The NECT hosts national curriculum training for district officials and curriculum coaches

The National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) team hosted the first of four Centralised Training workshops for NECT curriculum Coaches and Districts Curriculum Specialists in Centurion, Gauteng. 

The training involves curriculum specialists in priority subjects from six NECT Districts (Bojanala, Bohlabela, Libode, Mt. Frere, Vhembe and Waterberg), Provincial Education Specialists from the Eastern Cape, North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga education departments as well as Department of Basic Education (DBE) officials from Curriculum and Teacher Development Directorates.

It is hosted as part of the NECTs Learning Programmes which seeks to enhance curriculum planning, and delivery. The training will allow district officials to effectively support and monitor curriculum coverage in schools for improved learner outcomes. District officials have the huge responsibility of providing support to schools and teachers on curriculum matters and without adequate training, it becomes a challenge to effectively support teachers. The objectives of the training are to:

-          develop the facilitation skills of District Curriculum Advisors and NECT Change Agents;

-          induct the participants to the content of the Term One learning programmes for 2016;

-          prepare participants to run effective teacher training sessions on the NECT Learning Programmes for Term One 2016; and

-          Establish the school support processes for Term One, focussing on curriculum coverage, curriculum content, assessment and reflective practice.

“The kind of commitment we see from people in the system, and the positive attitude displayed, especially about starting early into the academic year is highly appreciated by the NECT, as this has a very positive impact on the outcomes of learning and teaching in our schools,” said Godwin Khosa, CEO of the NECT, in his opening remarks of the training workshop, which officially commenced on Monday 18 January 2016 and took place over a period of a week.

In a statement during the training workshop, Deputy Director General for teacher and professional development in the Department of Basic Education, Themba Kojana, said: “We welcome this initiative as a Department and we believe that the shared experiences amongst the participating stakeholders will yield positive results at school level. The experiences will also be replicated nationally as the subject advisors continue their work with teachers to help them improve their content knowledge and pedagogies, that learning outcomes are ultimately improved across board.”

“Essentially the final beneficiaries of the training are teachers who will be prepared to deliver the curriculum to their learners, and to deliver it with content accuracy. We anticipate that higher levels of curriculum coverage will be achieved as a result of this strategy. We also envisage that teachers will complete all of the required assessment tasks as defined in the CAPS policy,” said Dr Lorraine Marneweck, the Learning Programmes Technical Advisor.

The NECT, together with the DBE, aims to use this training workshop as blue print to determine how programmes to improve quality and delivery of education in the country are delivered. This training forms part of the NECT’s strategic effort specifically designed to assist in the improvement of teaching in schools to ensure the completion of the curriculum, improved education outcomes and delivery of quality education.