The news that the Limpopo Education Department is to build 50 new circuit offices at a cost of R50 million each, and will be deploying more than 500 former tertiary lecturers as fully-fledged subject specialists, while also absorbing 8 000 temporary teachers into the province's education system, has been widely welcomed by teacher unions and school governing bodies.

These and other ambitious steps were announced by Education MEC Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, during the department's recent matric awards ceremony in Polokwane.

In respect of the subject specialists, the MEC said that, with 144 circuits and more than 4 000 schools in the province, a total of at least 2 000 of them were actually needed. He said his department would immediately advertise 150 posts for curriculum specialists, with more than half of them scheduled to be appointed in the long-neglected Sekhukhune District.

He welcomed recently announced plans to develop the towns of Jane Furse, Burgersfort and Groblersdal, all situated along the fringes of this extensive rural area, saying the increased infrastructure would encourage more highly qualified educationists to settle there.

With regard to temporary teachers, Motsoaledi said the process of absorbing them into the education system would begin immediately, even before the province's schools reopened this month, to help fill the current 5 000 vacant principal, deputy principal and department head posts.

The MEC said his department would be introducing African languages in former Model C schools as fully accredited subjects, thanks to an offer from several universities to deploy lecturers from their departments of African languages, as part of a programme to strengthen language advisory services.

"We have provided books, we have provided 143 African language teachers, and we will give them absolute support, so that learners in grades 7 to 10 can do an African language as first language and only do English as a second language," he explained.