The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) is implementing a wide range of measures to build the capacity of our schools to meet the needs of the national curriculum in Arts and Culture.

In response to a query from West Coast News, Gill Cowan, Senior Curriculum Planner for Visual Art and Design, said measures to support Arts and Culture focus schools in the Western Cape included the following:

• Inservice training for to ensure that all teachers are familiar with the content requirements of the new national curriculum, new methodology and assessment.

• Mid year orientation workshops for all Arts and Culture teachers to support implementation of the curriculum for General Education and Training (GET), which covers Grades R to 9.

• Mid year orientation workshops for all Visual Arts and Design teachers, and Music, Dance and Drama teachers to support implementation of the national curriculum for Further Education and Training (FET) in Grades 10 and 11.

• The WCED has outsourced residential, in-service workshops for Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts for GET teachers.

• The WCED has developed partnerships with a range of institutions, non-governmental organisations and businesses to support for Arts and Culture teaching. The organisations include Iziko Museums, Woolworths and Arts NGOs, among others.

• The WCED has developed learning and teaching support materials for Arts and Culture subjects.

• The WCED’s Cape Teaching Institute is providing residential, inservice workshops, in collaboration with service providers.

• Specialists at the WCED’s Education Management and Development Centres (EMDCs) in each district are organising cluster support workshops for General and Further Education and Training.

Schools and teachers have shown tremendous commitment to developing their skills in Arts and Culture.

They have demonstrated their enthusiasm at our inservice workshops and training programmes, despite the fact that we have to organise them during holidays and over weekends.

WCED celebrated the new school year with a week-long provincial Arts and Culture residential course for Grades 8 and 9. More than 100 teachers attended the course from across the Western Cape and further afield.

Given the commitment of our teachers, schools and the department, we are confident that we will continuously develop our capacity to deliver the curriculum in Arts and Culture.