A Grade 12 learner from Lehawu Secondary School, outside Mbombela in Mpumalanga, is back home after representing South Africa at the Science Forum in London three weeks ago.
Precious Kaunda says she learnt a lot about life science. She represented the country with three learners from other provinces.
Kaunda says in London she learned about how people could minimise chances of contracting malaria and HIV.
The forum is a science and technology programme aimed at exposing learners such as Kaunda to innovation. Kaunda says she took part in career guidance activities such as how best countries can deal with malaria and HIV.
She says she will share her knowledge with fellow learners.
“I learned how it is transmitted and how it accumulates in your body and if not detected in early stage you can like suffer severely, the causes of Malaria are parasite then these blood life circle. Maybe a person can take medication and accordingly not over-dose take his medicine at the right time constantly that can like decrease the copies and if the copies can be like minimise to maybe less than 20 copies that person can no longer infect the virus if they get involved in sexual intercourse.”
Kaunda’s science teacher Ofentse Maudi has described the learner’s trip as successful. Maudi says the learner has put their school on the map. He says they encourage other learners to do the same.
“They were able to join the crew from other nations and they participated in many science activities where they were also addressed by some of the science people from institutions of higher learning and co-operate, therefore they learnt a lot in that regard in terms of science and they were able also showcase cultural activities, South African cultural activities.”
Meanwhile, the Mpumalanga Education Department says it is satisfied with Kaunda’s performance at the forum Spokesperson Gerald Sambo explains:
“We need such learners who would take their studies seriously and who are able to participate in various innovative programmes that would help the country you know to have innovative ways to deal with many issues like what she had already explained during her visit in London, so is crucial and we want to encourage other learners follow into foot steps to try and make sure that they take their studies seriously and participate in programmes that would help them enhance their learning skills into the classrooms so that they become better citizen.”
The department says the participation of learners in activities such as the forum will help create a desire among them to study maths and science. It has chosen over 100 schools in the province which have made maths and science compulsory subjects.
