Following interventions from the provincial and district departments of Education, Mary Waters High School is offering Science again after phasing out the subject earlier this year. The school had made the decision to drop Science without approval from the department of education.
Following interventions from the provincial and district departments of Education, Mary Waters High School is offering Science again after phasing out the subject earlier this year. The school had made the decision to drop Science without approval from the department of education.
On the first day of this term, the school began offering Science again. The school was able to reintroduce the subject after the department of education allocated an extra teacher to the understaffed school.
Speaking to Grocott's Mail last week, district education head Amos Fetsha said after meetings with the School Governing Body, prospective science pupils and parents, it was decided that the subject had to be introduced once more.
"We granted them a growth post in order for this teacher to be relieved of the burden of being the only qualified science teacher at the school," Fetsha said.
A growth post is a post that is beyond the school's allocation. It kicks in once the number of pupils is too high for the teachers to manage, Fetsha said.
"Part of our findings was that the teacher who was meant to teach Science at the school was overburdened. That is why we gave them a growth post," Fetsha said.
Mary Waters' decision to drop science
Earlier this year, a Grocotts Mail investigated an anonymous claim that science pupils were forced to quit the subject and study history.
After the news broke, the school management team of Mary Waters was hauled before the education department's special committee to explain the move.
When interviewed earlier in the year, School principal Faith Coetzee defended her decision, saying lack of interest in the subject by pupils, along with a lack of teaching capacity forced them to drop the subject.
"The number of learners taking science has been decreasing extensively over the years,” Coetzee said.
According to Coetzee, the situation placed a burden on other teachers at the school, which has over 1000 pupils.
"Learners who want to avoid science run to other subjects and create a problem of overcrowded classes," she said.
The Mary Waters matric class of 2016 would have been the last group to write the Physical Science paper.
When Grocott's Mail first reported on the situation, Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) researcher, Zukiswa Kota was critical of Mary Waters decision stop teaching Science, describing the move as unconstitutional.
