Mathematics, Science and Technology Strategies and Interventions (teacher training and development, teacher demand/needs, learner uptake, improved subject performance): DBE briefing with Deputy Minister

Basic Education

17 May 2022
Chairperson: Ms B Mbinqo-Gigaba (ANC)
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Meeting Summary

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In a virtual meeting, the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education was briefed by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on the mathematics (hereafter referred to as maths), science and technology strategies and interventions on teacher training and development, teacher demands/needs, learner uptake, and improved subject performance.

The Committee heard that some of the challenges included the underperformance in maths and science subjects at all levels, low participation in maths, the low quality of passes in MST subjects, and low participation in technology subjects in all Provincial Education Departments (PEDs). In collaboration with the Department of Higher Education and Training (the DHET) and the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), DBE reviewed and finalised the Integrated National Strategy for MST Education (2019-2030) with active participation of PEDs. As a result, all nine PEDs developed their MST implementation plans and high impact interventions prioritising their provincial context in terms of MST Grant Schools, Skills for a Changing World, Three Streams Model (Occupational Subjects), Focus Schools, etcetera, were being implemented.

On MST Teacher Development, the Committee heard that some of the challenges included that learner performance in mathematics in the NSC has been tittering around the 50% mark while other subjects have been recording higher performance. The MST teachers were generally qualified but not suitably qualified or had not majored in the subjects that they teach, and there was a shortage of MST subject advisors, and this shortage was unevenly spread across the provinces. On implemented teacher interventions and achievements in MST, the Department provided support for senior phase (grades 8 & 9) in maths and natural sciences and teacher support for technical mathematics and technical sciences.

The Committee was concerned about the declining numbers of learners taking mathematics as a subject and the lack of interest in MST subjects from both teachers and learners. A Member wanted to know if a review of the material available for learners to do maths and science and support mechanisms to succeed are done in those schools before the learners are motivated to do take the subjects. Another Member wanted to know how the Department intends to augment the shortage of qualified and competent teachers in the rural Eastern Cape, including the competence of curriculum advisors and the inadequate ratio of the curriculum advisors of the teachers and absence of follow-up classroom support. Members suggested that the internships linked to unemployed science and mathematics graduates could be linked with the teacher assistant programme and made a permanent feature in enhancing the MST programme. The Chairperson said that the reality was that the teachers who were teaching maths in schools were foreigners and not South African and South African teachers no longer had the capacity to redirect the learners towards MST subjects when they saw their potential and ability.

The Department said that it developed a plan to rollout ICT in schools working with provinces to ensure that ICT was utilised and provided to schools. The Department worked with mobile network operators who were obligated by their licensing to assist the Department in rolling out ICT. The provinces also set budgets aside for ICT, and the Department tracked the budget allocations in each province. The rollout of ICT was not only confined to tablets and laptops, but ICT was also used for low-end technology, including radio and television.

On the systemic evaluations in the Western Cape, the Department said that it was currently enrolling its systemic evaluations in a sample of schools across the country and they were benchmarked against the best international practice, and the results will be released later in the current year. This was important because it would provide the Department with a sense of the level of performance, what the difficulties were, and what could be done to address those difficulties.

 Members heard that the new teachers that were coming into the system had much better subject knowledge, content knowledge, as well as better pedagogical knowledge. The decision by government to change the focus of the Funza Lushaka bursary to address areas of shortage within the system had proven to be very successful. In most schools in the country, the maths and science teachers are South African, although there are some pockets of foreign nationals, but the number of South African teachers is increasing because the Funza Lushaka bursary is based on the needs of the country, which are languages, MST, and commerce.  Members felt that the meeting was an eye-opener for them and that the Department was doing well in trying to address the needs in rural districts.

Meeting report

The Chairperson welcomed the Members of the Portfolio Committee and the delegation from the DBE. She also acknowledged the presence of the Deputy Minister of Basic Education in the meeting.

Deputy Minister’s opening remarks
Ms Regina Mhaule, Deputy Minister of Basic Education, said that their presentation was divided into two parts, and the mathematics and science part of the presentation would be a response to the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030. Part A of the presentation would be on the intake, participation and performance of the Department, and Part B would be on the response to teacher demands and needs, as well as teacher development and training. She said that the responses from provinces have not been the same, but the Department is trying to get the provinces to be more involved in Maths, Science and Technology (MST).

Briefing by the Department of Basic Education (DBE)

Dr Granville Whittle, Acting Director-General, said that Part A of the presentation would be on the intake, participation and performance of the Department, and Part B would be on the response to teacher demands and needs, and teacher development and training. He apologised on behalf of Ms Simone Geyer, Deputy Director-General: Delivery and Support, who was not available in the meeting as she was on leave.

Mr Seliki Tlhabane, Chief Director: MST & Curriculum Enhancement, presented on the MST curriculum on the intake, participation and performance of the Department. On the problem statement of the MST subjects, he said that some of the challenges included the underperformance in Mathematics and Science subjects at all levels, the low participation in Mathematics, the low quality of passes in MST subjects, as well as the low participation in technology subjects in all Provincial Education Departments (PEDs)

In collaboration with the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), DBE reviewed and finalised the integrated national strategy for MST Education (2019-2030) with active participation of the PEDs. As a result, all nine PEDs developed their MST implementation plans and high impact interventions prioritising their provincial context in terms of MST grant schools, skills for a changing world, three streams model (occupational subjects), focus schools, and etcetera are being implemented. He also presented on the progress and improvement in Mathematics, Sciences, and Technical subjects, and improvements and progress in Computer Applications Technology (CAT) and Information Technology (IT).

Mr Enoch Rabotapi, Chief Director: Teacher Development, presented on MST teacher development and the responses to teacher demands and needs. He said that some of their challenges included that although there was improvement in international studies such as the Southern and Eastern Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) (2016) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (2016) by the South African learners at Grade six level, the improvement only put the country just above the 50% mark. Learner performance in mathematics in the NSC has been tittering around the 50% mark while other subjects have been recording higher performance. MST teachers are generally qualified but not suitably qualified or have not majored in the subjects that they teach. There is a shortage of MST subject advisors, and this shortage was unevenly spread across the provinces.

On the crucial tools guiding MST implementation, he said that the mathematics, science and technology interventions were:
-framed by the priorities of the National Development Plan, (NDP, 2012) of increasing the number of learners that pass by 50% in mathematics, languages, and science;
-Located in the ideals of the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa (ISPFTED, 2011);
-Advancing the MST Strategy (2018)
-Enhancing the professional development framework for digital Learning (2017).

On the implemented teacher interventions and achievements in MST, he said that the Department provided support for Senior Phase (Grades 8 & 9) in mathematics and natural sciences and teacher support for technical mathematics and technical sciences.

He also presented the summary for the PED mathematics and science programmes for 2021/22 and capacity programmes for 2022/23.

Discussion

Mr B Nodada (DA) said that generally in mathematics and science, South African education is in trouble and that there is further learning and alignment that the country can receive from countries like Ghana, Kenya and Finland in trimming the curriculum so that it is not quantity over quality. He commended the Department for coming up with the Three Stream Curriculum Model as it is responsive to general knowledge that is required for the ever-changing economy. He said that South Africa has a lot of gold, diamonds, and platinum mines and yet there is little talk of the development of a stream linked to technical skills and innovation in the refinery of those resources. Botswana does offer a curriculum that offers some of the skills required in the mining industry and they are also aligned with the university Degrees that they offer. He wanted to know if there is a possibility of having a trimmer curriculum that is also focused on skills development that is responsive to the economy of the country and whether it would be wise to add a stream or subjects that are responsive to the requirements of the economy.

He said that the Western Cape recently did a systematic test that shows that mathematics has dropped by over 106% in the Foundation Phase and Intermediate Phase. The presentation also indicates that there are fewer students that take mathematics. He said that perhaps when the announcement of the results happen, the detail on that must be provided so that the Department avoids applauding provinces that are purging learners on MST subjects for having a high pass rate. He said that the Department needs to be honest that there is a MST problem in the schools and there needs to be strategies and solutions in place to produce a higher uptake. There will not be a higher uptake if the schools in rural areas and townships are not capacitated in terms of the equipment required for mathematics and science. He wanted to know if a review of the material available for learners to do mathematics and science and support mechanisms to succeed were done in those schools before the learners are motivated to take the subjects.

He said that there is an opportunity and a gap in the Funza Lushaka bursary provided by the Department where specific learners can be identified and be incentivised to attract them to study MST subjects and go to study in universities so that they can teach the subjects. He said that it is important for the Department to do that because that is how it will be able to develop a personnel or staff base to enhance the subjects. He asked if the Department has a specific percentage of its bursaries for future teachers that is specific to the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) subjects.

He said that the North West University (NWU) is the only institution of higher learning that offers a degree in technical mathematics and technical science and that there needs to be a discussion amongst education Ministers on how these offerings are not just limited to a single institution to develop, but the teachers who graduate move to cities to teach the subjects because there is no incentive for them to teach in rural areas. He wanted to know if there is some collaboration to develop a pipeline of the curriculum in the three-stream model being translated into university degrees that people can be able to acquire as a teaching qualification.  

Dr S Thembekwayo (EFF) said that the Eastern Cape province is characterised by rural districts and vacant posts throughout the education system and is ranked 9th out of the nine provinces and wanted to know how the Department intends to solve this problem. She wanted to know how the Department intends to augment the shortage of qualified and competent teachers in the rural Eastern Cape, including the competence of curriculum advisors and the inadequate ratio of the curriculum advisors of the teachers as well as the absence of follow-up classroom support.

She asked the Department to explain the nonexistence of ICT in teaching and learning in the vast majority of schools that were selected by the Eastern Cape province for investigations. She said that the Dinaledi Schools have not been very successful in serving as support and mentoring hubs in Mathematics and Science for other schools and asked how the Department intends to improve the compliance of the Dinaledi Schools, as they are struggling to comply with the national requirement of 60% of learners in Further Education & Training (FET) who must take mathematics. She wanted to know if the Department can embark on research in connection to code-switching as a contributing factor to the failing of mathematics by the learners. Lastly, she wanted to know if there is a possibility of the Department setting up an internship programme for unemployed mathematics and science graduates with a view to advocating teaching as a career choice, including possible deployment to schools.   

Mr E Siwela (ANC) wanted to know how the Department is using the Funza Lushaka bursary to train more mathematics and science teachers and ensure that they are placed timeously. He also wanted to know if the Department shifts teachers who are not specialised in other subjects or if they retain them. He also asked how the Department leverages technology to enhance learning for the learners in science and mathematics.

Ms N Mashabela (EFF) said that on the National MST Strategy, the recommendation that the Department established a senior management level to review and overhaul the original strategy into a comprehensive national MST strategy which includes plans to implement, monitor, evaluate, manage, and report on the systematic role of the strategy must also include a comprehensive analysis on continuous teacher development and support. The reviewed MST must also centralise language teaching and learning and get extensive inputs from teachers and learners.

She said that the internships linked to unemployed science and mathematics graduates could be linked with the teacher assistant programme and made a permanent feature in enhancing the MST programme. Lastly, she said that the 30% mark as a benchmark, especially for mathematics and science, if the objective is to get learners into universities, is inadequate. The benchmark should not be considered unless it is just for data analysis.

The Chairperson said that the presentation did not tell good news in terms of the learners taking mathematics in the country and that if the situation does not change, there will be a serious problem in the next ten years as there will be no one to lead the economy of this country into a better place. She said that there needs to be an honest reflection of the education system of the country and solutions need to be found. She said that the 9% decline in learners taking MST subjects in the last four years is a lot and that is a cause for concern. She wanted to know what happened to the 143 learners who did not achieve a pass in mathematics in the NSC 2021 exams. She wanted to know what they are currently doing and where they are because they might not have passed mathematics, but they did it, which is what is important.

She said that the Department is targeting to reach a 420 score for the MST subjects in Grade 12 and Grade 9 in 2023, and the baseline from 2017 is 234. She wanted to know if the Department thinks that the 420 score is going to be achievable because the country is still recovering from COVID-19, which also caused a lot of problems in academics. Considering the weak foundation gaps in MST, as acknowledged in the presentation, she wanted to know how the Department is preparing the learners to perform better in MST to be able to achieve the 420 target in 2023.

On the Grade 6 SACMEQ IV report, she said that the Department reported that all provinces performed over the 500 mean score and wanted to know the realities that lead to low performances in TIMSS and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) when all provinces are scoring 500 and above at SACMEQ. She wanted to know how the tests are standardised. On the diagnostic assessments, she wanted to know the diagnosis of the capacity and competence of teachers and why they are reluctant to teach the learners mathematics and science. She said that the reality is that the teachers who are teaching mathematics in schools are foreigners and not South African. She said that South African teachers no longer have the capacity to redirect the learners towards MST subjects when they see their potential and ability and they do not have the country’s best interests at heart and wanted to know what the Department is doing about that.

The Chairperson wanted to know if the Education, Training and Development Sector Education and Training Authority (ETDP SETA) is addressing the skills challenge for mathematics. She also wanted to know what happened to the Dinaledi Schools for mathematics and science. She said that both the Committee and the Department can agree that they are worried about the future of the country and that although she understands that there are vocational alternatives that the learners can take, but the declining numbers yearly in participation on MST, let alone the pass rate is concerning. She said that if there is no interest or energy for learners to do mathematics, then solutions need to be found. She said that the country’s response to COVID-19 shows that the solution to the maths problem can also be found. She said that the Committee needs a report on the number of South African teachers that are teaching mathematics in comparison to the number of foreign teachers teaching the same subject to show South Africans that the country is not in our hands.

Response by the DBE

Mr Tlhabane said that the DBE is driving a Focus School Strategy (FSS) and the Council for Education Ministers (CEM) approved the establishment of 11 types of focus schools. Mining schools are one of the Focus Schools that will be established to respond to the issues raised by Mr Nodada. The purpose of the Focus Schools is to serve the Economic Development Zones (EDZs) and ensure that communities are supplied with learners who exit the schooling system with the subjects that can allow them to enter the economies of the communities in which they reside. The presentation also showed the subjects that are being established in the new curriculum, including coding and robotics, aviation and maritime sciences. The mining curriculum still needs to be developed to assist the Department to establish the schools.

On the provision of ICT, he said that the Department developed a plan to rollout ICT in schools working with provinces to ensure that ICT is utilised and provided to schools. The Department works with Mobile Network Operators who are obligated by their licensing to assist the Department in rolling out ICT. The provinces also set budgets aside for ICT, and the Department tracks the budget allocations in each province. The rollout of ICT is not only confined to tablets and laptops, but ICT is also used for low-end technology, including radio and television. The Department also works with local radio stations to deliver lessons using local languages delivered by local top teachers and subject advisors, and regional and national radio stations. The Department also partnered with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to ensure that lessons are provided on dedicated channels as part of its broader ICT strategy. The Department also has the MST conditional grant within the business plan and ICT is provided for in the grant.

On the Dinaledi Schools, he said that the name has been changed to MST schools, but the concept is still the same and the Department is supporting 1 000 schools across the country through the MST conditional grant. This support includes providing resources to the schools, and ensuring that learners are exposed to programmes that will excite and interest them in mathematics and science such as Olympiads and competitions. Teachers are put through training programmes, and school workshops are resourced with machinery and equipment. Other provinces have started feeder systems of the MST schools, where primary schools are supported by the MST Schools and are targeted at enrolling a high number of learners in mathematics and science. The Free State and Kwa-Zulu Natal MST schools have already started the feeder system.

The research on the impact of code-switching on the delivery of the subjects points to two issues. The first one is that when teachers use code-switching, the learners understand the subjects better, but the disadvantage is that when learners are writing exams, the requirement is for them to write in English, and they cannot use code-switching to answer the questions. The other issue is that the exam question papers come out in both Afrikaans and English, which puts Afrikaans speaking learners at an advantage because they are allowed to use code-switching in understanding the questions. There is evidence that code-switching can contribute positively to increasing the understanding of the content among the learners, but it does not benefit every South African learner.

The Department also uses high-end technology that requires the internet for those learners who have access to it and deploys digital content offline so that the learners do not have to access digital content using the internet. The learners can access this through the local content servers, where they can connect to a server that is preloaded with content.

He said that the debate about the 30% benchmark is a debate that the Department is following, but the message that they are driving forward is that 30% is the minimum mark that a child can attain to be considered as having passed a subject. The Department understands that the 30% benchmark does not enable a learner to be admitted to a university, but the Department is not trying to only push learners towards universities, they want them to take other options such as TVET colleges as well. The Department is trying to send a message to the learners and the general community that one does not need to have a university degree to be able to participate in the economy of the country, there are other options available.

He said that the Department heard the message from the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee that they must aim to achieve higher than they are currently achieving and work in the best interests of the country. He said that the Department does not know whether they will be able to reach the 420 target, but they will work hard to support the teachers and ensure that the TIMSS curriculum is taught well and expose the learners to high order questions. Part of the Department’s strategy is to give teachers the question papers to mediate them so that when they set school-based assessments, they set them at a higher level that is going to expose learners to higher order questions.

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) noted that one of the reasons the learners are unable to cope with questions in TIMSS is that when they are given homework and school-based tests, they are given low order questions. He said that Mr Rabotapi’s team also works on training Teachers to set high order questions.  

Mr Rabotapi said that the questions that were asked by the Committee fall under several categories. For example, the questions regarding the capacity to teach mathematics and physical science in the Department, the Funza Lushaka bursary, and subject advisors to support teachers all fall under the category of demand and supply. He said that someone from the Department’s human resources department could have given better details and credible information on demand and supply because it would have also given an explanation of the continued reliance on foreign teachers. The issue of demand and supply starts with the quality of the Department’s recruitment and whether they are recruiting people with the correct attributes.

The Funza Lushaka bursary scheme sets priorities in its recruitment, and mathematics and science are one of the priorities of the bursary. The issue of learners who change their preferred teaching subjects after being awarded the bursary has been addressed and it is no longer an issue, so mathematics and science are prioritised when placement is done. When the teachers are in the system, there are several factors that need to be considered. During the training of the teachers, the Department’s observation is that some of the teachers are not qualified mathematics and science teachers, which explains why some of them struggle to teach some of the content of the subjects because they lack the foundation to do so, which makes them difficult to train. When a teacher struggles with grasping the concepts, that has an impact on the learners that they are teaching, and the next line becomes the subject advisors whose responsibility is to ensure that they follow up on the teacher’s training.

When looking at the good that is done in other education systems, the Department recognised that its approach to teacher development has been proven to not have a great positive impact on learning outcomes. When the teachers are trained by their districts and DBE, the level of understanding is high, but when they go back to the schools to implement what they learned in their training, the level of implementation is low. The training that the Department does through its workshops does not induce the necessary behavioural change. This is why the Department’s teacher development unit is focusing on changing that approach so that it can get teachers exposed to resources to be able to lead their own development and provide them support.

Literature shows that self-development is the most effective way of inducing behavioural change because the initiative comes from the teacher. It was on this basis that the Department decided to open an online platform where the teachers can have access to quality resources and they can rely on each other through the Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and learn from each other how to improve their knowledge and competence. The Department wants to change the perception of the teachers that development must come from the districts or from the Department.

The reluctance of teachers to take diagnostic assessments is a reflection of a lack of confidence as Teachers do not want to be tested because they do not want their weaknesses to be exposed. If the Department can be able to induce a shift in their mindsets and have the teachers confident in self-develop, their participation in diagnostic tests will improve. In some cases, the reason teachers do not implement what they learnt in the training is because there are no consequences to them not doing so, and in other cases, there is no incentive for them to participate in ongoing development. He said that the sector needs to have an engagement on how they appoint Heads of Departments (HODs) and Deputy Principals in the schools so that their appointment is informed by demonstrated competence.

He said that the Department needs to provide Television sets in schools because the advantage of that would be to have learners exposed to quality instruction by individuals who provide instruction at a central place, and this would have to be made an interactive process between the instructor and the learners. Ensuring that there are laboratories, scientific equipment for experiments, well-qualified teachers, etcetera, could take a long time to happen, but in the meantime, through the provision of TV sets in schools, the mindset shift to quality instruction can be induced in learners. Through TV, the learners could get exposed to some of the scientific experiments that they need to do.

Dr Whittle said that the Secretary-General of the United Nations recently described COVID-19 as a worldwide generational catastrophe and it is important to take this into account in the South African context because since 2020, the country has lost up to 3 600 educators in the public service. COVID-19 has had a catastrophic impact on education in South Africa and the rest of the world. Prior to the pandemic, the country’s performance on PIRLS in Grade 4 was only outperformed by Morocco and South Africa was the second fastest improving country in terms of the PIRLS tests. All of this was dramatically reversed by the COVID-19 pandemic and in 2021, the average Grade 4 learner was only reading at a level of a Grade 3 learner, which suggests that they were a year behind in their reading scores. Reading and language are critical to educational performance, especially in maths and science and other gateway subjects. Maths and science cannot be fixed in Grade 9 or Grade 10, they need to be fixed in the foundation phase of Grade 1 and Grade R.

On the systemic evaluations in the Western Cape, he said that the Department is currently enrolling its systemic evaluations in a sample of schools across the country and they are benchmarked against the best international practice, and the results will be released later in the current year. This is important because it will provide the Department with a sense of the level of performance, what the difficulties are, as well as what can be done to address those difficulties. One of the key areas that the Department will have to look into is initial teacher education because only one institution, the University of South Africa (UNISA) produces up to 60% of the country’s teachers and they have a distance learning model. The Department is aware of some of the difficulties in that institution and is working with the DHET to try and address the teacher quality.

He said that the new teachers that are coming into the system have much better subject knowledge, content knowledge, as well as better pedagogical knowledge. The decision by government to change the focus of the Funza Lushaka bursary to address areas of shortage within the system has proven to be very successful. There are about 5 000 Funza Lushaka graduates every year and about 20 000 that study on their own or through NSFAS. The Funza Lushaka Bursary was a specific mechanism to guide Teachers into specific subjects where there are shortages and because of the introduction of three new streams, there are new subject areas that the Funza Lushaka bursary must be adjusted to cater for so that they can be targeted.

On Grade 12 enrolment, he said that they were surprised in the Department that in 2021, they had the highest number of full-time candidates that obtained a Matric in the history of South Africa. He said that this is a positive step for the DBE because the more young people finish their Matric, the more their chances are of obtaining employment. He said that the issue of foreign teachers is one that they have been tracking for several years and they have been able to dramatically reduce the number of foreign Teachers in provinces such as Mpumalanga, KZN, and Limpopo. He added however that foreign teachers were helping the country by offering their assistance in an area where it was sorely needed. He said that those details can be made available to the Committee during the course of the week.

On indigenous language teaching, he said that currently in South Africa, if you get to Grade 4, you switch one of two languages of learning and teaching, either Afrikaans or English. About 80% or more learners speak languages that are none of those two languages as their mother tongues. This is a major disadvantage for them and the Department has paid careful attention to this issue. In the Eastern Cape, over the last three years, they started introducing a programme where they make learning and teaching support material available in indigenous languages. This has made a difference in their learning outcomes. There is also a language unit that was initiated by the Minister and Deputy Minister of Basic Education working with the National Education and Collaboration Trust and the Department wants to increase the introduction of indigenous learning and Teaching in all its schools.   

Deputy Minister Mhaule said that when they visited schools, most of the MST teachers were the young cohort of teachers who recently graduated and in those schools; the performance of the learners is very high. In rural areas, STEM participation is high, but in the Free State, their mathematics and science intake is very low. She said that they found that the province is strengthening the foundation, as their primary schools have labs so that their process of teaching and learning in mathematics and science can develop as the learners move into higher grades.

She said that in most schools in the country, the mathematics and science teachers are South African, although there are some pockets of foreign nationals, but the number of South African teachers is increasing because the Funza Lushaka bursary is based on the needs of the country, which are languages, MST, and commerce. The Funza Lushaka Bursary recruits according to the needs of the specific districts.

The Chairperson thanked the Deputy Minister, the Acting DG, and the presenters for their responses to the Committee’s questions and said that the meeting was an eye-opener for the Committee.

The meeting was adjourned.


 

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