By Amy Musgrave
The KwaZulu-Natal education department is focusing on reviving its programme for school sports, which it says is especially important because not every learner is academically inclined.
“As part of our programme to see the revival of in-school sports, we have recently introduced Siyadlala Thursdays to encourage schools to dedicate time to sports every Thursday. This programme is gaining traction throughout the province,” said education MEC Sipho Hlomuka.
“We urge district, circuit and school leadership to ensure that every school in our close to 6000 schools participates in school sports.”
He was speaking at the MTN 8 activation programme for the MTN 8 final taking place at Moses Mabhida Stadium in eThekwini.
The programme forms part of the province’s efforts to promote school sports.
Four schools in the Pinetown district are benefiting from the MTN school sponsorship of R10,000, soccer kits and soccer clinics headed up by soccer legends.
“As the department… we would like to express our gratitude to MTN for identifying some of our schools to benefit from their CSI programme. Our schools are going to benefit enormously from this sponsorship, and we are very excited that our soccer legends are going to give soccer clinics to our learners,” he said.
The department understood that additional resources were needed to help revive sport at schools, and this was why it was mobilising big business to come on board, the MEC said.
.Also, the department was keen on introducing sporting codes that were unpopular among the majority of its learners as “this is important because we know that gifts and talents know no race and knows no gender”, Hlomuka said.
“Other than that, we need to be very creative to see our way through. We cannot let financial challenges deter us in our resolve.
“We do this because we understand acutely that not all our learners will make it in life through academic means; that some will thrive only if they are given an opportunity to display their God-given talent,” he said.
The MEC told everyone attending the event that “a healthy mind goes with a healthy body [and this] must be our collective anchor”.
INSIDE EDUCATION
