African press review 7 January 2015

Why are fewer SA school-leavers passing their exams? Why is little learning going on in Kenyan schools? Should Mugabe be on holiday while floods make hundreds homeless? And did the Ebola epidemic come from bats in Guinea?

South Africa is trying to understand what's wrong with its education system, BusinessDay reports.

Last Monday the education ministry announced that the pass rate for the "matric" school-leaving exams was down to 75.8 per cent for this year from 78.2 per cent in 2013.

According to the newspaper the pass rate was down in almost every province.

Of course South African political parties were quick to react to the results.

The National Freedom Party said lack of discipline and a poor culture of teaching and learning in most schools compromised results.

For the Pan Africanist Congress the results highlight "serious deficiencies" in South Africa’s education system.

According to BusinessDay, changes introduced to the teachers' curriculum last year are "a possible factor".

That's at least what Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga explained according to the paper.

For her “the curriculum changes have increased the cognitive rigour and demands".

But others are criticising that explanation.

In the Times an anonymous school principal explains that "the poor education standards, so prevalent in a large majority of state schools, has very little to do with the curriculum".

He even calls the situation a disaster.

Kenya's Standard is also talking about education today.

According to the newspaper, public primary and secondary schools remained empty yesterday as the teachers' strike entered its second day.

The paper explains that "a spot check in most schools at the Coast revealed that no learning was going on".

The teachers are protesting against the lack of increase of their salary this year.

This, as the government reminded everybody yesterday, means the teachers will not get paid until they go back to work.

But for Dan Aloo, the executive secretary of Kenya's National Union of Teachers, this won't have any impact on the strike.

"This is wrong and such acts will never coerce us into submission. We will soldier on until we get our rightful dues," he told the Standard.

Of course, the daily reminds us, the first people impacted by the strike are the pupils, which is why some are asking the teachers to go back to school as soon as possible.

In Zimbabwe the opposition is criticising President Robert Mugabe over his holidays.

The main opposition party, the movement for a democratic change (MDC) is accusing Mugabe "of being insensitive and leaving the country on autopilot", News Day reports.

The Zimbabwean president has been on holiday in Asia for two weeks and it's hard to deny that the timing is bad.

The newspaper explains that the country "is facing an emergency due to flooding last week that left hundreds of family homeless".

Acting President Emmerson Mnangagwa “has not yet provided them with relief tents and food", says News Day.

We still have no news of Mugabe either.

A team of scientists revealed yesterday that the likely origin of the current Ebola epidemic is a hollow tree that housed a colony of bats in south-eastern Guinea, News 24 reports.

"A two-year-old boy in the Guinean village of Meliandou, who is believed to have been the first Ebola death, may have been infected while hunting or playing with free-tailed bats," the website explains.

Until now fruit bats were considered a "natural reservoir" for the deadly virus.

But, according to the researchers, fruit bats can't be found in south-east Guinea.