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During the past week, a learner from a foster home made headline news when he was chosen to play fo the Limpopo Blue Bulls High School team. This just shows that you are not defined by your circumstances, which a good education you can achieve your heart's desires.

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Challenges, theories and who is to blame. 

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Challenges, theories and who is to blame. 

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I come from working at a company with an exceptional workspace culture to working in a very formal environment.

The list of where are we going wrong is so long, however we focus on problems and not solutions. The thing is people tend to use that phrase often as a way to divert a problem that stretches over a vast field of inadequate capabilities by management.

1. Discipline starts at home. You can ot control a behaviour that has been indoctrinated at home.

2. Assessment, you cannot formatively assess a learner on content that is lacking from a prescribed programme that does not constitute in your syllabus.  You are required to teach your CAPS not that of the 4th Grade in the 8th Grade. Learner gaps are too big to fix. The system is failing because learners are told you cannot fail more than once. The principal of no learner left behind was misguided from the beginning, they made it into no learner can fail more than once in a phase, this is not what was intended by no learner left behind. It has always been intended that resources were to be put in place that the learner can be guided into achieving success without being left behind.

3. School Finances. Schools are being micro managed and therefor there are no books, statiomary, staff and working classroom environments. Department took away the abillity for schools to order there own LTSM, ever since there has been a bigger abuse of finances and schools receive even less textbooks. Textbooks are the most basic need in schools. After which comes infrastructure and sanitary. There are schools who do not have running water.

4. Uneducated parents. Parents in most goverment or no fees schools really only look at 3 things i) feeding scheme, is my child being fed. ii) who can I blame of my child acts intollerable? It is easier to blame a teacher than accepting that my child will end up my problem at home if he gets susspended, so teachers are automtically targeted. And iii) who is responsible for my childs discipline and education, parents forget that they are directly responsible to ensure that HOMEWORK, DISCIPLINE AND RESPECT are taught at home. This puts a huge time consyraint on educators who have to work twice as hard to ensure that content are covered. Our parents cannot educate at hime if they are not educated. Hence homework is useless and pointless.

5. Lack of change. School structures needs to adapt as generational gaps increase. What worked 30 years ago, will not work now. The age gaps between staff and SMT are so enormous that personalities and work ethics clashes. If the school management are not willing to adapt to change, workstructures will fail. What educator 1 with 40 years teaching experience will feel is disrespectful , to a new teacher will seem like a learner in need of help. The learner of today acts out their emotions and with the ease of access to drugs and gangs and criminal activity, we face a harder battle in modern times to overcome.

Lastly :

Uneducated educators - NEVER EVER APPOINT A TEACHER IN A FIELD THEY ARE NOT TRAINED TO BE IN. This does more damage than good. ARTS AND CULTURE, LIFE ORIENTATION, TECHNOLOGY. The three subjects in schools that are almost alwats taught by teachers who are not qualified to teach them. This angers me so much. I have experienced this having facillitated a few times at departmental level. These teachers teach subjects THEY DO NOT WANT TO BUT HAVE TO. wrong attitude.

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Regardless of resources, support and any other excuse I can find. I believe the teacher is the be all and end all that ultimately makes a difference in education. Be the best teacher that you can be because in the end you are the challenge or the success!

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I believe the biggest challenge we face is under recourses classrooms that are incapable of supporting an inclusive environment. I believe that teachers are also not supported enough- emotionally, facility wise and financially.

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Biggest challenges faced by South African schools

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Biggest challenges faced by South African schools

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I think this is a very broad subject in a South African context. I think it depends on which quintile school you refer too, and also which province makes a real difference in what challenges are being faced. From reading newspapers, and researching contextual realities, I think the overcrowding of classrooms directly impacts on the quality of education, being given. For myself, I think the biggest challenge Im having, is that I believe there are no knowledge sharing between teacher and teacher, or schools and schools. I believe we are re-inventing the wheel, over and over, and we should use our resources better.

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We often tend to focus only on the negative in our schools. Yet there are positive stories as well. I feel one of the biggest successes the department has made is the classification of "no-fee" schools. Many people cannot afford the exorbitant school fees of some schools, meaning that due to this the learners would've not been able to attend school. With no-fee schools, all learners are allowed to attend school and get an education. Another positive programme is the nutritional feeding schemes at schools. In the school that I teach at I can see first hand how learners benefit from this. For most learners it is the only meal that they receive in a day.

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To me, the biggest challenge facing educators in South Africa stems from overcrowded classrooms, a lack of discipline in the class, inadequate resources in schools, and insufficient knowledge on dealing with certain barriers in the classroom. I feel that we as educators are not equipped/ prepared enough to deal with major issues in South African classrooms today. Systems like corporal punishment have been taken out of schools, but have not been replaced by a proper system to deal with behavioural issues in classrooms... I was never taught during my undergraduate degree how I must deal with certain issues/events which may take place in a classroom.