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Sports & Recreation

Education department not playing the game

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:30

By Lisa Bradshaw

The Department of Education (DOE) removed sport education from the school curriculum. Private and Model C schools can afford to pay sports staff which explains the ongoing sporting activities in certain schools but township schools don’t even have a PE lesson anymore.

For the last five years Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) has paid between 4500 and 7000 people to administer, implement and coach sports in rural areas. These sport facilitators earn a stipend of roughly R1500 a month and are monitored by the SRSA. They try to do a good job but battle with no equipment and hard clay areas which can’t even be called a field.

The DOE now aims to reinsert sporting activities in schools. There are staff members who have been trained in administering sport yet the DOE says they do not want to use these people but want to engage with physical education teachers.

We know that Model C schools don’t use physical education teachers for this work and in many instances especially at high schools they encourage scholars who are interested in sports to take on these posts when they leave school by offering training through correspondence studies.

As a result 7000 sports facilitators will be left out in the townships with no jobs while DOE aims to fill the gap by training 7000 new physical education teachers. The cost and time it will take to train new teachers will negatively impact the kids who are already getting a minimum amount of fitness and sports training.

I believe the7000 sports facilitators who are already practicing should be provided with short skills programs that prepare them to administer and coach school sports, and run inter school sport events.

However educational departments who should work together to provide opportunities for talented school children are more interested in attaining government positions and big salaries.

Government has promised to inject funds into school sports to boost mass participation and the DOE’s plan to bring back PE is aimed at keeping those funds in the hands of the department.

Wake up South Africa. Don’t waste the little resources we have left to retrain new staff when improvement of skills can be given to those that already exist and have shown passion. Is there a current database of all those that have been trained on the SSMPP since 2007? Have we tracked their skills and the work they have been doing?

I recently facilitated at the SADL and the Tourism Hospitality and Sport Business School (THSBS) for SRSA, the Department of Sport KZN. We taught sports administration to cluster groups that promote sport in rural areas.

We worked hard and had loads of fun. The participants loved the theme song which was used to call them back to class after lunch and teas so a four minute dance kicked off every new session.

It livened up our day and definitely made everyone proud of South Africa’s achievements. It also made me proud to know that we have some amazing people in this country who battle all odds to make a difference to communities and do what they can to improve the lives of those who have so little.