IMPROVING LIVES THROUGH DATA ECOSYSTEMS
ISIbalo School Programme
| Statistics continue to indicate that while South Africa has shown positive economic growth over the past few years, inequalities and huge income disparities continue to exist. These are characterized by significant youth unemployment, exacerbated by a lack of appropriate skills for development; and, a persistent skills shortage in areas required for an inclusive economic growth path. The malady of poor performance in Science, Engineering and Technology is well known.Yet South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP) which envisages the eligibility of at least 450 000 learners in Mathematics and Science every year till 2030, compels ingenious partnerships and interventions to be formed and implemented to address the education crisis faced by children in South Africa.The reality we face is that South Africa’s children are in the grip of a major Mathematics crisis with pupils in thousands of schools across the country unable to obtain more than 30% for a standardized Mathematics test. Arguing for a cross cutting and all-encompassing approach to develop a statistical capabilities foundation as the cornerstone of South Africa’s skills development strategy, Statistics South Africa has introduced the ISIbalo School programme for General Education & Training (GET) and Further Education Training (FET) that seeks to enrich learner, teacher and content development and training that will be more responsive to the challenges currently faced in education, towards achieving the goals on the NDP and growing a numerate and statistical literate youth for SA’s future development. | ||
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Learner Enrichment Programme
Since 2006, Statistics SA has embarked on a learner enrichment programme that includes:
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In 2015 alone we worked in several schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Gauteng provinces. With Maths Education students from Nelson Mandela Metro University, Statistics Honours students form University of KZN and Applied Mathematics students from University of Venda and University of the North who voluntarily taught Maths every Saturday to children in rural areas, at least 4,300 children in grades 10-12 were supported by Stats SA. |
Teacher Enrichment Programme Programme
| The interaction with teachers began in 2002 when South Africa hosted the 4th International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics (ICOTS-4) in Cape Town. Subsequent to that, the South African school curriculum introduced Learning Outcome 4 on data handling & probability for which many teachers were ill-prepared to teach.The maths4stats project was conceptualised, which continues to support teachers in the class room on matters of statistics and other areas of mathematics. It has seen in excess of 3,500 teachers being trained by Stats SA in collaboration with the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of the Western Cape.For More Information: Mr. Themba Mohoto thembam@statssa.gov.za |
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