In spite of the significant impact of Covid-19 on education in South Africa in 2020, Anglo American’s education programme continues to make an impact on the learning outcomes of nearly 70 000 learners in schools around its mining operations in South Africa.
The Anglo American Education Programme celebrated its third anniversary this month, after being launched in April 2018 by the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, and then Anglo American Deputy Chairman, Norman Mbazima. Education is important to Anglo American because it is imperative for the success of South Africa, in addition to being important for our host communities. With the impact of Covid-19 on education, it becomes even more important for Anglo American to work with the schools in our host communities and ensure they do not get left behind.
Anglo American’s Global Lead for education programmes, Zaheera Soomar, said more learners from the schools we support, wrote matric in 2020 compared to 2019, with a larger cohort of girls both writing, and passing, matric. Where the national results saw a 4% drop in pass rate as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the schools in the Anglo American programme only dropped by 3%, which is a significant achievement given that they are among the bottom quintile of schools in the country.
“2020 was a key implementation year for the programme with most of our interventions in place and high levels of support and activity planned for our educators and learners, but Covid-19 really threw a spanner in the works. We had to reassess a lot of our support, which allowed us to innovate to do things differently. As a result, the programme still made an impact as we were able to support all our students, especially our matric students throughout the pandemic, and that support was reflected in the results,” said Ms Soomar.
The programme’s goal is to improve reading, writing and numeracy levels by addressing some of the underlying reasons for poor education outcomes – which include supporting school management teams, governing bodies, principals, and more than 2 300 teaching staff – in 109 schools in their host communities.
The programme builds on Anglo American’s substantial investment in education and skills development in South Africa over many years, which has seen the company invest 100 million per annum over the past five years, largely focused on learner support, infrastructure and educator development, and.
“While South Africa has made great strides since 1994, we need civil society and business more than ever, to contribute to the next phase of building a quality education system. In line with our Purpose of Re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives, we remain fully committed to giving our children the highest quality education they can get and afford them an opportunity to break the generational triple challenges of inequality, poverty and unemployment. To that end, we are currently planning to extend the programme into a second phase,” said Ms Soomar.
This second phase, which will be announced later in 2021, will bring a similar number of schools into the programme. Through a continued partnership with the Department of Basic Education, the Department of Social Development, our key NGO partners and a range of private sector partners – Anglo American looks forward to building more relationships and garnering more support from other interested stakeholders as the programme extends in its current form.
Soomar said the programme remained committed to achieving its ambitious learner-focused targets, which include:
- 90% of learners aged five meeting the minimum requirements for school readiness
- 90% of grade 3 learners passing with at least 50% in Numeracy and Literacy
- 75% of grade 6 learners passing with at least 50% in Mathematics and English First Additional Language
- 90% matriculation pass rate, with a 50% university entrance
- 65% of grade 12 learners passing with at least 50% in Mathematics
The programme is one of the initiatives under Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan. One of the pillars of the strategy is to create thriving communities in and around its operations, with education as a key building block.
