Students preparing for the upcoming preliminary examinations for Grade 12 will have an opportunity to access free online matric revision lessons on The Voice of the Cape’s Facebook and YouTube platforms. The annual matric revision program gives learners access to expert teachers and comprehensive revision material at no cost.
The objective of the program is aimed at empowering students with essential knowledge and skills needed to tackle the final National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination. It is also open to students across the country including learners from disadvantage communities who often lack access to specialised teachers.
“It is an exciting time but also very stressful for matric students and their parents, the Voice of the Cape is always looking at ways to empower our community. So, we have taken advantage of our online platforms to bring the revision sessions to the people and understand the impact of the digital space. We are basically connecting students to experienced educators specialising in subjects like physics, maths and many other subjects’’ beamed excited VOC Producer Quanita Kamaar.
The online revision program has been running for four years and is an annual community project on the radio stations project calendar.
“The educators who are on board have been amazing, volunteering time out of their busy schedule to give back to the community,” said Kamaar.
According to a Research ICT Africa report on the After Access 2022: Internet usage trends, a total of 40% of South Africa men had access to the internet and only 28% of females made use of the internet in 2012.
“Looking back to when we were in grade 12 in the early 2000’s as an example, it was not easy to access the internet, computers were expensive to buy and the smartphones were relatively rare,” said Kamaar.
A 2022 report by the Research on Socio-Economic Policy on Teacher production, class size & learner population growth warned that more teachers would need to be employed by 2030 to prevent overcrowding of Grade 12 classrooms if the historic trend of 1.4% of grade 12 enrolments recorded between 2012 and 2020 were to continue.
“If you look at the state of education in our country especially in public schools, overcrowded classrooms hamper the ability of teachers to adequately support learners who are struggling. The online session is less distracting and gives the learner the ability to focus and pay attention to the lesson. Learners will not be intimidated or feel shy to ask questions,” highlighted Kamaar.
Learners accessing the online platform will have access to educators offering English and Arabic revision lessons facilitated by Muslima Ismail currently completing Classical Arabic at Markaz fajr for non-Arabic speakers in Cairo, Egypt.
Ismail is, a former VOC presenter and producer and completed her BA in Arabic & Islamic Studies at the Madina Institute
Mathematics and Physical Science will be facilitated by the tutors at Supreme Scholar including Imam Natheer Hendricks with a Math and Computer Science degree and has more than 10 years’ experience teaching and tutoring both locally and internationally, Zainab Afrika a 3rd-year Chemical Science student at the UWC and Ameer Rhoda a 3rd year Engineering student at CPUT.
Fatima Adamson, a teacher at Futures Academy SA’s Online High School will conduct lessons on Religion Studies. Adamson has five years teaching experience working with Grade 10 to 12 students and is a marker of the National Senior Certificate and Senior Certificate papers.
Students are encouraged to join the session and may access the recordings at a later stage on the Facebook and Youtube platforms of VOC.
“If you were to pay for private tutoring you can expect to pay anything in the bracket of R100 to R150 per hour and you will not have to pay a cent for the lessons. All you need is a PC or Smartphone and internet connection,” explained Kamaar.
Some of the sessions will be conducted live and recorded and the comments will be monitored by Education Indaba host Ameer Adams.
“We want to make the session engaging and invite learners to interact and ask questions, if your question is not addressed in a particular lesson, the facilitator will carry it over,” added Kamaar.
If you are an educator and would like to participate in the program, please contact The Voice of the Cape reception on 021 442 3500 or email quanita@vocfm.co.za.
VOC
Photo: VOC
