By LUCAS NOWICKI Contractors have abandoned more than 50 major school upgrade projects in the Eastern Cape after government departments failed to pay them on time. Many of these schools have been stripped of valuable materials and vandalised after being abandoned. One example is Makhanda’s Grahamstown Primary School. The school moved into temporary prefabricated premises in February to make way for a R55 million upgrade. The revamp, originally due for completion in 2021, was to have included an administration block, a new library, an IT centre, and a school hall, according to the school’s principal, Leon Coetzee. Then in June,…
Author: Rod Amner
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By JOSI SALVADORI It was a morning of pure delight for 60 preschool learners who gathered outside the Lebone Centre recently for an extended edition of the Multilingual Storytelling Programme. Cathy Gush, Lebone’s Literacy Programme co-ordinator, kicked-off the event with a warm welcome and a mini story-telling session between her and the learners. Gush’s book of choice, titled “SHHHHH!” by Sam Wilson, Alex Latimer, and Anita van der Merwe, was a real crowd pleaser and set the scene for the rest of the morning. The Multilingual Storytelling Programme, established in 2018, recruits story-tellers from the surrounding community who dress-up and…
By NOMVELO MASANGO and NOKUTHULA SIBIYA The Kingswood branch of the Intsomi programme has officially been launched. Hosted in the housekeeping staff room of Kingswood College, the event was facilitated by Intsomi coordinator, Cathy Gush. The Intsomi programme is an initiative that was started at Rhodes University in 2015. It was created to help Rhodes University Grade 1-5 staff members become agents in the development of their children’s reading and learning skills. Intsomi has been providing reading books and educational material, as well as hosting workshops to assist parents with their children’s learning outside of the classroom. Due to the…
By RUMBI NYAREBEKA Elation filled the classroom recently, as 82 learners at Samuel Ntsiko Public School were gifted with storybooks to celebrate International Literacy Day. The books were generously donated to the learners by Book Dash and the Lebone Centre, and distributed by Rhodes University Linguistics students. The Rhodes University students have been working side by side with the Grade 5 learners in Samuel Nstiko for just over eight weeks now, as part of the Linguistics and Community service-learning course. This is a collaborative initiative aimed at providing learners with opportunities for rich oral interaction as well as establishing a…
By CATHY GUSH Project Read is a programme of the Lebone Centre that makes use of community volunteers and students to support the language and literacy development of more than 100 Foundation Phase learners in St Mary’s, George Dickerson and Good Shepherd Primary schools. Funding is provided by the Vestas Empowerment Trust as part of the Primary Education Partnership in Grahamstown. Learners on the programme are allowed to borrow a storybook to take home and read on a weekly basis, but recently, in honour of National Book Week it was possible, through donations made by national organisation Book Dash, to…
Over 300 free books were recently gladly received by children and parents from a wheelbarrow outside the Lebone Centre. The books were donated by Book Dash, an organisation of creative volunteers that creates new African storybooks that anyone can freely print, translate and distribute. The wheelbarrow distribution was one of a number of events organised by the Lebone Centre and other partners this week in celebration of Literacy Month and National Book Week. The initiatives were designed to tackle the fact that many families are not able to buy books, and many children do not know the joy of owning…
Thieves and vandals have wreaked havoc on the original premises of the Grahamstown Primary School (GPS) after contractors recently abandoned a R55-million upgrade to the school due to non-payment by the Department of Basic Education. Michelle Banda and Rod Amner report. After years of planning and negotiation, Grahamstown Primary School was looking forward to a substantial revamp – including the installation of a media centre and library – by the Department of Basic Education (DBE). In a recent interview with the EP Herald, Education MEC Fundile Gade said the department had only R1.6-billion of the R4-billion needed for the completion…
By JENNA KRETZMANN For 53 years, a group of Makhanda women has been gathering in the comfort of each other’s lounges on the third Thursday of every month. They have presented around 525 essays so far on topics ranging from ‘Icons and Iconoclasts’, ‘The History of Glazing’ to ‘The Ukulele of Hawaii’. The ‘Third Thursday Essay Club of Grahamstown’ was founded in 1967 by Rosemary Smith, Betty Davenport, and Shirley Maclennan. It aims to bring intellectual stimulation to an invitation-only group of women, ranging in age from early forties to late eighties. “Controversial as it may be, to have only…
By Zikhona Nyumka Of 854 teachers in public schools in the Makana sub-district, 389 have received laptop computers as part of a Department of Basic Education (DBE) initiative to integrate ICTs into teaching. According to the Makana DBE e-learning co-ordinator, Rejoice Batyi, all Foundation Phase teachers have already received laptops, while Grade 4 and Grade 9 teachers are in the process of receiving theirs. The DBE also plans to distribute laptops to all high school teachers and from next year learners will start receiving tablets. In 2017, the Mail & Guardian reported that while Eastern Cape educators were receiving laptops,…
By Zikhona Nyumka Just 17 of the 26 computers in the Fikizolo Primary School computer lab are in working order and there is no connection to the internet. The software is basic: Microsoft Office, Rapid Typing and a coding gaming programme called Blockly. But unlike many similar labs in local schools, this one is being used thanks to a partnership with the Ulwazi outreach programme of the Department of Information Systems at Rhodes. Ulwazi recruited an intern to manage the lab and every afternoon between 2 pm and 4 pm ICT training is offered by Rhodes students. In 2016, Ulwazi…