Thabo Mohlala

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) seems to be on course to conclude the placement of all Grade 1 and 8 learners in the province before the end of February. At the beginning of this week, the number of the unplaced learners stood at 3,366.

Yesterday the number was whittled down to 690 and GDE’s spokesperson, Steve Mabona, told Inside Education earlier this morning that in their estimation they should have wrapped up the process by next week.

“If all goes according to plan probably we would be done with the placement of learners before the end of next week,” said Mabona.

He said this was significant progress considering the number of learners they had to place in schools across the province when the academic year started in mid-January.

“The challenge we have is lack of space to accommodate all the learners who come to the province every year. Most schools are full but we have to try and find them space. We are trying to cope with the learner influx by opening a school every month. We have specifically targeted areas that show rapid growth such as Midrand and Fourways Corridors where parents who cannot afford to take their children to private schools turn to public schools,” said Mabona.

MEC Panyaza Lesufi said they would rather deal with overcrowding than deny kids a space to learn.

Mabona said the programme of building schools is ongoing and although resources are insufficient they try to make money available by reprioritising their budget.  In a press release last week, Mabona said the main cause of the learner enrolment backlog is due to the relocation of parents from other provinces to Gauteng.  

He said the highest number of relocation is from the Free State at 61, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 56 applications and Limpopo with 51.

The department also said they received relocation of learners from countries such as Zimbabwe, Burundi and India.

Michael Gaotlhobogwe and Adri Du Toit

The African continent is home to a large number of young people – and it simply doesn’t have jobs for them all. Youth unemployment is high across the continent.

Some countries, like Nigeria and Kenya have tried to tackle this problem by equipping children with entrepreneurial skills while they’re still at school.

This equips children with essential foundational knowledge and skills such as emotional intelligence and risk taking; it also develops their appreciation for self-employment opportunities. This means that when such children find themselves in a situation where they are unemployed, they don’t give up and succumb to self-pity. Instead, they are able to use their skills to create new opportunities as entrepreneurs.

Both have long made entrepreneurship training part of their schools’ vocational subjects and technology classes. For some years, teachers in these subjects have been trained in entrepreneurship education.

Of course, inculcating a culture of entrepreneurship can’t entirely eradicate the problem of youth unemployment. But it can reduce unemployment by giving young people the skills they need to create their own businesses and generate work for themselves or others outside the formal job market.

And a large body of research from around the world has shown that entrepreneurship education should start from an early age.

We set out to see whether Botswana and South Africa could make some inroads into their youth unemployment problems by introducing entrepreneurship into their schools’ curriculum. South Africa’s youth unemployment rate stands at about 55%. Botswana’s is around 34%.

Botswana offers an optional subject called Design and Technology from junior high school level (pupils in these grades are aged between 12 and 15). In South Africa, Technology is offered as a compulsory subject at various phases of the school curriculum.

We found that the current curricula in both countries do not include explicit entrepreneurship content. On top of this teachers in these subjects aren’t trained to pass on knowledge or information about entrepreneurship. This is a real missed opportunity given that in Nigeria and Kenya the subject of technology is a good vehicle for supporting and developing pupils’ entrepreneurial skills.

Entrepreneurship in schools makes sense

In Botswana and South Africa, entrepreneurship-related programmes are offered to people who have already left school. Botswana’s government has introduced initiatives like the Youth Empowerment Scheme and the Youth Development Fund to encourage and empower young people with entrepreneurial and survival skills such as interpersonal, risk taking, emotional intelligence, as well as being able to identify opportunities, and financial skills in general.

In South Africa, the National Youth Development Agency includes an entrepreneurship development programme. This aims to help young entrepreneurs access the relevant skills, knowledge, values and attitudes needed to develop and create their own businesses. But entrepreneurship programmes are not coordinated and often not managed well in South Africa. So very few young people actually benefit from them.

In principle, the programmes are good. But they haven’t worked because the people they’re meant to benefit don’t have the right skills to take advantage of what’s being offered. This could be addressed if entrepreneurial skills were being instilled at an early age – in the school curriculum.

Use existing resources

So why don’t schools in Botswana and South Africa simply introduce an entirely new subject that’s devoted to entrepreneurship?

The reason, as we point out in our research, is that the school curriculum is a hugely contested space in any country. Many subjects are competing for space and recognition, and it’s a long, complex process to introduce an entirely new subject.

That’s why we suggest that the southern African neighbours could learn from Kenya and Nigeria by merging entrepreneurship education with an existing subject. Technology, or Design and Technology, is the ideal home for this since these subjects already incorporate a number of skills any good entrepreneur needs. These include problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork and production or making skills, which learners develop in Technology when they design and physically make a product.

When learners can see the results of applying their knowledge and skills into actual products – which could be sold or somehow used to create an income – their learning immediately becomes more valuable.

Technology teachers will need to be trained in entrepreneurship education. But this is a worthwhile investment both for the individual teachers and their own skills and the value they’ll be able to add for their pupils.

Michael Gaotlhobogwe, Senior Lecturer in Curriculum and Instruction, University of Botswana and Adri Du Toit, Lecturer in Consumer Studies and Technology Education, North-West University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Benson Ntlemo

Magangeni Primary School in the Collins Chabane municipality in Limpopo says that the success of a 13-year-old who won a national competition shows that it is the epitome of educational excellence.

Hlulani Baloyi, 13, of Malamulele Township won the Mzansi Spelling Bee Competition.

Hlulani who is in grade 7 will fly South Africa’s flag at the continental level in Kenya in June and she will fly with a representative of the school and one of the parents.

Her win was celebrated at the school this week and in attendance was Malamulele central circuit manager Shadrack Maluleke representing the Limpopo department of education.

The chairman of the school governing body Malamulele Sombhane said Hlulani made history.

“It is the first time that I have heard of that a primary school child from Malamulele flies out of South Africa after winning a national competition,” said Sombhane.

He said her win was not an isolated case but was a reflection on the school itself.

“This means that in terms of quality education we are giving it to the community we deserve the limelight that comes with Hlulani’s win,” he said.

He praised Hlulani as a crack pupil.

“She has represented the school on many occasions but this win beats all of them,” he said saying that her win at the national event did not take them by surprise.

But he said although the school did the department of education proud, they had no classrooms.

“We have requested for classrooms for many years and were put on a priority list but we were not given any,” said Sombhane/

The school has 1,270 pupils in 14 permanent classrooms and 5 mobile classes.

The school also has 34 educators.

The principal Lucky Mashaba sits in a small office with many trophies.

The shy girl said she was not going to disappoint at the continental competition.

“I am going to do my best,” she said.

Her father is Lazarus Baloyi a well-known ward councillor in the Collins Chabane municipality.

“Although it did not come as a shock to me, credit my go to the school because a pupil may be intelligent but if the school is not organised she won’t excel,” said Baloyi.

Magangeni School started in 1973 with 86 learners.

It is one of the most popular schools in Malamulele and people hire taxis to take their children to the school from far off places.

“We turn away many pupils a year who want to be admitted at the school because there is not space,” said Mashaba.

The school excelled in the National teaching awards in 2015 and 2016.

Mashaba himself became second best in the province on two occasions when for school leadership.

One of the former teachers, Morris Chauke, represented Limpopo recently in the national awards.

One of the teachers, Esther Hlungwani, became second nationally in teaching mathematics.

“The school may be situated in the old section of the township but we attract pupils from everywhere and we have produced products who are pillars of society,” said Mashaba.

He says South Africa must appreciate the role the school the school plays and must start with recognising Hlulani’s achievement.

“She has become like Oscarine Masuluke who represented his people,” he said.