Pretoria - Principals, their deputies and some heads of departments from girls’ schools across the country are focusing on collaborating and discussing strategies to advance girls’ education in South Africa.
The South African Girls’ Schools Association and delegates gathered at the Pretoria High School for Girls and the Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool Pretoria for a three-day conference, titled “Unlock to Unlimit Girls”, where they are also tackling the everyday challenges facing the girls.
The conference was sponsored, among others, by mostly the Gautrain, and Standard Bank. It ends today.
Phillipa Erasmus, the president of the association and principal of Pretoria High School for Girls, and Marna Jordaan principal of Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool Pretoria, said teachers were confronted with unprecedented obstacles that seemed to lock away the potential to fully empower and educate pupils.
Speaking to Pretoria News at the venue yesterday, Erasmus said: “The theme ‘Unlock to Unlimit Girls’ is about unlocking what was restricted in the last couple of years because of the pandemic, and the unlocking of people’s thinking to be able to create thinking environments for girl schools.
“This is about bringing in heads together for collaboration and to share this practice and take it back to our schools to further the future of our country, particularly female leaders of our country.”
Jordaan agreed saying that some of the challenges girl pupils were facing were bullying on social media and mental illnesses.
“We have had to have a renewed focus on stress and wellness, emotions and support, and teach resilience. What contributes to that is that we have a lot of broken families because of the pandemic and after the pandemic. Many children are losing parents, siblings, etc. We need to get these girls to still have hope, belief and a future,” she said.
Jordaan said that because of conferences like this one, exam results coming out every January were positive for girl schools.
“In all records published at the beginning of the year; in every top 10 of the country you will find about seven girl schools.
“Girls schools excel academically for different reasons; like belonging to an organisation like this because we share common goals and things that we want to achieve. We are trying to open up girls’ minds through our schools and to guide them into becoming citizens that can appropriately contribute to the economy of our country,” she said.
Some of the guest speakers included Bronwyn Williams, futurist, economist, and business trends analyst, who discussed unlocking the mind to unleash unlimited future potential; Desmond Zeelie, executive head of Glenwood House School, who explored unlocking the potential for unlimited leadership, and Professor Benjamin Rosman, from Wits University, who shed light on unlocking artificial intelligence to expand our digital capacity.
Pretoria News