Gauteng MEC for education Barbara Creecy today launched a programme for mathematics lessons to be broadcast via satellite to Grade 8 and 9 learners in the province.
The programme has been piloted since the beginning of the year, but was officially launched at Ibhongo Secondary School, in Soweto, this morning.
A live broadcast from the Mindset studio, in Randburg, is transmitted via satellite directly into a number of classrooms in the province. Mindset Network is a non-profit organisation set up in 2002 for the purpose of providing educational solutions for the formal education and health sectors.
The focus of the programme is currently on mathematics for Grade 8 and 9 pupils in 15 schools, reaching approximately 5 200 learners. Two lessons per grade per week are broadcast into the school and two afternoon briefing sessions for the relevant teachers of each grade.
According to Michael Peter, CEO of Sci-Bono Discovery Centre, each school is provided with a video-on-demand decoder, a satellite dish, and a means to view the broadcast, such as a television or a data projector and sets of speakers. Learners view the broadcast lesson and participate in the exercises supported by their own class teacher. "The teacher may, during the live session, call the studio to ask questions on behalf of the learners," says Peter. "The same lesson is also recorded and is available the next day for those classes who were not able to watch the live session."
Peter says the programme was initiated as a result of the dire performance in mathematics of Grade 9 pupils in the province last year. The Grade 9 Annual National Assessment results of 2012 showed the Gauteng average performance in mathematics was 14%.
"Teacher training was identified as a part of the programme to address the challenge, but this would not turn around results in the short-term," says Peter. "For this reason, a broadcast option was looked at, with a view to ensuring that learners are immediately exposed to high-quality teaching, while at the same time teachers are exposed to best practice that they could emulate."
The District Education Offices were each asked to identify one school per district in which to pilot the first phase of the programme. These had to be schools identified as one of the Priority Schools of the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE), which are schools that have been identified as in need of special programmes aimed at addressing under-performance. These also needed to be schools that had shown capacity to manage such a project successfully, says Peter.
The programme is primarily funded by GDE, with R340 000 allocated for the first phase of the programme and Mindset providing free access to the satellite bandwidth.
"Learners are exposed to high-quality teaching and the pacing of lessons is in line with the prescribed work programme. Therefore the curriculum gaps (in knowledge and skills) that are evident as learners progress, are minimised," says Peter. "Integration of technology into the classroom helps enhance learning."
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