL
admin @ July 14, 2010