Latest news with #Grade4
CTV News
30-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
‘It's a bit of a stinky job': Banff Grade 4 students leading the way in composting initiative
On Fridays at Banff Elementary School (BES) it's not the custodian who goes around collecting the class compost bins, it's the Grade 4 students. It may be a stinky job but it's one they take great pride in. Started by Grade 4 teacher Alysa Amirault back in March, the compost club aims to educate students while giving them the opportunity to lead the way in environmental action within their own school. 'I really see the value in it, and I see the value in it giving the kids this opportunity to be leaders in their school, and it's just been great,' said Amirault. After the last school composting program stopped shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic and with the recent G7 Leaders' Summit in Kananaskis, Amirault felt a call to action and rallied her Grade 4 class. 'I said, 'You guys, why don't we do a compost club?' And [the students] were so stoked until they realized that it's kind of a thankless job and it's kinda gross … but they're really keen,' she said. With the first unit of the Grade 4 science curriculum being 'waste in our world', students learn about the importance of conservation and are given a hands-on role to take action in their community through the club. 'First, I was really excited [for the club]. I didn't know that compost eventually turns into soil. I thought [it] would take like a million years or something, but now I know,' said Grade 4 student Tvisha Patel. 'It's a bit of a stinky job,' she added. Grade 4 student Alex Stewart wants others to learn more about the benefits of composting. 'I encourage lots of people to [compost] because this is a good thing for the planet. Just throwing your stuff in the garbage bin, it doesn't really help, but when you throw it in the organics bin, it makes it easier so people can make soil so you can be able to grow more food and eat,' said Stewart. Every Friday students go to their assigned classrooms, picking up compost bins from around the school. Back in class, the bins are searched for non-organic waste items. 'You sometimes need to talk to [the classes] about putting stuff in because the first run for me there was like a plastic yogurt container [in the bin],' said student Owen Wells. The next step is data collection where each bag is weighed and recorded. The class has collected 166 pounds of compost since the end of March, according to Amirault. Walking over to the town compost bin on Moose Street, the students dispose of the organic waste and replace the bins with new compost bags donated to the class by the Town of Banff. 'The cutest thing recently is that the kids have started singing the Single Seed song,' said Amirault. Written and performed by BES students alongside Banff's poet's laureate, Heather Jean Jordan back in May, 'A Single Seed' is a song dedicated to the leaders of the G7 Summit in Kananaskis that expresses the student's hopes and concerns for the future. The song has now become the anthem of the class as they make their way to the town bins. 'My favourite thing is when we all go to the bin and then we just start singing and it's really fun,' said Stewart. Amirault hopes the message of the compost club is that even the youngest can contribute and make change, and that can start with small steps. 'I hope that they'll remember that they learned some things and that they can be influences too … [in] the not so glamorous part of what taking care of the planet looks like,' said Amirault. 'I just hope that they'll continue to be curious. Who knows maybe they … find careers and opportunities for themselves to showcase what they know and be advocates for the environment and for the world … but also just on a small level that they can influence their families to just be better, do better.' As the school year comes to a close, Patel hopes the up-and-coming Grade 4s will eagerly carry on in the initiative. 'I would encourage the other Grade 4s that are gonna come in next year … I would encourage them to do this job and be willing, be supportive,' said Patel.
News24
22-06-2025
- Politics
- News24
SA schools are failing — but new research from Nigeria offers hope
A new working paper from Nigeria offers a glimpse of what an artificial intelligence-augmented education might look like. In Benin City, researchers ran an experiment in nine ordinary public schools. The intervention was modest, but the results were anything but, says Johan Fourie. Anyone who occasionally opens a South African newspaper will know the story: most of our public schools are failing. But for those who have grown numb to these stories, a few numbers should still jolt you awake. Four out of five Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language. One in four learners will repeat Grade 10. One in five teachers is absent on Mondays and Fridays, and one in three are absent at the end of the month. These are not new problems. I distinctly remember sitting in a development economics class in the early 2000s, wrestling with the challenge of South Africa's poor education outcomes. Back then, the prevailing hope was that these were teething issues: a temporary hangover from the transition to democracy, soon to be fixed by a public school system finding its feet. I was optimistic that steady investment and reform would deliver the turnaround we needed. But two decades of painfully slow progress have forced me to reconsider. I now find myself firmly in the voucher camp. The idea is straightforward: instead of allocating government funding directly to schools, each child would receive a voucher – say, R20 000 per year – which they could use to enrol at the school of their choice, public or private. The logic is that real choice, backed by state support, would foster healthy competition between schools, driving up quality far more quickly than our current approach. If anything is going to shake us out of this rut, it is giving families the power to choose. But ideas like that rarely get off the ground, not because they lack merit, but because there are too many vested interests determined to block any radical change. Powerful groups stand to lose if old certainties are upended, and so real reform is strangled before it even begins. Any solution to our education crisis must, somehow, find a way to keep almost everyone on board – at least at the start. So let me offer one solution. A new working paper from Nigeria offers a glimpse of what an artificial intelligence-augmented education might look like. In Benin City, researchers ran an experiment in nine ordinary public schools: invite students in for after-school English lessons, but with a twist. Instead of a chalkboard, each child sat at a computer, learning English with the help of ChatGPT-4. The intervention was modest – just 12 sessions over six weeks – but the results were anything but. By the end, students who attended the AI-supported classes outperformed their peers by more than 0.3 standard deviations on the final assessment. That might sound modest, but it equates to nearly two years' worth of typical learning gains. Crucially, these were not just superficial improvements in digital skills or answering AI-generated trivia. The most significant gains were in English itself. The researchers found that students who participated in the AI tutoring also scored much higher on their standard end-of-year English exams – the same exams taken by all students, covering the entire year's curriculum. As the authors put it, the impact of the intervention extended well beyond the brief six weeks of the programme. In simple terms: a short burst of AI-assisted tutoring delivered learning improvements that our traditional schooling system has failed to achieve in years. There are subtleties worth noting. The programme benefited all students, regardless of their starting point, but the strongest effects were seen among those who had performed better before, and among girls, who started with lower scores but made up ground. The more sessions a child attended, the bigger the gains: the researchers estimate that a full year of AI-augmented tutoring could boost achievement by up to two standard deviations, a remarkably large effect. And the real surprise: it was almost absurdly cheap to run. When the researchers did the maths, they discovered the programme yielded the equivalent of more than three years of schooling for every $100 spent, an efficiency that leaves traditional interventions in the dust. For a country, or even a continent, grappling with limited resources and a rapidly urbanising population demanding education, results like these shift the boundaries of what's possible. If one study is not enough to convince you, then let me add a second, meta-analysis study, published just last month in Nature Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. The authors summarise the results of 44 research papers reporting the impact of ChatGPT on learner improvement. Their conclusion? The 'calculated effect size indicates a large positive impact'. In short: yes, ChatGPT boosts education outcomes significantly. So, if I were to advise the Minister of Basic Education, here's what I would recommend we implement tomorrow: make free AI tutors available to every child in a public school. The early evidence is persuasive enough that, for once, this is a bet worth taking. But I suspect it won't be nearly so straightforward. The Minister will inevitably run into the same old obstacle: vociferous, well-organised teacher unions with plenty of political clout. Sensing that AI tutors might expose just how poorly their members have been performing, the unions will do everything possible to block implementation. They'll point out, quite rightly, that Large Language Models can hallucinate, but quietly sidestep the mounting evidence that many teachers in under-resourced schools are just as likely to get things wrong. They'll insist that education is about more than rote learning; it's about instilling values, fostering citizenship, and shaping the next generation. In theory, this is correct, but in practice, it rings hollow when so many teachers struggle to attend a full week of lessons. When pressed, unions will argue, as they have before, that wider factors in the classroom prevent teacher success, yet they remain reluctant to experiment with alternative approaches that might address these very issues. The result is all too familiar: rhetoric about the sanctity of education, and resistance to anything that might unsettle the status quo. So, here's a second proposal for the Minister: bring the teacher unions on board by paying them to help implement AI tutors in a random selection of schools across the country. Guarantee the salaries of all teachers for the next five years as part of this national pilot. No one loses out, and everyone has the chance to see what works. Even better, equip the participating teachers with their own AI tutors, allowing them to develop new skills alongside their students. At the end of five years, if education outcomes show no improvement, the programme can be cancelled. But if the results match those from Nigeria, with a clear and substantial boost, then it should become the new standard everywhere. AI tutors could also help address another looming crisis: as the teaching workforce ages and fewer young people choose the profession, South Africa is heading for a serious teacher shortage. AI will not displace the need for a human in the classroom, but it can ease the load, allowing larger classes without sacrificing personalised support. This is already happening: South African company Mindjoy is building AI tutors that deliver adaptive content, real-time feedback, and 24/7 personalised learning, while automating routine tasks to free up teachers for deeper engagement. Instead of the old classroom model, imagine dynamic learning spaces where students of all ages learn at their own pace, guided by teachers and AI working together. The future of education could be both more flexible and more effective – if we have the imagination and political courage to build it. If we accept that four out of five children still leave primary school unable to read for meaning, that thousands of teachers are absent on any given day, and that a quarter of learners are repeating grades, we are simply condemning another generation to disappointment. Clinging to the status quo is a decision, one that chooses failure by default. But if we treat technology as the ally it can be, and summon just a fraction of the ambition our children deserve, there is no reason why South Africa's schools must remain at the bottom of the rankings. The numbers can change, if we do.
