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New programme launched to help reduce the high rate of graduate unemployment

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New programme launched to help reduce the high rate of graduate unemployment

Thabo Mohlala

One of the common reasons graduates struggle to find employment is the misalignment of their expectations and those of the potential employers, said Sabelo Mbuku, head of communications at the Transport Education and Training Authority (Teta).

Mbuku was talking to SABC news on Friday about the Work Readiness Programme (WRP) which Teta has introduced to help graduates adequately prepare for the job market. The programme provides graduates with soft skills that most take for granted but which, he says, are crucial to ensure they are ready to work.

Mbuku said qualifications are just certification of one’s academic achievements but they are not enough to land a graduate a job. He said employers wanted someone who will hit the ground running and help the company to achieve or increase its profit margins.

“Qualifications somehow get into one’s [graduate’s] head because you raise your expectations based on them and forget that the employer is more concerned with productivity and profits. And now when you walk into that company and are not ready to deliver to the expectations of the company -irrespective of your qualifications -; chances are you may not get the job because in the eyes of the employer you are not ready for the job. You need to be prepared so that when you get employed you become productive and this is what will excite the employer,” said Mbuku.

Nomalungelo Nkabinde, one of the beneficiaries of the programme, shared her experiences. Qualified with a diploma in logistics, she said she also struggled to find a job. She said things changed for the better when she decided to volunteer instead of looking for a fulltime job. She underwent two months’ theoretical programme and spent four months with the host employer to gain practical experience and she finally got placed.

She said she found this very helpful as it exposed her to a real work situation, adding that graduates need to change their attitudes. “To me, attitude is everything, for instance, when I started on this programme I used to earn R2, 500, which is sponsored by Teta. And when I told other graduates they looked at me with disbelief because they felt it was too little,” said Nkabinde.

“When you have high expectations you are going to look at things like salaries; that I have a Masters’ degree and I should be earning so much. And only to realise that you have to start at the low end and that will certainly cause some discomfort. So we need to close that gap so that we increase the appetite and help you to tone down your expectations to realistic levels,” said Mbuku.

He said a graduate who has gone through the programme not only has a point of reference but is also taught how to apply for a job and this opens up opportunities for an interview.  “And by the time you are interviewed for a potential employment in the future, you have been through all these processes. It is no longer a shock for you and so you’ve got to be ready before the opportunity comes because when that opportunity presents itself and you are not ready, you might miss it and it may not come back again,” added Mbuku.

He said in most instances when graduates walked into a workplace they realised their expectations could not be met as they thought. What WRP does is to get them to minimise their expectations by giving them valuable soft skills that prepare them for the work environment.

Hoërskool Overvaal: It is not just about capacity but also diversity, says SECTION27 attorney

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Hoërskool Overvaal: It is not just about capacity but also diversity, says SECTION27 attorney

Thabo Mohlala

Schools are public bodies that are not only obliged to provide quality basic education but are also dutybound to address the issue of cultural diversity said Bhavna Ramji, an attorney with SECTION27.

Ramji was speaking to SABC News on Friday morning during a wide-ranging interview on education. Talking about the Hoërskool Overvaal situation, where there is a racial standoff, Ramji said although the judgment of the case has not been released to the public in written form, there were important and pertinent factors that school managers needed to understand.

She said beyond the issue of capacity, which was the main reason Hoerskool Overvaal advanced the current impasse, was the question of diversity. Ramji said schools were under an obligation in terms of the Constitution to ensure they accommodated cultural diversity.

“So let us say the Hoerskool Overvaal can’t accommodate these learners, they still have an obligation to ensure that they can provide a sufficient and culturally diverse programme for the learners who are from different backgrounds,” said Ramji.

Ramji also weighed on the issue of the influx of learners in provinces such as Gauteng and the Western Cape which places financial stress on the education departments to place learners at schools across the province. She said one of the main causes is the poor standard of education in the rural areas.

“There are huge problems going on in the rural schools from the way in which they are funded, not having efficient and reliable scholar transport to post provisioning which means not having enough teachers. And this has created a very real perception among parents that it is better to send their children elsewhere. So you have an equal distribution of learners across the country”, said Ramji

She said until we recognised and addressed the quality of education in rural areas as a starting point the problem would persist.

“I think that seriously we have to consider the quality of rural education in this country; that should be our starting point. It is not normal to have a situation where kids are being sent hundreds of kilometres away from their families to live with distant relatives and attend schools in other provinces, particularly where they learning in a language other than their own. Remember children have a right not just to basic education but also a right to learn in the language of their choice,” said Ramji.

She said moving children to areas that were perceived to provide quality education could be costly for parents. It is not only about physical dislocation but it also places children at a disadvantage when it comes to the issue of language.

“It is often there is a perception among parents that for a child to learn in English is equivalent to them actually learning English. But often not learning in mother tongue often places the child at a severe disadvantage which then takes to not admission which we look at the beginning of the year but something that we look at the end of the year which is quality of education and educational outcomes,” said Ramji.

Hoërskool Overvaal: School community fears protests will impact on learning

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Hoërskool Overvaal: School community fears protests will impact on learning

Thabo Mohlala

Amid calls to halt the standoff outside the premises of the beleaguered Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeniging, Congress of South African Students (Cosas) upped the ante and threatened to intensify its protest action.

Parents, teachers and other role players are calling for decisive steps before the confrontation spills into the classroom and disrupts learning and teaching.

The comments made by Cosas’s greater Johannesburg region chairperson, Penuel Maduna, Friday morning during an interview with 702 gave substance to the concern. Maduna was responding to allegations that one of its members issued a call to members of the organisation to attack white people.

Although he conceded the call was made by one its members, who will face disciplinary action. 

Maduna said however, that the call was a direct response to some white parents who were seen armed with guns outside the school premises. Some protestors were armed with knobkieries.

Maduna said the problem could have long been nipped in the bud had the minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, taken heed of Cosas’s request to prevent schools from using Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

“We don’t have a problem with the department itself. The only problem is the minister of education because we have been writing letters to her department asking her to change the language policy so that English is the only medium of instruction in all the South African. And that all other languages must be treated equally, we cannot have schools that use Afrikaans while there are no schools that use our African languages. And we are saying that we can no longer be romantic about this issue nor can we continue to write letters because those white people have declared war against us by carrying weapons. We see this as a declaration of war,” said Maduna.

He said they were going to take on the fight against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction as the generation of 1976 did against the apartheid government, adding: “There is nothing special about Afrikaans”.  

Maduna vowed they would do everything in their power to make sure the school does not function until they have appointed their own interim principal.

Meanwhile, Suid Afrikaanse Onderwyser-Unie (Saou) has put the blame of the escalating violent protest at the school at the door of Gauteng MEC of education, Panyaza Lesufi. In the statement released late yesterday, the teacher union said Lesufi wanted to achieve his objective of placing 55 learners at all costs even though he was told Hoërskool Overvaal has reached its capacity.

“Lesufi made it clear from the outset that he intended to achieve his objective: the placing of 55 English learners at an Afrikaans high school which is already full. His insistence on taking the school to court and involving the learners in the process directly fomented the resultant emotional violence on the part of the parents and community at large following the court judgment” read the statement.

The union said by targeting Afrikaans as a language, Lesufi betrayed his “political agendas” as this matter had very little to do with the “supply of quality education for all in the province”.

Saou further said: “At no point has Panyaza Lesufi or his department answered the obvious question: Why have sufficient numbers of schools not been timeously built to meet ever-growing numbers of learners needing to be placed? Is the MEC aware of the Education realities that obtain in his province? In the current year alone no fewer than between 20-30 new schools are required to begin to address the need.”

About 27 people have been arrested since the protests started on Wednesday.

“No to bogus colleges”: Buti Manamela shuts down illegal institutions in Joburg

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“No to bogus colleges”: Buti Manamela shuts down illegal institutions in Joburg

Bonile Khanyi

Deputy minister of higher education Buti Manamela shut down an alleged bogus college in Johannesburg on Friday morning.

In a video published by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) on Twitter, Manamela was seen confronting the owner of the Johannesburg City College in Braamfontein and ordered him to shut it down with immediate effect. The college was not registered with the department to operate as an institution of higher learning.

Speaking to Inside Education, Manamela said this was part of his nationwide public awareness campaign aimed at enforcing compliance with the relevant legislation in the private college sector.

“We shut down the college this morning because it is not registered with the department of higher education or with any of the Skills Education Training Authorities (Sete’s) or with Umalusi,” said Manamela.

“This is part of an overall campaign that we are running as a department to alert particularly the poor and the working class, people who are the most taken advantage of by these colleges,” said Manamela.

Manamela urged students to be careful when applying for a course at an institution of higher learning.

“We urge students and prospective students to find out from the department whether or not the college has been registered and the programs that it offers have been accredited.”

Manamela said the department opened a case against the owner of the college over a year ago.

“We have since opened a case about a year or two ago with the police against the owner of the college, the matter is before the court and we hope that we’ll be successful in court because we do not believe that this college should be operating,” Manamela said.

Also on Friday morning, Manamela found Sandton Technical College was running illegally too after inspecting its documents. He gave them “a certain amount of time to comply with the rules and regulations of the department” or ship out.

The minister also said the campaign would be extended to the rest of the country under the #NoToBogusColleges after a twitter user asked him to raid institutions of higher learning in Durban Central.

Hoërskool Overvaal: SAHRC says protesters must be peaceful

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Hoërskool Overvaal: SAHRC says protesters must be peaceful

Bonile Khanyi

Protesters have every right to be outside Hoërskool Overvaal but they must demonstrate peacefully.

This is what Advocate André Gaum, Commissioner of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) responsible for Basic Education, said on Thursday morning. Tensions have calmed after protest action flared up for a second day at the school after 8 were injured and 10 were arrested on Wednesday.

Speaking on Power FM, Gaum said he met with the principal, demonstrators and police. He said he made it clear to the principal that the protesters had every right to be there but also told the protesters they had to be responsible. Gaum said he told protestors to be peaceful and non-threatening.

No one from the school’s management team has met with the protesters.

Education MEC, Panyaza Lesufi said on Wednesday, that communication between him and the school broke down.

There was a standoff between parents and protestors early on Thursday.

ANC and EFF supporters took to the streets on the first day of school, to express their frustration over a court ruling that the Afrikaans-medium school did not have to admit 55 English-speaking pupils, despite the Gauteng education department’s instruction to do so.

The School’s Governing Body (SGB) is claimed there wasn’t enough space to accommodate the additional 55 learners.

According to recent media reports, the arrested group is expected to appear in the Vereeniging magistrate’s court on Thursday.

 

Angie Motshekga: Technical high schools are very important for the economy

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Angie Motshekga: Technical high schools are very important for the economy

Thabo Mohlala

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) will give special attention to technical high schools because they are poised to play a vital role in the country’s broader economic growth plan. This is according to basic education minister Angie Motshekga, who spoke during her visit to Hebron Technical College in the North West Province on Wednesday.

The school which is part of Madibeng sub-district under Bojanala district, attained 55,2% in the recent 2017 matric results. This was the lowest mark in the region and is believed to have impacted the North West’s overall 2017 National Senior Certificate (NSC).

Motshekga said the main reason for the poor performance was that the school did not have a principal for a long time. She said a new principal with requisite qualification has already been appointed with the specific brief to improve the school pass rate.

Motshekga said technical colleges are expensive to run but her department is determined to assist them to operate optimally to fulfil their key economic roles. She said the North West MEC of education, Sello Lehari, put together a strong team comprising municipality officials and big business to provide the necessary support and revitalise the technical colleges.

“Technical schools are very important to us, we have embarked aggressively on three streamed curriculum where we really want to do the best with technical schools. They are very expensive to run though they are extremely important to our economy. So it really concerns us if they don’t perform because we have put them at the centre of our work. It is really to find out what more can be done to get them to perform to their optimum,” said Motshekga.

Motshekga said the other purpose of the visit was to congratulate farm schools that did well during the NSC examinations and also motivated those that performed poorly. Two schools that produced outstanding matric results are Machadam Farm School in Mooi Nooi which obtained 100% pass rate in 2016 and 2017 and the Madikete High School in Maboloka which scored 82.5% in the NSC.

The provincial department, Motshekga said, has established a Directorate of Rural Education to specifically focus and provide targeted interventions to farm schools as particularly those that they decided not to close them down.

Motshekga’s sentiments resonate with her counterparts in the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). Both Minister Hlengiwe Mkhize and her deputy, Buti Manamela, also highlighted the need to beef up the TVET sector to accommodate learners who did not qualify for university.

This is part of the post-schooling education and training (PSET), which forms the cornerstone of the DHET’s strategic objective of creating a workforce of young people with skills set that meet the needs of the business community and the broader economy.

During his visit to the Capricorn TVET college Manamela emphasised the need to invest more resource to meet the growing demand shown by young people for training and vocational education.

He told Inside Education that TVET colleges statistics increased from 350,000 to at least 750,000 over the past four years.

“This shows that more people are responding to TVET colleges, therefore we need to respond to that,” he said.

But the huge and sudden demand for spaces at these colleges has also exposed the weaknesses in the system chief of which is lack of capacity of the TVET sector to accommodate the students.

The stampede at the Capricorn TVET college and the influx of students at Motheo TVET college in the Free State are a case in point.

Free State education MEC vows to retain the number one spot

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Free State education MEC vows to retain the number one spot

Thabo Mohlala

Free State education MEC, Tate Makgoe, made a bold commitment yesterday that his department would retain its pole position for the third time in a row as the best performing province in 2018.

Still basking in the glory of his department’s 2017 matric exam victory, Makgoe spoke at Rehauhetswe Secondary School in Rammulotsi, Viljoenskroon to kick off the start of the 2018 academic year. The school is one of those that contributed to the province’s high pass rate with a 100% pass rate.

Speaking to SABC TV, Makgoe said he was extremely excited that schools performing well in the province were in township communities. He said this was a great motivation for black children and a sign they can hold their own against children from well-resourced areas.

“You must remember that 85% of our schools are no-fee paying schools and so when you see schools such as Rehauhetswe Secondary giving us 100% pass rate, we get very excited. We are saying to all the black children in the province of the Free State, it can be achieved and I am very proud that this year we have 20 similar poor township based schools that gave us solid 100% pass rate. We want to inculcate the culture in our learners that you don’t look back; you just have to look forward and achieve what you want to achieve,” said Makgoe

He said the high pass rate has created healthy competition and set the bar high for the learners and schools and encouraged them to continue to work hard and produce better results. He said this could also be attributed to the critical role that the districts play in supporting the schools.

“It is not surprising that the best district (Fezile Dabi) in South Africa comes from the Free State. The second best district (Thabo Mafutsanyana) comes from the Free State and that the only two districts that got 90% come from here. Clearly, we are on the league of our own, what we need to focus on on a continuous basis is to work on our primary schools so that we have more and more learners getting bachelors passes,” said Makgoe.

He said he was excited that schools from other parts of the province were also contributing to the overall pass rate. Take, for instance, Rantsane High School in QwaQwa, which he said produced 100% pass rate and 91% bachelors passes and Mohaladitwe Secondary School, which gave them a 100% pass rate and 85% bachelors.

“It is exciting that township schools are setting high performance standards for other township schools, added Makgoe.

Makgoe said they made sure that all resources needed for learning and teaching have been delivered to schools days before teaching commenced.

“Our systems are rolling; learner study materials and textbooks have been delivered. There might be shortages here and there because of the constantly growing numbers of our learner population,” he said.

Makgoe said they experienced phenomenal growth in the number of learners because of the good matric pass passes his department produced. “

We have learners from other provinces such as Gauteng, Eastern Cape and others and this growth is bound to put our resources under stress,” he said.

Makgoe vowed the Free State “will again in 2018 achieve the 90% pass rate and the 40% bachelor rate and the latter has been eluding us and we are going to be working very hard to achieve it. We’ve already been working with grade 11s, who are in grade 12 this year, they have been attending camps and they are ready to give us good results”, adding that “determination is much more important than resources in this game of education”.

 

 

Spark Schools network fuels parents’ anger over enrolment mess-up

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Spark Schools network fuels parents’ anger over enrolment mess-up

Vicky Abraham

Parents of children enrolled at Spark Schools in Gauteng were left disappointed and confused when their children’s names did not appear on the registration roll, the day before schools started.

This was despite receiving emails from Spark Schools that their children had been accepted at different campuses around the province.

Distraught parents, bemoaned on the school’s Facebook media page that they had already bought school uniforms for their children because they were convinced that they had been accepted by the school. Also on the Facebook page, the school network informed parents it would not be accepting walk-in complaints and that parents should send their queries via email or over the telephone.

Nana Mashaba’s daughter had to return home on Wednesday morning as her name did not reflect in the admission list.

“Three ladies at the registration desk requested my daughter’s name and I gave them her name. Unfortunately, when they looked on the system my child’s name was not there. I was told that I need to phone the enrolment department to find out what is happening. I have been calling them since morning and they told me that I must just go home with the child because they are working on the system so that they can place her in the class. They could see that I have paid school fees, so the only thing that they have to do is to put the child in the classroom and allocate a class for her,” said Mashaba.

Mashaba said: “I am very disappointed because I woke up early in the morning and I arrived here at 6am. I was excited because as a parent I wanted to see my first child going to school. My daughter was very ecstatic, but now she has to go back home, and she is feeling sad and she was crying. She asked me ‘Mama why am I not joining the queue (other children), why am I going back home?’ I explained to her that I did everything right, but things didn’t work out properly, and I have been trying to get her a classroom.”

Spark Schools were inundated with calls and messages on social media from discouraged parents who were frustrated that they do not know where to take their children to as most schools had already closed for registration. They demanded the school to refund the fees they had already paid.

According to the Sparks Schools website, the annual fee is R21 000 for 2018 and the monthly tuition fee is R2 100.

 

Brian Khazamula and Manale Mabaso whose daughter was supposed to start her Grade R today at Turfontein, said: “We have done the application and paid the fees. We knew our child has to be at school today, but when we arrived here they told us we have to phone and confirm the registration. That is something that has to be done by the administration department not us. We are very frustrated, we have to go back home, and she will start her classes tomorrow.”

“She was excited when she came to school. But now her mood is dampened. She asked, ‘why am I going back home, isn’t this my school’. We had to create a story that her class starts tomorrow,” said Mabaso.

In response to parents’ displeasure, the Spark School team sent out a message to parents on Facebook notifying them they were aware of their concerns.

“We are aware that many of you do have queries regarding enrolment applications, and the first day of school. Should you have queries regarding enrolment please email registrar@sparkschools.co.za or phone 010 125 0600. We are experiencing high call volumes, so we do apologise if you are not answered immediately. Should you have any school-specific queries please contact your child’s school specifically. You can view contact details at the following page https://www.sparkschools.co.za/contact-us/. Please note that we will not assist any parents who come to the SPARK Schools Support offices. Any queries can only be managed via phone or email. We do thank you for your patience at this time,” wrote the Spark Schools’ team.

Spark School’s media team, Ogilvy Public Relations did not respond to questions sent to them before going to press.

Back to school: Chaos at some schools while others hit the ground running

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Back to school: Chaos at some schools while others hit the ground running

Thabo Mohlala

The first day of school resembled a mixed bag: some schools were ready while others look like they would still need a couple of days to sort themselves out. Experts say schools that hit the ground running on the first day tend to well at the end of the year.

Inside Education visited some schools randomly around Eldorado Park and Pimville to gauge the level of preparedness of each school. The first stop was at Klipspruit West Secondary, which was a site of racial confrontations between Coloured parents and Black teachers. The situation looked calm from the outside with police within the school premises.

An official who said he was deployed from the district office was stationed at the gate. He said although the situation was normal he was concerned about the late-coming of the learners who could be seen strolled in 15 minutes after the school started at 8am.

The situation looked chaotic at Eldocrest Primary School. Parents could still be seen registering their children and some learners were loitering outside classes. One of the school managers, who didn’t want to mention his name because he is not permitted to speak to the media, blamed the situation on factors beyond their control. “Parents did not heed the department’s call to register online and they only come to do so today. The other main contributing factor is that most parents choose to register their learners here because we are a no-fee school and we also run feeding schemes. So we cater for learners from the impoverished surrounding informal settlements,” she said.

The next stop was at Progressive Comprehensive Secondary School in Pimville Zone 4. The school did not seem to be ready for teaching at all. A sizable number of learners were outside their classrooms and some could be seen carrying orange chairs moving from one classroom to another. In the administration block, parents and learners formed queues to deal with a range of problems they wanted to be sorted out before they start with classes.

One of the teachers said one of the main reasons they could not teach was because they should first “sort” the learners. “We are trying to ensure we get a proper mix of the learners to avoid ethnicity. For instance, in this classroom here, majority of learners are Tsongas and Sothos. We need to dilute that and bring in learners from other tribes. The danger is if you leave it without diversifying them you would end up with one ethnic group in majority and often this breeds tribal tensions and at times fights. Teachers as well would develop negative attitudes towards the class or display favouritism based on those dynamics,” he said. He blamed this on the administrative staff who he thinks can balance the mix early on so that learning can start on the first day.

Wisani and Tshebedisano Primary Schools, also based in Pimville, seemed to have their ducks in the row. The premises were neat and quiet with only the cleaners and some ground staff members going about their chores. Although some teachers were issuing learning materials to learners, teaching was in progress in other classes.

One of the managers of one of the schools said the secret to getting things right on the first day is advance planning. “I didn’t go on holidays and the aim was to precisely prepare for this day. I didn’t just focus on the administrative side of things; I also made sure the yard does not look deserted. I personally cut the grass and trimmed the trees in the yard. Before we closed for December holidays, I made sure we have sorted out issues around time-table, which is very crucial to ensure teaching starts on the first of schooling,” he said.

Parent provokes EFF and ANC protesters at Hoërskool Overvaal and gets punched

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Parent provokes EFF and ANC protesters at Hoërskool Overvaal and gets punched

Bonile Khanyi

The first day of school at Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeninging turned violent when a parent and protesters had a scuffle. 

The man, who was dropping off his daughter, threw a zap sign at the group of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and African National Congress (ANC) supporters who were outside the school protesting against the school’s Afrikaans-only language policy. The parent also tried to stop a black parent from driving past the school. He was then punched. 

 

EFF supporters were demonstrating outside the school, to voice out their frustrations about the recent ruling by the North Gauteng High court to set aside the Gauteng education department’s decision to force the school to enrol an additional 55 pupils.

Judge Bill Prinsloo said based on the overwhelming weight of the evidence‚ the Afrikaans-medium school had no capacity to admit the English-speaking learners‚ let alone to do so at such short notice and to convert to a double-medium school.

But many are not happy with this decision as they say it is blatant discrimination and racism.

Police used stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd after violence broke out.

 

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