Pretoria - The Free State Department of Education has urged parents, educators and learners to participate in the upcoming provincial School Governing Body (SGB) elections set to take place in March.
According to the provincial department's spokesperson, Howard Ndaba, the provincial elections will be held at 1 458 schools - with not less than 66 000 parents participating - between 1 and 31 March 2012.
"By voting, electorates will be able to give a specific direction of how they want to govern their schools to improve teacher and learner discipline and obtain better results at the end of the year," Ndaba said, adding that successful elections would be a catalyst to obtain the department's target of 80 percent matric pass rate and beyond.
He urged voters to vote for valuable people with relevant experience in different spheres. They should also be able to take decisions that will be in the best interest of the schools and better the education of the country.
The nationally, over 24 000 public schools will be electing new representatives of the SGBs during March.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said recently that the new SGBs would have to pay more attention to improving the quality of learning and teaching, have an interest in the results of tests like the Annual National Assessments (ANA) and the interventions to improve the schools' pass rate.
"We need SGBs that will support curriculum delivery, focus on the improvement of learner achievement by supporting schools in developing strategies for improving teaching and learning.
"What we also need now is for parents, through SGBs, to understand how and why their children perform at a particular level both in the Grade 12 NSC exams and the ANA," Motshekga said.
People who may serve on SGBs include parents, educators, non-teaching staff, learners at Grade 8 and higher and community members. The term of office is one year for learners and no more than three years for all other members. In addition, school principals are automatic members of SGBs.
