Six 2024 National Teaching Awards (NTA) winners left on a week-long fully funded project-based international study tour to Denmark, courtesy of the FirstRand Foundation. As part of their 2024 NTA sponsorship, FirstRand Foundation awarded the first place winners in six categories with a three-part professional development package, the second part of which is an international development experience, amounting to R200,000.00, where the teachers will acquire immersive experience on the project-based learning model.

Speaking at the send-off brunch, with FirstRand Limited Executives and FirstRand Foundation Trustees also in attendance, Deputy Director-General for Educational Enrichment Services, Dr Granville Whittle, standing in for the Deputy Minister of Basic Education, Dr Reginah Mhaule, said: “Today you stand at the threshold of an experience that will not only enrich your professional development, but hopefully ignite new ideas that will ripple through your classrooms, your schools, and your communities when you return home.”

With the first part of the prize, a 5-day visit to one of the schools FirstRand Foundation supports, already having taken place earlier in the year, the third part of the prize will be an opportunity to join teachers from China, India, Denmark and other African countries, at an International Research Symposium on Project-Based Learning, taking place later during the year.

Dr Whittle also thanked the FirstRand Foundation for their vision and commitment to the development of teachers. “You have demonstrated what is possible when the private sector steps forward not only as a funder, but as a true co-architect of our education future,” he concluded.