South Africa is Planning to Add Robotics & Coding to School Curriculum
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has announced that robotics and coding will be added to the South African curriculum.
According to the department’s recently released annual performance plan 2022/2023, full-scale implementation for Grades R through 3 and Grade 7 is planned for the academic year 2023. Robotics and coding will be piloted in other grades from 4 to 9, from 2022 to 2023, and will be fully implemented in these grades between 2024 and 2025.
According to the department, teaching children in lower grades robotics and coding will provide them with the digital skills needed to land jobs in this era.
Learners will be introduced to digital literacy, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things through the subjects (IoT).
According to Media24, three subjects, Kiswahili Entrepreneurship, Robotics, and Coding, were successfully trialed in 54 schools in 2021 for Grade R to 9.
“Learners should be equipped with entrepreneurial skills that encourage job creation in response to future education skills transfer.” The annual performance plan states that “the emphasis will be on improving learners’ skills in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Financial and Scientific Literacy, as well as critical thinking problem-solving; creativity; communication; and collaboration.”
“The sector will concentrate on curriculum response to skills; teacher preparation for curriculum digitisation; change in teaching and learning methodology; and integration of ICT skills in the Three Stream Model.”
According to DBE, teachers are the department’s strength, and the department must strive to equip educators with soft skills and curriculum support in order to collaborate and be inclusive with education partners and stakeholders.
“Because Coding and Robotics is a new initiative, the emphasis will be on upskilling teachers to be trained to teach this new subject in collaboration with Higher Education Institutions,” DBE explained.
