In response to the call made by the Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga for comments to amend the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) to make provision for coding and robotics at South African schools last year.
Recently, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) said that it will include robotics and coding in the national curriculum. According to the department’s annual performance plan for the academic years 2022/2023, which was issued recently, the full-scale implementation for grades R through 3, as well as Grade 7, is scheduled for the academic year 2023. The two topics of robotics and coding will be piloted in additional grades from 4 to 9 from 2022 to 2023, and their full implementation in these grades will take place between 2024 and 2025.
According to Media24, In 2021, the three new subjects namely Kiswahili; Entrepreneurship, Robotics, and Coding were successfully trialed in 54 schools for Grade R to 9.
What To Know About Robotic and Coding in Schools
Coding and robotics courses are designed to help students become better problem solvers, critical thinkers, collaborative and creative workers, and successful citizens in today’s digital and information-driven society.
Furthermore, learners will be able to apply digital and ICT skills and transfer these skills to solve everyday problems and their possibilities.
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“Learners should be equipped with entrepreneurial skills that encourage job creation responding to education skills transfer for the future. The emphasis will be on improving learners’ skills in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Financial and Scientific Literacy, along with critical thinking problem-solving; creativity; communication; and collaboration,” the annual performance plan reads.
“The sector will be focussing on a curriculum response to skills; the preparation of teachers for curriculum digitization; teaching and learning methodology change and the integration of ICT skills in the Three Stream Model.”
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DBE Response
The department affirms that teaching children in lower grades robotics and coding will equip them with digital skills which are required to land them jobs in this era. The subjects will expose learners to digital literacy, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
More so, DBE added As Robotics and Coding is a new initiative, the focus will be on the upskilling of teachers to be trained to teach this new subject in collaboration with Higher Education Institutions.