África

Africa/ South Africa/ 23.06.2020/ Source: businesstech.co.za.

The Department of Basic Education has published a new directive focusing on the reopening of school’s under South Africa’s lockdown.

While the directive is largely in line with previous changes made by the department, it does provide further clarity of a number of key issues.

These points are outlined in more detail below.

Matric exams

The directive states that the May/June 2020 examination for candidates who registered for the Senior Certificate and the National Senior Certificate will be administered in November/December 2020.

It adds that the November/December 2020 National Senior Certificate examinations will be administered as planned, subject to the alignment of the timetable to the 2020 revised school calendar.

The revised school calendar can be viewed here.

School attendance 

The directive makes specific provision for parents who do not wish for their children to return to school due to coronavirus concerns.

In these instances, a parent must apply to the Head of Department, who, in terms of section 4 of the South African Schools Act, may exempt a learner entirely, partially or conditionally from compulsory school attendance, if it is in the best interests of the learner.

This is subject to the proviso that the parent makes reasonable efforts to ensure that the learner continues learning from home in line with the learning materials provided by the school.

“Should a parent wish to apply for a learner to receive education at the learner’s home (home education), he or she must comply with the legal requirements for the provision of home education, as contemplated in section 51 of the South African Schools Act.”

Opening of hostels

The department said that school hostels are permitted to open provided that they comply with the department’s minimum health, safety and social distancing measures and requirements on Covid-19.

The directive also includes new requirements for both schools that plan to reopen their hostels, as well as requirements for schools who plan to close their hostels.

“Hostels may open once the notification and declaration have been submitted to the Head of Department: Provided that the Provincial Department of Education reserves the right to conduct an inspection, once the hostels have opened to verify the hostel with the measures and requirements.”

Learners with special educational needs

In addition to the guidelines developed for schools with specific categories of learners with disabilities, all schools with learners with special educational needs, as contemplated in the South African Schools Act, must comply with all directions and circulars regarding the re-opening of schools.

The new directive makes a number of specific provisions for the return of these learners, including autistic learners and learners who are blind, partially sighted or deaf.

“Officials who are unable to practise social distancing from learners with special education needs must be provided by the Provincial Department of Education with appropriate personal protective equipment, including protective clothing, where such provision is necessary.”

“Officials appointed to carry out symptom screening, in accordance with direction 13, in schools for deaf learners, must be able to communicate using South African Sign Language. Where this is not possible, a sign language interpreter must be available to ensure proper communication with the learners.”

Permits and certificates

The directive states that school officials who have to commute to and from work on a daily basis are permitted to move between provinces, metropolitan areas and districts provided they have the correct permit.

This permit may be issued by the Head of Department or a delegated official or, in the case of a school, by a principal or a person delegated by him or her.

Similarly, learners who are required to move between provinces to commute to and from school on a daily basis must be issued with a certificate issued by a principal or a person delegated by him or her.

You can find these documents in the directive below.

Curriculum trimming

To accommodate the teaching time lost as a result of the national state of disaster and the adjustment of timetables, the national curriculum has been reviewed by the Department of Basic Education.

The revised content phase map, which contains a broad overview of the curriculum content, including skills, knowledge, attitudes and values learners would be exposed to over a three year period, as well as the revised annual teaching plans and curriculum support guidelines, are accessible on the website of the Department of Basic Education here.

You can read the full directive below.

Source of the notice: https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/410045/updated-lockdown-rules-for-south-african-schools-including-matric-exams-return-to-hostels-and-more/

Africa/ Nigeria/ 23.06.2020/ Source: www.weforum.org.

• Children in rural and underserved communities in Nigeria are being left behind as they are not equipped to adapt or transition to new methods of learning.

• Governmental reforms in the national curriculum would help bridge the gap in inequality, as would PPPs.

According to a 2019 Executive Summary on Poverty and Inequality by the National Bureau of Statistics, 40.1% of the population in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the largest producer of oil in Africa, is classified as poor. That is, on average, four out of 10 Nigerians has per capita expenditure below $400.

A UNICEF report states that 10.5 million of the country’s children aged 5-14 years are not in school. Only 61% of 6 to 11-year-olds regularly attend primary school. Some states in the north east and north west of the country have more than half of the girls not enrolled in schools as marginalisation ensures that girls are deprived of basic education.

A struggle was going on prior to COVID-19 to ensure young children stay in school and have access to proper education, as Nigeria contributes approximately 20% of the total global out-of-school population.

The COVID-19 pandemic is revolutionizing digital and online education globally but kids in rural and underserved communities in Lagos State, Nigeria, are being left behind as they are not equipped to adapt or transition to the new methods of learning.

On 19 March 2020, the Federal Ministry of Education approved school closures as a response to the pandemic. States in the federation contextualized this, with the Lagos State Ministry of Education releasing a schedule of radio and TV lessons for students in public schools.

Priorities should include the introduction of courses such as coding and robotics.

—April Amorighoye

However, for families that earn below $1 per day and faced harsh economic realities due to the four-week lockdown in the state, the purchase of radios or TV might be a trade-off that they cannot afford. A suggestion to this problem was the provision of portable solar radios to help bridge the digital divide.

The pandemic has unmasked substantial inequities in the education sector. Private and non-governmental sectors are tirelessly working to salvage this situation. Projects such as Digiterate and Teach for Nigeria hope to ensure proper tools for education are available to all in Lagos.

However, one major issue that may stem from this inequality is that these kids who currently cannot keep up with their peers because of inaccessibility to digital tools may never catch up and will continue to feel the effect of this gap long after the pandemic is over.

This may result in a severely diminishing pool of young adults who have not garnered the necessary skills to stay ahead in the future. With Nigeria already behind in preparing its young people for the workplace of the future, the effects of the pandemic further exacerbate this issue.

There are measures that must be taken to help bridge the divide when the urgent needs of the pandemic subside. They centre largely around Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and government aid.

PPPs can do much to improve the quality of, and increase access to, education for poor children in underserved communities. More schools in such areas, especially Lagos, would go some way to start shifting the teacher/student ratio which has hit alarming lows of 1:83 at points during the past decade.

The result of new schools opening would be a reduced burden on teachers, currently ill-equipped to handle the ever-burgeoning class sizes.

Voucher schools may also aid in rapidly improving the education system in Lagos as suggested by a World Bank Report addressing the need for more information on the private education sector there, given that private schools are the lead education provider in the state. Voucher schools are schools chosen by students and to which the government provides funding; they may be government or non-government providers or both, depending on the system.

Government aid is needed in terms of investing in educational tools of the future alongside a total revamp of the educational sector. Reforms in the national curriculum post-pandemic would be an effective way to bridge the gap in inequality. Priorities should include the introduction of courses such as coding and robotics which can usher students into the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and prepare them for jobs of the future.

In countries such as Nigeria, education should be viewed as a high government priority. Help in increasing awareness of the pressing need for the country’s children to be educated, especially those from low-income families, will benefit the country’s economy in years to come.

Aid provided in this direction can be viewed as an investment in human capital; the more educated a country is, the more productive.

Of all sustainable missions surely the most pressing is to improve lives, and there’s no better way to do so than proper and sound education for all.

Africa/ Nigeria/ Source: www.xinhuanet.com.

Redacción: Prensa Latina

Africa/Kenya/21-06-2020/Author and Source: www.kbc.co.ke

Over 4000 school girls in Machakos County have been impregnated in last three months. Among these, 200 are under 14 years of age.

This is according to the County Children’s Officer Salome Muthama speaking on Tuesday during the celebrations to mark the Day of the African Child at Machakos Rescue Center in Katoloni, Machakos town.

Ms Muthama described the situation as worrying. She assured that legal action would be taken against those responsible for the beastly action. The Children’s officer blamed the long school holiday occasioned by the Coronavirus pandemic for the upsurge and implored parents to take more responsibility over their children.

“As we celebrate this day here today, just within this Covid-19 period alone, some 4000 girls have been impregnated in our county!” Ms Muthama declared as she blamed parents for not taking keen interest in bringing up their children thus exposing them to the trickeries of wayward adults and bad peer influence.

She noted that following the partial lockdown of major towns like Nairobi and Mombasa due to Covid-19 pandemic, most parents had sent their children to the rural areas where they are being taken care of by aged grandparents who are unable to take keen care of the youths.

“These helpless grandmothers are not able to closely watch over the youths, and as a result the young ones are introduced to bad habits or even molested by peers and other unscrupulous people thus leading to such calamities such as these pregnancies,” she observed.

She said it was not enough for the parents to send food and money from the towns for the children they had dumped at their own grandparents’ homes noting that it behooves them to stay with their children and mentor them.

“Parents should stay with their children so that they watch over them closely and provide appropriate guidance instead of dumping them at their grandparents’ homes claiming that they are protecting them from the Corona pandemic,” she noted.

At the same time Muthama urged those charged with the dispensation of justice to children to make deliberate efforts to eradicate delays in the process. She particularly called on the police to fast track cases involving children so that justice is dispensed with promptly and the children allowed to go on with building their lives.

She told those attending the celebrations whose theme was “Access to a child-friendly justice system in Africa” that delays in dispensation of justice to children amounted to denial of their rights.

“Cases involving children should take at most six months to resolve but here in Machakos some take up to two years or more,” she lamented.

Noting that delay of children’s cases amounted to a denial of their rights, she added, “Children attend court either as offenders, victims or witnesses, and every time a case drags, the children are being denied opportunity to either attend school or other matters that affect their future lives,” she noted.

The children’s officer similarly appealed to members of the society who are witnesses in cases involving children not to shy away from attending court, but come out and participate fully so that the cases are solved promptly.

And reacting to the shocking news, Machakos Women Representative Joyce Kasimbi condemned the wave of pregnancy among children and said local grassroots leaders should explain how it happened.

She said parliament would pass a law that will ensure that anybody who impregnates a child will be held responsible.

Similar sentiments were expressed by two DCI officers who warned of dire consequences.

Speaking when they joined children of at  Mwisoo Children’s home in Kyawango, Maau-eli in Mwala, to celebrate the Day, Machakos Sub County DCI boss Rhoda Kanyi and her Mwala counterpart Catherine Kinoti said the law will be brought to bear on those found molesting minors.

“Men who sleep with minors must be warned that the law will definitely catch up with you,” they warned.

Source and Image: https://www.kbc.co.ke/alarm-as-4000-school-girls-get-pregnant-in-machakos-since-march/

Redacción: Porfinenafrica

Cuatro escritoras y activistas analizan el feminismo occidental y reclaman espacios para las mujeres menos privilegiadas.

Comparto, con el objetivo de repensar y reflexionar, este vídeo sobre “Feminismo mainstream” en el que cuatro grandes autoras y activistas -Chimamanda Adichie, Angela Davis, Judith Butler y Arundhati Roy- hablan y se posicionan respecto a lo que ha sido el feminismo hegemónico y cómo a través de él se ha representado la lucha de las mujeres por la igualdad sin tener en cuenta las realidades ni las necesidades de las menos privilegiadas: mujeres negras, migrantes, pobres, racializadas…

Un vídeo que nos puede servir para mirar con otros ojos la realidad, abrir nuestra mente y comenzar a deconstruirnos para formar algo más grande aún, que incluya a todas, especialmente a las menos privilegiadas.

Este vídeo recoge parte de las intervenciones de las escritoras con motivo de su presencia en las Conferencias del Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona el pasado 2018. Un ciclo en el que se abordó el feminismo dando voz a voces alternativas y dispuestas a la crítica constructiva.

Fuente: https://porfinenafrica.com/2020/06/voces-alternativas-al-feminismo-hegemonico/