Mutual & Federal and Winning Teams help pave the way to success for Limpopo’s matrics
28 November 2013 | Company News & Results | Old Mutual Insure (was Mutual & Federal) | Mutual & Federal
In South Africa, the National Senior Certificate exams - commonly known as “matric” - have become an annual event of major public significance. According to the Department of Basic Education, the matric exams “not only signify the culmination of twelve years of formal schooling, but represent one of the key barometers to indicate the state of health of the education system”.
As one of nine provinces expected to contribute to a higher or improved national matric pass rate, the Limpopo Province has set a high benchmark for the number of learners expected to pass matric this year – the Province’s education authorities are targeting a 75% pass rate for the matric class of 2013, an improvement on last year’s score of 66.9%.
Success in this regard will depend on many factors and relies on the contribution of various stakeholders. Over the past few years, Mutual & Federal, through its support of the Winning Teams programme within the Capricorn district of Limpopo, has been helping Grade 12 learners from disadvantaged backgrounds prepare for Maths and Physical Science in Grade 12 through an ongoing revision programme in those subjects. The examination preparation programme, which is run throughout the year and which is supported by Mutual & Federal through their Corporate Social Investment strategy, was extended to cater for learners who failed their Grade 12 exams in 2012 and who wrote supplementary exams in 2013. Due to the encouraging results from this intervention, the programme was further extended to include a winter revision programme.
Denzil Hollis, founder of Winning Teams, explains that the extra time devoted to Winning Teams is bearing fruit. "Previously, insufficient time was being devoted to the Winning Teams initiative - teachers were using holidays to catch up on their teaching of the current year curriculum, and the Winning Teams model focuses on catch up on the backlog from prior years,” Hollis says. He explains that a different tack was tried in 2013:
"Winning Teams took all willing learners who had failed Maths and Physical Science in the Capricorn district of Limpopo and prepared them for the supplementary exam. The model really started working when learners spent two weeks preparing intensively with Winning Teams.”
Of the total number of learners who enrolled in Winning Teams to prepare for their 2012 matric supplementary exams earlier this year, 50% of them passed in Physical Sciences - up from 9% when compared to the total number of learners who passed the matric supplementary exam in 2012 before Winning Teams was introduced. "In one particular school circuit, where not a single learner had ever passed the supplementary Maths exam, they achieved a 50% success rate,” says Hollis.
Hollis, who has 21 years’ experience in Winning Teams training at corporate level, developed the winning formula for the school environment after being approached by Tom Boardman, then chairman of the Banking Council to assist with financial literacy. Now with a broader focus within the school environment – specifically on Maths and Science, Hollis says the secret to success lies in inculcating a culture of learning – especially "learning to learn for oneself”.
The process uses team work and peer teaching. The structured learning and reinforcement process used in the Winning Teams Examination preparation programme is very different from the usual teaching model. It provides the element of engagement missing in the classroom. "Questions are posed, debate occurs and they have fun. The learners mark each other’s homework, and with the materials we provide, they teach each other within the implementation steps of the programme.”
"The game involves four teams and questions are posed by the referee from a pack of cards which all teams discuss. It is a model which takes both the discipline and the excitement of sports and applies it to learning. It’s about competition and recognition in a non-threatening environment. It instils teamwork among learners, in which they are happy to share knowledge. Even wrong answers are part of the learning process as it teaches them how to do it right,” Hollis says.
The Winning Teams model achieves this outcome by supporting the teacher with an engagement tool that helps individuals to help each other – in their own time and sometimes in class time. "Pupils who have sometimes done as little as 20% of the Maths and Physical Sciences curriculum during grades 10 and 11 are now catching up in their own time through a team activity akin to Trivial Pursuit. The initiative is mostly run outside of school hours and is made fun by competing in teams in a game,” Hollis explains. According to Hollis, to be truly successful, the Winning Teams initiative requires an investment in terms of time and this motivated the programme coordinators to look beyond the customary school term programme to include holiday revision programmes.
The success of the model has not gone unnoticed and the Limpopo Department of Education has now dedicated all holiday camps to Winning Teams revision. A further refinement in the near future is that each learner will receive an App on their mobile phone which means they have the materials at hand and can replay them as many times as they want during the year, which in turn enables them to tutor each other.
Laurien Comyn, Head of Business Responsibility at Mutual & Federal, says that the Winning Teams programme fits with the company’s philosophy of turning setbacks into comebacks for customers, its people and communities. "Mutual & Federal is proud to be associated with this initiative, as it is making a real difference where it is most needed,” Comyn concluded.
