Following the release of the national matric results, the Department of Education is set to evaluate the performance of its Dinaledi schools.
With over 500 such schools nationwide, it remains to be seen which Dinaledi schools make the cut and which don't.
The Dinaledi schools form part of an initiative by the department to improve the maths and science pass rates in the country, produce over 50 000 passes on higher grade in 2009, and ultimately increase the number of students entering the engineering and ICT fields.
“At the moment, the department is analysing the results of the Dinaledi schools and the initial results indicate that 25% of the schools passed maths and science. We also only know of 10 schools, at the moment, which underperformed. We are looking at whether we should replace those schools that didn't perform well,” says media liaison officer for the Department of Education Lunga Ngqengelele.
Ngqengelele says the department has established a set of minimum requirements which Dinaledi schools have to meet or exceed, and failure to do this might result in the replacement of the underperforming school.
“What we will be considering is whether or not the underperforming Dinaledi schools should be replaced by other schools which performed better and which could benefit from the focus on maths and science and the extra resources.”
Nqgengelele emphasises that the decision to replace schools and identify new ones will be taken by provincial governments.
Past reports by ITWeb indicate the schools have also been failed by government bodies. The schools were supposed to be connected through the National Wholesale Broadband Network that Sentech is building with the R500 million that government awarded the state-owned institution. However, Sentech remains underfunded, as government initially allocated R3.8 billion for the completion of the network. It is not known if and when Sentech will receive the rest of the funding.
In October 2008, Sentech told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications that it has “connected none of the 250 Dinaledi schools”.
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