Our EduRise programme will soon be celebrating the culmination of a fulfilling journey with schools in Tongaat and Verulam. Since 2019, EduRise has been empowering schools to deliver quality education, with interventions focused on school management and governance, mathematics, natural sciences, English, creative arts, physical education and environmental awareness.
All components, with the exception of creative arts, were completed in 2022 at these schools. Implemented by Creative Madness, the creative arts programme continued to delight educators and learners in 2023.
“We consider the impact of teaching visual arts in class to be one of the highlights of this programme,” said EduRise programme manager Pain Mashingaidze.
“When the Creative Arts programme started, few educators knew how to draw. They depended mostly on giving learners copies of drawings and learners had to just add details into the drawing. By the end of the first year, we could already see a marked difference in their creative abilities. We can now say that all the educators are doing extremely well in visual arts. It’s no longer an issue for them to teach drawings step-by-step in class,” said Pain.
Educators quickly gained more competence in:
- Identifying and teaching different art elements.
- Creating their own posters in class.
- Integrating English, in the form of describing their drawings and labelling drawings (eg body parts and their function).
- Integrating maths, in the form of identifying the different shapes contained within each artwork; as well as folding paper into equal parts and identifying the line of symmetry in drawings. This also improved learners’ ability to focus and follow instructions, making lessons even more engaging.
“Educators are now able to produce interesting ideas which align with the curriculum. Another great result is that they now use more recycled materials to create original artworks which opens a door for new interesting ideas,” said Pain.
With the Creative Arts component completed, these schools will now enter the sustainability phase, where they continue to implement their EduRise learnings without our active involvement.
We thank our partners and schools in Tongaat and Verulam for embracing this learning journey with us. We look forward to seeing how their creativity unlocks learning in years to come!
