Pretoria - There has been tremendous transformation in the education sector post-apartheid, and principals and teachers now play a huge role in the development of the pupils from a younger age.
And to learn more about the progress made in transforming the education sector post-apartheid, EU Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen yesterday visited Laerskool Oost-Eind Primary School in Sunnyside, Pretoria.
Her visit was part of the 15th South Africa-EU Ministerial Political Dialogue, with particular focus on teacher education and professional development.
The main purpose of her visit was to get an understanding of the progress, challenges and opportunities at the school level.
Some of the challenges mentioned by the Department of Education and the school governing body were the lack of proper infrastructure at the school, shortage of classes to accommodate pupils, water challenges and load shedding.
To increase opportunities at the school level, they launched a teacher initiative in an effort to improve the quality of training for teachers who are already working, and also for newcomers to better equip them.
Urpilainen said: “As a commissioner, I have very much prioritised education, and the EU is investing a lot in education and across the world, we have increased our financing in education from 7% to 13%.”
“The 13% increase means that we are now spending over €6 billion (about R112bn) for education projects and I am very happy that with South Africa we have been partners for over 20 years, and wish to continue into future.
“Existing issues include young people not wanting to be teachers anymore. Therefore we ask, how can we attract them to become teachers? We need to have programmes that train and equip them because, from a statistics perspective, we need to have almost 15 million new teachers by the year 2030 if we really want to provide opportunities to access education.”
She said the EU also wanted to invest in research, so that it could provide more research education for South Africa and over the national borders, to enable multinational research co-operation.
She, her companions, the teachers and the school governing body took a tour around the school to inspect the infrastructure.
She visited the library bearing gifts for the pupils, who shared their goals and aspirations.
She also went to the classes to see how pupils were settling in.
Laerskool Oost-Eind principal Sindisiwe Mokone said she was the first black African woman to be principal at the school and had been in this position for over 10 years.
“I am honoured that the EU visited our school today, and I have hope that this visit has inspired other educators as well as our pupils to strive for greatness.
“It has given us high exposure because now there’s going to be improvement in our children’s extracurricular development, because they will participate in sports and other programmes that will play a huge role in their development.”
She spoke of overcrowding in classes and said she looked forward to getting sponsors to come in and build more classes to accommodate all pupils.
Pretoria News