It started in Ulundi and continued to happen in Newcastle in Kwa-Zulu Natal: department officials from different education directorates met to change the face of continuing professional development for the better. The Director -Teacher Development, Mr. S. Manganye, made it clear that history is being made. Programme writing has been a serious challenge for KZN province for quite some time: a lot of professional development training for teachers was happening across the province, however most of the programmes were not officially endorsed by SACE, so teachers could not claim professional development points (for external training).
Mr. S. Manganye, Director Teacher Development, chaired the first programme writing workshop in October 2016 in Ulundi. The process was facilitated by Mr. Theo Toolo from South African Council of Educators (SACE) and Mrs. Nkele Yvonne Lechaba from VVOB. The session involved both practical session and a presentation on the SACE rubric, provider guidelines and how programmes are assed to qualify for professional development points. The session allowed officials an opportunity to use Departmental policies like, Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS), White paper 6 and SIAS to write teacher development programs stressing differentiation to enable teachers to cater for all learners.
Departmental officials were assisted to prepare teacher development programs aligned to SACE standards. Issues relating to gender equality in teacher development material were addressed with rigour and the Province acknowledged the need to intensify the process of ensuring that all teacher development materials are gender sensitive. SACE brought evaluators on board to allow evaluation to happen in-house. By the end of day 5, 37 officials submitted 42 programmes that were evaluated and sent to SACE head office in Pretoria to be endorsed. By the end of 2016 KZN had 42 evaluated and endorsed teacher development programmes.
From zero to forty-two gave the Province a motivation to work even harder, at the dawn of 2017 the province engaged again in the second session of programme writing which involved 37 officials form different directorates. Officials were committed to the process to the extent that they had to be reminded to go out and have lunch and they continued working until 11:00 pm. The process ended up with 37 programmes evaluated on site and sent to SACE head office in Pretoria to be endorsed.
Today KZN province is having 79 endorsed teacher development programmes that were written by departmental officials and the province is planning to continue its efforts to write more programmes in 2017.
