The 2025 Chronicle

parents are more likely to support the transport costs of older children than younger ones if finances are an issue. This results in a high dropout rate or a late start to schooling, with obvious disadvantages for the children affected. In an effort to mitigate this challenge, the MCPT runs a transport subsidy programme for children in Grades 1, 2 and 3 at Shea O’Connor and Es iphethwini Sendezi. After Grade 3 the foundation is set, and parents are able to manage their own transport fees. The risk of dropping out at this stage decreases significantly because the value of education has been realized. Project champions: Jon Bates and Akhona Sikhakhane EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT ECD centres exist in many different forms in our communi ties. Some are run by people with no formal training; others are staffed by teachers with the appropriate qualifications. We have engaged the Grow ECD team to assist with an evaluation of the centres in our footprint and provide recommendations. We opened a fully functional centre for 50 toddlers at Zenzani in February, thanks to funding from the Eric Thorrington-Smith Foundation. We also raised the funds to install a state-of-the art centre in the Lion’s River community, the previous facility having been closed for safety and hygiene reasons. The principals of our footprint ECD centres received business training from Grow ECD. This included an app that gives them access to a variety of administrative and teaching materials. The principals also receive mentoring sessions to help them run their centres as successful businesses. We actively look for individuals and businesses to support our programme because the need is vast. It is estimated that 80% of toddlers in South Africa do not have access to functional ECD facilities. We are striving to ensure that our footprint primary schools are adequately served. Project champion: Akhona Sikhakhane CAREER GUIDANCE – EDUVELOPMENT The Grade 12s in our footprint schools previously had no help with career guidance and tertiary studies. The few who were fortunate enough to have access to information were able to enrol in institutions of higher learning, but a large majority re main unaware of career opportunities, tertiary institutions or how to apply. The introduction of the Eduvelopment app and platform, through Old Boy Andrew Cook, has added great value by addressing this significant need. Eduvelopment workshops with all the Grade 9 learners from our footprint schools were completed to enable sensible sub ject choices for their Grade 10 year. The Grade 11s and 12s were taken through the app and assisted with tertiary-educa tion applications. LEARNERSHIPS The 11 learnership students who started in February have been adding value to their host schools by assisting the school princi pals with their significant administration load. They have been putting systems in place which hold teachers accountable for school start and finish times, submission deadlines and gen eral printing, and keeping filing up to date. The students have

evaluate its 16 footprint schools with a key focus on five areas: • Instructional functionality • Infrastructural functionality • Leadership functionality

• Learning outcomes • Ed-tech competence

In an annual report to the department, the MCPT will reflect on what the needs are in these five areas, and in particular what remedial action has been taken and will be taken. It is hoped that a cooperative and collaborative relationship will develop which will encourage the Department of Education to assist where it can in improving our footprint schools as functional places of learning. Funding has been raised for much of this work, but the need is considerable. Project champion: Steuart Pennington and MCPT Team PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP Citizen Leader Lab and their education initiative Partners for Possibility is a non-governmental organization operating in 2 500 schools in all nine provinces. Their primary objective is to engage under-resourced school principals in a co-action and co-learning partnership with business leaders who offer their knowledge and skills to improve the leadership of the school. Learning circles of eight principals and eight business leaders are formed to enable this. Over the past three years Partners for Possibility has established four circles engaging with 32 schools in the KZN Midlands, with considerable support from the MCPT. The programme is a year long, with three key interventions: Time to Think (Nancy Kline), where role players engage in conversations with partners as equals; Flawless Consulting, where listening, collaborating and charting a way forward are emphasized; and Community En gagement, where reaching out to communities – and engaging and understanding them – is emphasized. In addition to this programme, the MCPT partnered with the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (FED SAS), which is firmly established as the leader in school gov ernance and management throughout South Africa. FEDSAS informs, organises, mobilises and equips its members to devel op, maintain and build on the highest education standards in our public schools. A non-profit organization, FEDSAS serves about 2 000 member schools. Although membership is open to all, current members comprise most of the top-performing and highly functional pub lic schools in the country. FEDSAS is expanding its involvement into communities where previously it had not had the opportu nity to make a difference, the Midlands being one such area. Project champion: Karen McKenzie TRANSPORT SUBSIDY Each community that the MCPT works with is different. For this reason we carefully design our interventions and involvement with our footprint schools around their particular needs. In respect of transport this is particularly true. For example, the Shea O’Connor and Esiphethwini Sendezi principals have chal lenges with uptake in the lower grades of their schools because

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