Mfolozi Municipality embarks on schools functionality visits

As part of the Schools Functionality Monitoring Programme, Mayor Cllr S W Mgenge, councillors and municipal officials of the uMfolozi Municipality were deployed throughout the area of KwaMbonambi to assess the state of readiness in different schools for the beginning of the 2015 academic year.

This provided an opportunity to engage members of the school governing body with a School Functionality Monitoring Questionnaire which they all had to complete in order to get the views of the teachers on how best to improve teaching and learning in their specific communities.  The school visits are done together with the department of education as part of KwaZulu-Natal Legislature’s oversight exercise over the executive arm of government. Once the delegation has had a chance to monitor the identified schools throughout the area they will report their findings to the Premier of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Mr Senzo Mchunu as well as the MEC for Education, Ms Neliswa Nkonyeni, who will then implement tateps to raise the standard of education.

“The Schools Functionality Monitoring Programme has been very effective and we believe that it has had huge impact towards improvement of results,” said Municipal Manager, Mr K E Gamede.

During the school visits members inspected a number of things including whether schooling begins on the first day of school, availability of teaching staff and school infrastructure.

“We have been disappointed by the negative results produced by the class of 2014 and we want to partner with the provincial education department to make ensure that they see an improvement in the results. We are not only focusing on schools that performed poorly. But also visiting those who did well, so that they continue to perform well and to take the best practices from those schools and implement in the poor performing schools. We want the class of 2015 to make us proud, by at least, achieving a 100% pass rate,” said Mr K E Gamede.