The aim of the vacation training has been to improve the quality of teaching in these schools, paying special attention to new content and pedagogy in the new curriculum and so impact on the performance of learners.

In April nearly 300 teachers from 85 KZN Dinaledi Schools met in Durban for a 5-day training programme in Mathematics, Physical Science and Life Sciences organised by the KZN DoE's MST & ICT Directorate and facilitated by CASME.

Our internal evaluation of the training shows that teachers are beginning to demonstrate positive shifts in their content knowledge. In the Life Sciences educators demonstrated an overall improvement of 30% in their mastery over the Environmental Studies and Reproduction topics. Similar improvement was recorded in Mathematics with educators improving by approximately 30% in Algebra and Transformational Geometry. The most dramatic improvements were seen in Physical Science with a 45% increase in mastery of Organic Chemistry.

Life Sciences educators were also treated to a morning at Seaworld where a range of classroom activities were demonstrated to assist them in the teaching of marine reproduction and marine environment studies. Our thanks to Heidi Simpson of the NPC Education Centre at the South African Association for Marine Biological Research for hosting us.