What is Curriculum?

 What is Curriculum?

The concept of cottage schools has emerged in many countries, including South Africa. For the purpose of this journal entry we will briefly discuss some issues we face with regards to curriculums at the cottage schools. Cottage schools aim to serve the community by offering a syllabus that is available online and offline and is more flexible to the students’ needs.

Our country has many students who do not fit the frame of main stream schooling in South Africa. With this need, community colleges (also known as cottage schools) were established. The community centres are run/led by members (mostly teachers or tutors) of the community. One issue we faced was that the syllabus offered in mainstream schooling did not suffice the needs of our students. Through partaking in exhibitions and building relations/partnerships, many of these community colleges joined and decided to offer the GED syllabus as an alternative to the South African curriculum.

The GED syllabus is affordable and flexible and have assisted many students to complete their high schooling in South Africa. However, recently the government put measures in place to prevent these GED students from applying to study for a degree at a government university, giving preference to students who completed the South African syllabus. A possible reason for this may be that the government would like to promote their own schooling syllabus.

This is very frustrating and this affects our current and future GED student’s morale and parents in a adverse way. Currently, we are in progress of obtaining confirmation from private institutes /universities within and across board that will accept our GED students for degrees and that is recognizable with the South Africa International Qualification Board.