The Department of Basic Education will roll-out R34.8 million in bursaries plus R5.5 million seed funding over the next four years for a project aimed at teaching young children in their mother tongue.
The Department of Basic Education will roll-out R34.8 million in bursaries plus R5.5 million seed funding over the next four years for a project aimed at teaching young children in their mother tongue.
Next year, the Education Department at Rhodes University will pilot a new Bachelor of Education degree for Foundation Phase teachers, which focuses on educating children in both isiXhosa and English.
The Department of Basic Education has allocated 26 Funza Lushaka bursaries to the first year of the pilot and 30 per year thereafter.
This means that at the 2014 rate of R75 000 per bursary, some R34.8 million new money will be coming into the university in the next four year period.
As an undergraduate degree programme for pre-service teachers, it will bring transformational change to the faculty.
These bursaries will be targeting mother-tongue isiXhosa school learners in the Eastern Cape, especially but not exclusively rural EC school leavers who would not normally be able to afford funding to attend university.
“We are about to embark on an aggressive recruitment campaign in collaboration with the Eastern Cape Department of Education, who will be responsible for the administration of the Funza Lushaka bursary,” said Rhodes Dean of Education, Professor Di Wilmot.
In addition to the 26 bursary holders, there will be space for an additional 14 self-funded students to enrol for the course next year.
The Education Department at Rhodes is intent on attracting quality students in an attempt to contribute positively towards transformation and improving the quality of schooling in South Africa, said Wilmot.
The pilot BEd degree will be co-ordinated by Sarah Murray for the next four years.
The first two years of the degree will consist of a combination of compulsory education specific subjects, two languages (isiXhosa, English or Afrikaans) and a choice of two electives from a list of courses relevant to education offered in other faculties at Rhodes.
The third and fourth years of the BEd will consist of education specific subjects taught in the Education Department.
A number of new staff members will be appointed in the next four years.
To assist Rhodes with getting the programme off the ground, the Department of Higher Education has awarded R5.5 million seed funding for staff costs.
“The funding from the Departments of Higher and Basic Education is recognition that the Rhodes Education Faculty, the smallest education faculty in South Africa, is producing, and will continue to produce, quality teachers,” said Wilmot.
Applications are now open for learners to apply for a place in next year’s course.
The requirement for acceptance is 40 points, however students with points between 32 and 39 will be considered subject to the Dean’s discretion.
Other universities within the Eastern Cape that offer the BEd qualification include Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) and Fort Hare University.
The project, which has been under development since 2008, is a response to the national imperative set by the Department of Higher Education and Training to train more Foundation Phase teachers, particularly African languages mother-tongue teachers.
“The Eastern Cape has a critical shortage of mother tongue isiXhosa Foundation Phase teachers. That is why our new course has such a strong multilingual orientation,” said Prof Di Wilmot, the Dean of Education at Rhodes.
The multi-lingual degree programme will enable teachers to specialise in Foundation Phase teaching and it will equip them to teach in isiXhosa and English.
