WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2004-03-01 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/1/2004 1:53:20 PM
S.Africa: Mpuma to close farm schools
[A little known fact for people outside South Africa is that many farmers built schools for their worker’s children. Some of these are to be closed down by the government. Jan]
Nelspruit – Mpumalanga has begun phasing out all 63 farm schools in the province as part of a R125m programme to provide fully-fledged rural schools for farm worker and village children.
Education MEC Craig Padayachee said on Monday government was obliged to dismantle the existing network of privately-managed farms schools and tiny “one teacher” village schools because they were incapable of providing a uniform or in many cases acceptable standard of education.
“Many of these schools are simply not fit to be called institutions of learning. We have already conducted a successful pilot project in the Louisville district, where we established a centralised rural school that replaced all nearby ‘one teacher’ schools,” said Padayachee.
“The pilot was so successful that we have now begun establishing similar schools elsewhere in the province, and plan to have phased out all existing farm and village schools within three years.”
The initiative forms part of a wider school building programme, that will see Mpumalanga spend R125 million constructing 477 new classrooms, 20 new administrative blocks and 1 000 toilets over the 2004/05 financial year.
“We are also appealing to the private sector to help us build additional science or biology laboratories, and libraries, especially in previously disadvantaged schools, where pupils were denied access to this type of technical learning before,” said Padayachee.
‘Didn’t want black scientists’
“In fact, most township or rural schools were in the past built without libraries or laboratories, obviously because the [apartheid] government never intended [black] learners to become scientists and engineers.”
Mpumalanga new school building programme seeks, he added, to accelerate an earlier construction project that resulted in 1614 new schools and 4888 additional classrooms over the past 10-years.
This track record includes 282 ‘special classrooms’ such as laboratories, as well as 80 administrative blocks, and new bulk electricity connections at 79 schools, with security fencing at 83 crime-hit rural or township schools.
The better facilities, as well as a linked programme to provide more teachers to rural and township schools, has helped to dramatically reduce overcrowding at schools.
“When we took over, 10 years ago, there was an average of one teacher to 82 pupils. I can proudly say today that we have managed to reduce this ratio to 1:35, and hope to reach our target of 1:32 within the next few years,” said Padayachee.
Teacher ratios have always been problematic in farms schools and are easier, he added, to manage in larger schools such as those planned for rural areas.
Padayachee stressed that a new government-subsidised school bus system would be introduced to help rural or farm children reach their new schools.
Edited by Tisha Steyn
Source: NEWS24.COM
URL: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/New…br>