Eastern Cape's education system starts to Growsmart

Growsmart - Nontuthuzelo Primary School

Growsmart is a fun, competitive and exciting resource that is curriculum-based and helps educators and learners to master their required syllabus work.

The programme will be offered in 30 schools in East London and the same number of schools in Port Elizabeth for the first time in 2018.

These schools are chosen by the Department of Education because they show poor literacy performance. Growsmart targets learning grades four, five and six, which is where the department has identified its potential to have the biggest possible impacts.

The Eastern Cape is the second South African province in which Growsmart is working to have meaningful, positive impacts on primary school performance.

The initiative started nine-years ago in the Western Cape, where it has established a strong, successful track record. Here, it has helped thousands of children and teachers, grown into 160 schools, and expanded to include literacy, story writing, mathematics, science and debating. As a measure of its success, its story writing initiative has already produced 80 published authors under the age of 13 whose books are now being used in the school system.

For its inaugural project in Eastern Cape schools, Growthpoint will focus on boosting the literacy performance of primary school children with a specially developed spelling competition. Growsmart provides all materials and resources needed to excel in the competition, which is based on the schools’ curriculum.

Jewel Harris heads the Growsmart initiative for Growthpoint and explains: “This collaborative approach to boost education with the Eastern Cape Department of Education creates a meaningful and effective way to make a real, positive contribution to education in South Africa. We are extremely excited to bring this high-energy, high-impact programme to the Eastern Cape.”

Now in 210 schools across two provinces, Growsmart is a leading example of the impacts and importance of ongoing effective public-private partnerships. It is designed to be transformative for educators and children, but also for their families, communities and South Africa as a whole.

For more information, visit www.growsmart.org.za, or follow Growsmart on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.