On 12 February 2009, CPUT’s Wellington Campus launched the Centre for Multi-Grade Education. The Centre is the only one of its kind in Africa dedicated to providing accredited multi-grade teacher training.
The Centre was made possible through a grant from the Royal Netherlands Embassy and will form part of the Systemic Education and Extramural Development and Support (SEEDS) initiative.
The SEEDS initiative will see four Western Cape universities and several education service providers, working in close collaboration on a number of education programmes.
A total of R150 million was awarded to the SEEDS initiative by the Royal Netherlands Embassy, of which R22 million was awarded to CPUT.
The agreement between the institutions and embassy was signed on 12 February 2009 at Stellenbosch University .
While the other institutions will focus on various education projects in science, mathematics and HIV/Aids, CPUT will use the funding to continue its pioneering work in multi-grade education.
In multi-grade classroom settings teachers are responsible for teaching children of different grade levels in the same classroom at the same time.
In South Africa these classrooms are often the only option for the delivery of education in rural areas where there are not enough learners to set up a conventional school.
The classrooms are labour intensive and require more planning and professional development than the conventional classroom.
Although multi-grade education is a worldwide phenomenon in rural areas, training of these teachers has remained unaddressed in many parts of the world, resulting in the poor academic performance of rural learners.
In South Africa 8 million children attend rural schools, of which more than 2 million are taught in multi-grade classrooms.
This picture mirrors the African continent where 50% of classrooms are multi-grade. Currently multi-grade classrooms account for 30% of world classrooms.
However, with the rollout of the Centre, the landscape of teaching in rural South Africa is set to change.
The Centre will equip teachers with the necessary skills to deal effectively with multi-grade environments. It will also provide pupils and teachers with classroom resources specifically geared towards multi-grade environments.
This will ensure that the level of education of rural primary school pupils is brought on par with that of their counterparts in urban schools.
During the next few months the centre will focus on various training projects and research. This will include the following:
- Training of project management staff and one CPUT mentor
- Training of 10 CPUT multi-grade education supervisors
- Training of 20 curriculum and learning material experts
- Conducting a baseline study on multi-grade schools in the
- country and Southern Africa
- Training of 50 post-graduate students in multi-grade education
- Training of 150 officials and 286 educators in multi-grade education
- Adapting teacher education curriculum for rural multi-grade application and implementation
- Education lecturer and researcher, Dr Jurie Joubert, will drive the activities of the centre.
Dr Joubert and Chris Lombard of the CPUT Advancement Office have worked tirelessly for the last 18 months to build the case for support for this project, which resulted in the full requested grant of R22 million being awarded to the Centre.
By Noloyiso Mchunu
Photos: (left) Learners at a small multi-grade school near Laingsburg; (top right) Dutch Ambassador to South Africa Rob de Vos and Stellenbosch University Vice-Chancellor Russel Botman sign the SEEDS agreement. (bottom right) Vice-Chancellor Russel Botman and CPUT Vice-Chancellor Prof Vuyisa Mazwi-Tanga with other delegates at the signing of the SEEDS agreement.
