The countdown starts: “5-4-3-2-1”, a siren wails and the netball action across 8 courts commences in unison. Fifteen minutes later the siren wails again and the action stops for half-time. The teams rotate ends and the announcer’s voice commands: “30 seconds!”  The wailing siren marks the start of the next half.  Exactly thirty minutes into the action the siren wails to end the matches on court. Players wish each other well, the winning teams celebrate, the losing teams contemplate what could have been. Five minutes later, round two matches are ready to commence. Green flags are raised to indicate the readiness of each court. Again the countdown commences, and we off!

This was the routine, like clockwork, from 08h30 yesterday morning to 16h00, when the last matches were completed. In total 19 rounds of netball took place. 236 players competed on a balmy, Winter day in Worcester. Many hundreds of spectators added to the electrifying atmosphere.

What stood out at this sporting event for me, and some of my friends who attended the day, was more than just netball-on-display. Yes, the action was great, the “ooohs-and-aarghs” when a movement failed, a pass was missed or a shot not scored was frustrating, the many parents shouting words of encouragement and giving advice to the players was cool and the referees commanding the arena of play with military precision, was smart. But more than that was on display yesterday.

What really hit home was the wonder of sport as a unifier of communities. I think the absolute power of sporting events to cross cultural, ethnic and class barriers is often underestimated. Sport levels the playing fields and focusses on the pure talent and skills of the various players, individually and within team context. Whether you are a poor kid coming from a deep rural setting or a member of a middle-income family or a rich, urbanised child, it doesn't matter on the court. All that matters is talent and skill, and the interplay between the players and to what extent they execute the coach’s game strategy. Sport allows every child an equal opportunity on the field-of-play to show their metal. And boy, was talent on display yesterday!

Even spectators, across the many divides that classify our society, tend to forget where they came from when cheering on the players. There is uniform support on display - all that mattered was that the team they supported did well!

When all these energies collude to improve our society, the earth does move! People do realise that we have more in common than not! That there is great warmth in sharing and nothing worthwhile in isolating oneself.

To the organisers of yesterday’s event, a massive thank you, not only for well-oiled logistical arrangements, but for showing all of us there that people (adults and children) matter, and that sport is one of the greatest arenas available to us to showcase this to the world!

A picture gallery of the event can be viewed here.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 600 million people in the developing world are vision impaired. Most have little or no access to eye care or eyeglasses.  As a result, work productivity, quality of life, health, education and safety impacts are enormous.
                                                                            
The WHO highlights the following facts:

1. The global economic cost of lost work productivity due to people with poor vision has been estimated at 700 billion dollars a year.
2. Refractive error, which eyeglasses correct, is the number one cause of vision impairment in the world.
3. It is also the second greatest cause of preventable blindness.
4. 6 out of 10 people in the developed world wear glasses, contact lenses, or have had corrective eye surgery.
5. 6 out of 10 people in the developing world are also vision impaired, but have little or no access to eye care or eyeglasses.
6. In North America, the ratio of optometrists to people is approximately 1: 6k.
7. In sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio of optometrists to people is approximately 1: 8 million.
8. In Malawi, Africa, one of the poorest countries on earth, the ratio of ophthalmologists (surgeons able to perform cataract surgery) to people is 4: 15 million.

 
Depending on their degree of vision impairment, daily tasks are more difficult, accidents more frequent, even life expectancies are shorter.  Holding a job, finding enough food, learning how to read, and looking after a family may be impossibilities. Good eyesight is essential since it affects every aspect of our lives when awake. Hundreds of millions of people in the developing world who need glasses don’t have them. Poor eyesight for them can mean the difference between working and not working, gathering enough food or going hungry, being able to read or remaining illiterate.
 
Healthcare measurements adopted by the WHO show that, unless the problem of uncorrected refractive error in the developing world is addressed, by 2030 refractive error is set to surpass HIV/AIDS as one of the top ten health issues affecting opportunities and work productivity.
 
In case you don't know, you may need glasses because of one or more of these benign eye conditions:

1. myopia (nearsightedness) - when you have difficulty seeing things in the distance
2. hyperopia (long sightedness) - when you have difficulty focussing on close objects for long periods
3. presbyopia - when you can't focus on close objects any more due to aging and glasses to help you read and the need to squint at everything to make it clearer is called astigmatism.

I'm often confronted in my visits to schools with the notions that learners don't grasp the curriculum content or require extra time to master various aspects of the curriculum or are incapable of attaining good marks. I'm often left wondering if educators are paying sufficient attention to how learners are engaging the curriculum during lessons, whether the methodology being used appeals to the individual learning style of learners or if simply, they've noticed the squinting in a learner, the incorrect recording of information from blackboards and that just possibly, the problem is learners can't see properly.

Information sourced from:
www.globaleyesightnow.org
www.optometrist-advice.com

Pay careful attention to the-above picture. Look again. Do look one more time. What do you see?

I hope you first noticed what most people would comment on, i.e. they are an all-smiling group of youngsters, that they are full of enthusiasm and unbridled energy. Do you feel their warmth? Do you notice their confidence? Do you notice their unblemished skin tone? Do you notice their healthy teeth and infectious smiles? Do you notice their poses? Each of them struck a different one, just too happy to be in-the-shot!

Or did everything in the preceding paragraph come as a second thought. What was your first? Did you see African children? Did you see poor children? Did you think they are unruly? Uncultured? In need of discipline? Did you think they suffer malnutrition? That they needed de-worming? That they probably live in an informal settlement? That their school uniform is not consistent? That they don't stand a chance-in-life? That they will probably become gangsters, dropouts, sexual offenders, wife beaters, thieves or murderers or victims of social injustice?

I wish I could properly capture their adventurous spirit, their passion for life, their innocence, their fearlessness. I spent five minutes with them today, and left enthused by them. They were so spontaneous...they were everything I would want to see in children...you see, they are children.

You may be wondering why I am placing so much emphasis on the picture and on the initial impulse it triggered in your brain and the subsequent image and impression it left with you. It is very simple actually. Everyday, in classrooms across the expanse of our country, we are confronted with the boundless possibility in the faces in this picture and which enters our learning spaces. They are literally a blank canvas, alive and open to manipulation, to be stretched and moulded. But an adult stands between them and the gateway to realising their full potential - YOU.

And what you decide at that very moment they confront your presence determines to what extent they will flourish and ignite or start to slowly die cognitively and otherwise. As an educator you have such power each day. You literally hold sway over the future of our country and it's future citizens.

And our children don't ask for much. They simply want you to believe in them, then nurture and encourage them, make them feel safe when vulnerable and like superman when they want to take-on-the-world, guide them but give them sufficient space to explore, and recognise that every dream expressed is possible, and then showing them how to identify and embrace the tools they need to realise the same. And not to punish them for being different, for having an appetite for learning some days but also not on other days, and lifting them when they feel overwhelmed.

It is as simple as that. In exchange, you will get to enter their worlds, share their dreams, heartaches and growth, and live a life fulfilled as they fulfil theirs... Isn't it exciting to be in teaching?

A newly released report by UNESCO highlights that every day $1.3 billion is spent on equipping armies across the globe. The organisation has also determined that aid spending on education in support of poor countries has dropped by the same figure over the last four years. It is a worrying statistic, one that virtually flies in-the-face of the old adage "the pen is mightier than the sword". The report further makes the assertion that "the cuts are biting hardest in those countries furthest from reaching the education goals. In sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to over half the world’s out-of-school children, aid to basic education fell between 2010 and 2011, and stagnated between 2011 and 2012. Since 2010, 12 African countries have seen cuts in their aid to basic education of US$10 million or more. The two countries with the largest cuts in aid to basic education from 2010 to 2012 were India and Pakistan, even though both sit among the top five countries in the world with the most children out of school. Aid to basic education for low-income countries recovered slightly in 2012 compared to the decreases felt in 2011, but levels are still lower than they were in 2010. Twenty-two low-income countries received less aid for basic education than two years before".

Today, the various international news channels highlighted the steady retreat of Iraqi armed forces from various cities in the face of an insurgency by radical tribal-based militias. Some of the analysis invariably focussed on the cost of equipping and training the Iraqi army and how they simply abandoned their posts and equipment, in spite of the billions spent on training them and providing them with the tools to wage war. One military commentator lamented the fact that the army recruits are illiterate for the most part! What irony...placing sophisticated military hardware in the hands of illiterate soldiers and expecting them to defend themselves and innocents with any sense of purpose or plan. And even if they were handed a plan, what value would it have in the hands of soldiers who cannot read?

If we look at the root causes of the issues of gang rape in India, honor killings in Pakistan and the ongoing killings in the CAR and Mali, I'm sure the underlining reasons will also focus on the lack of basic education in many of the perpetrators. If we bring the issues of education lack to our backyards, I'm convinced many of the psycho-social challenges "lie-their-heads" on the pillows of illiteracy too.

We spend a lot of taxpayers' money on education. It is a sector that must succeed, because the cost of civil unrest, murder and mayhem, is too great a price to pay should we fail in our mandate to appropriately skill our future generation of adults!

In the Western Cape, +-34k educators serve in our public schools. They consume, in salaries, around 80% of the education budget each year. Educators are undoubtedly our primary resource in the classrooms of 1500 schools in the province. It therefore goes without saying, that when our Directorate of People Management and Practices visit, they generate enormous interest amongst school managers, who have to deal with the effects of employees' service and working conditions at school level. A week ago we received such a visit at our district offices. The picture above shows you a portion of the audience-in-attendance.

The agenda is jam-packed, dealing with various aspects of recruitment practices, such as People Planning, Excess Management, Performance Management  and Health and Productivity Management. We then moved on to Competency-based Recruitment and Selection, with a focus on placing good advertisements, effective shortlisting and interviewing processes and the nomination process at the tail-end. With vibrant Q@As after each input, we proceeded to unpack Service Benefits such as PILIR, Leave, Appointments,  Pensions and Resignation. The afternoon's information session was rounded off by Employee Relations, which unpacked Grievances, Disputes, Fixed Term Contracts, Misconduct, Abscondment, Legal Matters  and Training.

It was clear from the energy in the room that the various aspects presented throughout the afternoon resonated with everyone present. And that's how it should be. The entire emphasis of the inputs were pegged on the need to manage our staff effectively as managers. Again, rightly so, since the sophistication of our organisation's systems do not guarantee that we will be an effective organisation. Behind the many technology interfaces we have and administrative processes that drive our daily work, sit people. And people matter. They are not one, two or three dimensional objects. They are our primary resource; the drivers of each interface we generate. They are complex on both the cognitive, physiological and social level. We need to recognise this before we recognise them via staff numbers or badges. When we do, coupled with the necessary support, development and up-skilling, we start building effective organisations. When we don't, we sit with mediocrity. And our children don't deserve mediocre service.

In an article for the “Armed Forces Comptroller”, Dr John Kline highlighted the following seven ways to Effectively Manage People and Processes:

1. Demonstrate a Desire to Serve: people accomplish more with managers who demonstrate a desire to serve.
2. Eliminate Process Interference Factors: A process interference factor is anything that stands in the way of performing the process or completing the task. Process performance problems are often “rooted in management’s failure to provide the complete spectrum of resources—namely, time, tools, guidance, policies, and facilities.” When a manager discovers a process interference problem, his or her first action should be to supply required resources.
3. Continually Improve the Process: Successful managers not only eliminate process interference factors, they search for better ways of doing things. They are not content to simply fight fires and manage crises; they improve the process by implementing productive change.
4. Know Your People: Successful managers know about the people who work for them. They learn by walking around the workplace, interacting with people, and listening to what others say about them.
5. Communicate Effectively: Successful managers place the highest value on effective communication because they know productivity depends upon it.
6. Listen to Understand: Effective managers listen both to find out what is going on and to understand and show positive regard for those around them.
7. Be an Encourager: Competent managers realize the importance of encouragement. People flourish and processes are performed better when managers encourage their subordinates.                                              
   As managers, let us continuously strive to display the above-mentioned behaviours as we serve our one million children sitting in public schools that depend on all of us to prepare them well for adulthood.