Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi has expressed satisfaction with progress made in implementing the school twinning programme.
He was speaking after Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga released the 2018 matric results in Midrand, Johannesburg on Thursday.
Gauteng has shown the highest pass rate this year. It is followed by the Western Cape and the Free State in second and third places respectively.
KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo are the bottom three. The programme which was introduced in 2014, has seen schools from townships being paired with those in well-resourced suburban areas. However, not all parties have welcomed the programme.
But Lesufi says it has started to yield positive results, “It’s encouraging I must be honest but it’s a beginning. Our education is way, way behind, we have to push it and it’s an uphill task. It’s just that South Africans have not accepted that where we are, we’re not supposed to be there. We started at a very low pace. It’s only after 1994 that we had to do so many things within a short space of time, to pass legislation. We had to introduce a new curriculum, build new schools, allocate infrastructure, so it’s only now that we are dealing with the task of education.”
