Monday, July 15, 2013

Qualification for CAT teachers

Friend has been teaching CAT for 10+ years.  Has repeatedly had best Matric results in the district. Now her principal requires her to get registered with SACE which means getting a degree and then a teaching diploma.
This requirement will not really improve her CAT results.
If she does her studying part time through Unisa what should she do her degree in – she teaches CAT?  Unisa does not offer a degree in CAT and she already has her advanced Computer Drivers Licence in the Office suite.
Should she spent all that time and effort on getting those qualifications or just give up a successful teaching career?  
She has about 15 years to go before she would have to retire.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

How short sighted is that Principal, I will GAURANTEE that is a new Departmental circular that wants to force teachers that are successfull and replace them with some IDIOT.

Anonymous said...

Every teacher in the country should be registered with SACE. Without SACE the department will not appoint you and private schools will loose their Umaluzi accredication if their teachers are not registered with SACE. Unisa have Bedt degree in Education and then you can choose CAT as main subject.

Anonymous said...

There has to be norms and standards. However there is also a case for exceptions. This is why the governing bodies can choose to employ certain teachers which the department can't provide.

Anonymous said...

Once again, write to prof Jansen. Maybe he could wake them up!

Anonymous said...

I taught for 11+ years at a private school without any "teacher's qualification" and was registered with SACE - also had the highest final marks for my CAT students! Now have a governing body post at a govt school. Also feel my 18+ yrs of computer teaching/training not going to improve with Teacher's diploma - have life skills!

Anonymous said...

I have been studying for a BEd for the past 6 years through Unisa. Having worked in the corporate world for 13 years, and then teaching for 13 years, my experience about computers and certifications have come from the corporate years. CAT is offered as a subject to choose at Unisa. The problem I am experiencing is that to qualify with CAT one has to do Delphi as a compulsory 1st year subject. I teach CAT not IT. I have a lot of learners coming to CAT because they are failing IT. If you look at the requirements to teach IT, studying through Unisa, they also require you to do Delphi and rightly so. The sad thing is that I am stressing because if I don't get this degree, my job availability is affected, not to mention that I haven't been getting the normal benefits or "higher" salary, because I don't have the degree, for the past 13 years.

Anonymous said...

I appreciate the fact that teachers should have sound content knowledge, but doing Delphi programming for a CAT course is overkill!

For CAT, they could rather include advanced HTML and some VB to code macro's in Word and Excel. This should cover the 'development' part of the course well enough.

Anonymous said...

At Unisa there is a Computer Science course for the Bed degree.Maybe you could try that.There is no main heading for CAT.Just for IT.Ive done the Delphi module at UNISA and i can tell you its extremely difficult.And i teahc CAT at school.Not helping me at all .Just for degree purposes.

Anonymous said...

I think the government should come up with an in-service qualifications for teachers who are already teaching CAT and make exemptions. I have had student teachers coming out from universities with BEd degrees with ICT as part of their majors, but there are blank when it comes to CAT.

Dr Pam Miller said...

Person who made the comment above, please email me at docpam at gmail dot com Thank you. Let us see what can be done about it.

Anonymous said...

Hi everyone

I have my subject advisor in the same predicament, to be SACE registered. She has been teaching CAT for many years without a Teaching degree. She does have MOS 2007 quals (Im not sure how many credits per certificate SACE will allow, if they do accept these MCP certs). What is the best route to take for her to be SACE registered for CAT. Any advice with regard to this will be appreciated. My email is dael.b@brainline.com. Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards