Thursday 27 February 2014

Expedition to Port Shepstone

Tuesday and the #IBMcsc South Africa education team of myself and Dan headed out for a trip south to Port Shepstone to attend a meeting of Science Subject Advisers.  These advisers focus on supporting teachers of science in grades 10-12 ( for my UK readers that is equivalent to our years 11-13).

We were picked up from the hotel at 8am and taken to the outskirts of Durban to meet one of our clients from the education department at a garage. Paused here as we waited for one of his colleagues who was to join us but was stuck in traffic so a chance for a couple of photos....all be it squinting into to sun a bit...




From here a short drive across the highway and into the car park of the Pavillion Shopping Mall to meet the now arrived colleague and all get into his car for the drive along the coast.  We passed some lovely scenery along the way with brief glimpses of beaches and a very choppy looking ocean.



Delayed for a while by a police checkpoint that was pulling what appeared to be a fairly random cross section of vehicles over to check driver's licences etc.  Large number of police vehicles parked up on the grass median of the dual carriageway and range of different police and immigration officers chatting with drivers and some passengers on some minibus taxis.  Apparently this is the sort of place that they normally set up these sort of road blocks - no where to turn off when you spot them ahead :-)  Didn't seem prudent to take any photos of the setup thought so you'll have to use your imagination.  After some checks of our driver's however licence we were on our way again.....



Once in Port Shepstone we made our way to what I think was the Suid-Natal High school to join the subject advisers.  I was puzzled that even though we were in term time the school seemed quiet but was informed that it is a boarding school and we were meeting in the boarders' dining room so the children were all down the hill in the main school building.



We had a very useful couple of hours with them where we go to talk about TeachersTryScience and also sit in on  their discussions on lesson planning support for a topic in Grade 12 Chemistry.

Then it was time to reverse the process and head up to Durban ( via a late lunch at the Galleria Mall) to be picked up and brought back to Pietermartizburg.



A really useful day continuing to gain insights into how the school education system works in South Africa - next job will be immerse ourselves in the CAPS curriculum documents.

As has become the norm a group of us headed over to the Mall for dinner in our continued quest to work our way round the various restaurant options.


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