South Africa’s future depends on a thriving early childhood development culture and system and a nation-building programme that is helping in this crucial area are the Absa and Sowetan Early Childhood Development (ECD) Awards.
It is sponsored and run in association with SABC Education, the national Education Department, South African Congress for Early Childhood Development and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and the Aggrey Klaaste Nation Building Foundation.
The programme encourages the professional development of ECD practitioners and the infrastructure development, improvement and support of ECD centres and ECD resources and training organisations. It also focuses on the development of infrastructure, improvement and support of ECD centres, resources and further training of ECD organisations.
They include caregivers, teachers and managers of ECD centres, crèches and kindergartens – as well as the tutors and organisations that nurture the teaching staff.
The awards given are for best resource and training organisations, home-based centres or playgroups, practitioners and community based centres, and innovative ECD programmes.
Hundreds of nominations have been submitted. Site visits and short-listings are taking place this month. Provincial award ceremonies - to select national finalists – are being held throughout November. The finalists will be announced in Pretoria, Gauteng on December 3.
By Nikki Florence, SABC Education, Head of Outreach Unit
1 comment:
The assessment guidelines for the National Certificate Vocational indicates that subjects must be assessed according to certain percentages for theory and certain percentages for practical. The lecturer in all of us finds it easy to deliver on the theory component of assessment. After all we are all familiar with tests, examinations and worksheets. All of these types of assessments are theory assessments. This begs the question then, what is a practical assessment? In certain programmes this is an easier question to answer. For example within Hospitality or Engineering it would be making some kind of end product in a kitchen or workshop. Other NCV programmes, for example NCV Education and Development, it may be bit more difficult to develop a practical assignment.
We often think that an instruction to a student to make a poster or a mind map is a practical assessment. Is this a true practical task? The true test of an assessment being a practical assessment is to ask the question: Would the student be doing this in a real life work or industry situation? If the answer to this question is yes, then the assessment can be considered a true practical assessment.
We need to make sure that we balance the delivery of theory with relevant practical assessments. A good way to encourage the student to interact with their chosen real life work or industry situation is to encourage students to interview professionals in their chosen industry.
Within the NCV Education and Development programme, students can be encouraged to interview teachers, social workers or community workers.
Post a Comment