FREE SUPPLEMENTARY EDUCATION HELPS KEEP KIDS IN SCHOOL
March 2010

The biggest challenge facing the education sector is to improve core performance in literacy and numeracy and to increase the average performance in South African schools. The problems are often attributed to poor transition from mother tongue to English at Grade 4 level and this is when many learners, who find it difficult to adapt to the changeover, fall behind and then leave school prematurely. 

PEP has founded the Student Prince Academy programme to help Grade 4 learners with the transition from mother tongue to English as the language of tuition.  Today, the first two academies in KZN will be launched in Umlazi at Vumokuhle Primary School and Muzomuhle Primary School.  There are already four academies in Gauteng schools and two in Western Cape schools, bringing the total number of academies in South Africa to eight. 

The Student Prince Academy is a free supplementary education initiative launched and piloted by PEP in 2008.  Due to the improvement of learner performance, PEP is investing R5.5 million into the project this year and, altogether, is helping 1 300 children to improve their literacy and numeracy.

The Academies, run by Social Innovations within existing schools, are giving Grade 4 learners after-school core competence tuition in the necessary building blocks of education - numeracy, literacy and life skills. Academies operate three times per week from 14h30 until 16h30. All the children are given a snack (e.g. a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a fruit juice) at the end of the day. 

When the initiative was launched in 2008, the Department of Education (DoE) endorsed it fully and said this kind of model should be replicated in as many provinces as possible. The DoE also stated that, rather than throwing money at an arbitrary corporate social investment project, PEP had identified a real need and then piloted an initiative to address that need and in order to ensure that it worked.

PEP MD, George Steyn says: “We’re not only helping to keep kids at school and off the streets, but we’re also providing a safe and caring environment for supplementary education and other activities with the aim that in the long term they’ll keep on attending school.”