IN August 2021, a six-year-old grade one learner in South Africa was raped, allegedly by a general worker in her school’s toilet. Public shock and outrage at the ongoing onslaught against children has brought renewed attention to young girls’ particular vulnerability to sexual violence.

One in five children are victims of sexual abuse in South Africa, representing 19.8% compared to a global average of 18% for girls and 8% for boys.

In the 2019/2020 Annual Crime Statistics report, more than 24,000 children were sexually assaulted in South Africa. Statistics are not readily available for schools and there is a great deal of under-reporting but it’s estimated that 22.2% of school children have been victims of violence.

Rape and other forms of violence in and around schools reflect a broader problem in the country.

At a joint sitting of parliament on gender-based violence in 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa described the crisis of sexual violence as brutal war against women and girls.

But despite political and financial will to end the crisis, the problem remains widespread.

What’s behind this epidemic of sexual violence against children and what can be done about it?

In South Africa, the majority of rapes are committed by men.

This points to gender dynamics and the masculine norms that are allowed to flourish within families, communities and the broader social and cultural context of the country.

Men may be the problem, but they are part of the solution too.

What’s needed is to start early to invest in boys’ and girls’ capacities to transform the norms which give rise to sexual entitlement and rape.

This must happen in families, communities, through the media and online technologies and in schools. We have to alter the strong ideological grip that shapes male power based on subordination of others. Not all men rape and not all men are violent. The key is to address gender inequalities across institutions offering new ideals based on the potential to be different and peaceable.

Gender inequalities at school

By the time boys and girls start school, they have already learnt that men and women do not enjoy equal status in society. Prevalent cultural practices combine with patriarchy to produce a version of male power based on sexual entitlement, misogyny and violence which limits girls’ agency.

A recently published book that I co-edited, Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces, highlights evidence of the everyday struggles of boys and girls. It examines the ways in which gender and sexuality give rise to difference, inequalities and violence.

Boys and girls learn that men are often the heads of households or provide financial support.

Even in the absence of men from families, male power remains a cultural ideal.

In this gendered system of power, girls and “weaker” boys are often targeted through emotional, physical, sexual, and verbal forms of violence.

While boys and girls are both perpetrators and victims of violence, we found that there are huge gender disparities in the experience of violence, making schools very unsafe for girls.

This is not to say all boys and girls passively accept their circumstances. They often fight back and resist. But they need support from a young age to stop the violence. And schools play a role in this intervention.

Schools also reinforce these inequalities.

The violence comes in many forms in a culture that values girls less than boys. In previous research, girls told me they experienced everyday sexual harassment in the classroom, in the playground and in the school corridors and toilets.

Groping, fondling, touching body parts in sexualised ways, cat-calling, slut-shaming and coercive sexual practices are part of the rape culture at school. Girls experience violence from boys and are vulnerable to the sexual advances of male teachers.

Reporting sexual violence in schools

Between April 2020 and July 2021, more than 160 cases of sexual misconduct perpetrated by male teachers were reported to the South African Council for Educators.

When sexual violence is reported in schools, evidence suggests that teachers themselves are afraid to pursue the matter. Their fears stem from threats of violence from members of the community.

The mandatory requirement that adults must report sexual violence to the police remains problematic as a direct consequence of intimidation and fear of reprisals. Sexual violence remains under-reported and under-studied.

Facing the issue

Schools are in a contradictory position. On the one hand cases highlight how unsafe schools are and how detached the schooling experience is from the quest for gender equality.

But schools are also spaces to allow for the development of critical capacities where people should learn new ways of doing things.

What if schools and teachers were able to address sexual violence from the time children started school, instead of regarding these issues as not part of teachers’ work?

At the heart of the issue for boys, girls and teachers is to confront, from a very young age, the question of sex, sexuality and gender.

Reflecting on dominant patterns could begin to change them at school and in life generally. To see children as victims without the capacity to act on their circumstances is to fail them.

If teachers can talk about sex to young children in ways that bring attention to its ties to gender and violence, it might give children confidence to report instances of sexual violence and rape.

Approaching the problem requires an understanding of the complex entanglements between the personal, the social and the political context.

A quest for gender equality and an end to sexual violence takes determined collaborative effort to bring different institutions together.

The Conversation

THE 15-year-old schoolboy, who fatally stabbed a Grade 8 student from Pholosho Junior Secondary School in Alexandra, has been remanded in custody at a Child and Youth Centre.

On Monday, Qhayiye Mgaye was stabbed to death at the school. 
The accused who has been charged with murder, appeared for a preliminary inquiry at the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday..

The matter was postponed to 8 September, when the accused will appear before the Child Justice Court.

Phindi Mjonondwane, a spokesperson for the NPA in Gauteng, said the pupil was charged with murder, and a preliminary inquiry was held.

“The state alleges that the death of the fellow learner ensued from a fight between the accused and some learners within the school premises during lunchtime, wherein the accused fetched a sharp object and stabbed the fellow learner.

“The learner was remanded in custody at a Child and Youth Centre until 8 September 2021, when the matter will be heard in the Child Justice Court,” said Mjonondwane

A spokesperson for the victim’s family told Power FM that they wanted to meet with the family of the murder accused, and they also believed that the teachers could have done more to prevent the incident.

He said the family was demanding answers from the school, and they also said violence would not solve a trying.

The deceased pupil will be buried next week in the Eastern Cape.

Meanwhile, Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi, earlier in the week, condemned the fatal stabbing of the Grade 8 pupil and conveyed his condolences to the family of the deceased Grade 8 pupil.

“We vehemently condemn the violent behaviour which led to the death of a learner allegedly, at the hands of his peer on school grounds. It is absolutely unacceptable. The SGB must investigate this incident and take necessary disciplinary action against the perpetrator,” said Lesufi.

He has met with the school and the family of the deceased.

The Department of Basic Education plans to boost its maths and science capabilities after schools fell further behind in these subjects due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Presenting to parliament this week, the department said that matric performance in these two subjects has been low for several years, with 12 districts specifically targeted because they were under-performing.

The department said it has now developed a new training programme to help assist these districts, including a collaboration with Cuban specialists to design new course materials for maths and science at schools.

An online training course has also been developed for subject advisors in Grade 8 and Grade 9.

Data published by the Telkom Foundation in August shows the Covid-19 pandemic has also hurt school learners in the critical areas of mathematics and science.

The data reveals that the lack of face-to-face learning under lockdown has seen high-school learners regressing.

“The Telkom Foundation has been monitoring data from schools we support across the country since 2018,” said Sarah Mthintso, chief executive of the Telkom Foundation.

“Regrettably, we have seen the negative impact of the pandemic – and the unavoidable closure of schools – has had on learning.”

Globally, the World Bank estimates that the closure of schools affected 1.6 billion learners. South Africa was among those countries forced to impose strict lockdown conditions, which halted classroom learning.

The Telkom Foundations initial diagnostic assessments conducted with grade 9 found that several learners had deficiencies in math and science, many of which were carried from the intermediate phase at primary school, impacting their ability to excel in these subjects.

This meant that the Foundation had to focus on both grade-level and remedial approaches to close the gaps. The grade 9 learners surveyed showed an improvement from a Grade 3 level understanding to a grade 5 level before the impact of the Covid pandemic.

“Over the years, we have seen learner improvement as a result of this targeted hybrid approach, however with Covid-19 restrictions and learners missing contact learning time, some have regressed in key areas, particularly problem solving, algebra and measurement,” said Mthintso.

Dropouts 

In addition to subject performance issues, the department also raised concerns around the number of learner dropouts and lost teaching time.

About 80% of learning was lost in 2020, while 50% of the 2021 school has been lost for many learners, it said.

Civil society organisations and education experts have now published an open letter to the Department of Basic Education warning about the high drop-out rate in South Africa’s schools.

The letter, which was published in the Daily Maverick, argues that Covid-19 school closures, coupled with the economic shocks of the pandemic, have exacerbated a dropout crisis “long in the making”.

The group called for a coordinated national dropout prevention plan to help address these losses.

“Even before the pandemic, available figures suggested that four out of 10 learners who started school in Grade 1 would drop out before completing matric,” the group said. “The number of learners who have not re-enrolled due to Covid-19 exacerbates this worrying trend.”

The group added that the number of South Africa’s dropouts is still not clear – varying widely from the government’s official figure of 300,000 learners to upwards of 750,000 learners in the latest NIDS-CRAM survey.

To address these and other issues, the group recommended the following interventions:

Encourage community involvement in getting learners back to class by leveraging structures like street committees and churches to help trace learners who are unaccounted for;Develop uniform attendance monitoring systems (until Grade 12), from the national level all the way to schools, to get a real sense of the scope of learner disengagement and dropout;Revise the curriculum to promote learning recovery, in consultation with the latest data from the DBE’s curriculum audit – as well as subject specialists, teachers, curriculum developers and other stakeholders;Initiate a sustained and comprehensive, data-driven, Back-to-School plan (until Grade 12) to reach learners who have dropped out and to assist them with re-enrolment. This must include the development of a national psychosocial support strategy that is linked to an early warning system;Hold regular discussions about “Care and Support in Schools” at national and provincial levels;Establish a learnership on how to use data to inform interventions. Capacitate school staff to use data, with the necessary infrastructure and human resources for data collection and management in place;Make dropout prevention an explicit goal of the education system. Dropout should be a key performance indicator for provincial education departments, and the national department must set reduction targets to hold officials accountable.

Curriculum recovery plan 

The opposition Democratic Alliance called for a curriculum recovery plan to help make up for lost teaching time.

The party said schools lost 50-75% of learning time in 2020, and the 2021 educational year is following the same track. It warned that foundation education learners are expected to suffer the most in their following school years if this is not addressed.

“The Department of Basic Education must ensure that the provinces and various district circuits engage with teaching staff to truly understand the various schools in every district’s specific needs and concerns in completing the curriculum and to find solutions in bridging those shortfalls.

“The provincial departments must also ensure that the districts engage with their local municipalities to find safe public spaces where extra measures to increase learning time could be implemented.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the growing chasms in South Africa’s schooling system, and nearly two years of broken learning time has exacerbated the challenges learners face in getting a quality education, it said.

“The minister and her department need to ensure that their time is well-spent in finding innovative solutions to the crisis.

“World-wide innovative solutions have been found, and there are many schools in South Africa that have also risen to the challenge. The minister must take inspiration from these innovations and ensure that no child would be left behind.”

HIGHER Education, Science and Innovation Minister Blade Nzimande says different departments are finalising their skills and innovation strategies to support government’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP).

“The Department of Higher Education and Training is finalising the Skills Strategy, whilst the Department of Science and Innovation is finalising the Innovation Strategy,” Nzimande said.

Nzimande said the Department of Higher Education and Training has generated the scarce, critical skills, and occupations in high demand lists to guide programme offerings and student enrolments in the Post School Education and Training (PSET) institutions.

While this work is underway, the Minister said targets are set for the placement of graduates in work places so that they are work-ready for easy absorption into the world of work, given that “the lack of work experience is often the barrier to securing gainful and permanent employment among young people”.

He said that entrepreneurship hubs are being established at Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges to support students to move into self-employment after completing their programmes.

The Minister said both the universities and TVET Colleges curricula are strengthened to be relevant to skills required by the national economy and that of the world.

“This is to ensure that the PSET sector produces world class graduates who, more importantly, are able to participate and grow the South African local economy and help in the local job creation drive and the implementation of the ERRP.

“At various intervals our universities align their study programmes to these national priorities, whilst our TVET colleges are gradually aligning their programme offerings to the needs of local employers and communities,” Nzimande said.

The Minister noted that some of these changes are happening within current programme offerings, whilst many colleges are introducing new occupational offerings that are in demand within their specific local economic context.

“In addition, there has been an extensive review of much of the TVET curricula to make them relevant and keep them current, and this will continue for the next several years. The focus at the moment is on digital and related skills to meet job demands driven by the 4th Industrial Revolution,” Nzimande said.

He added that the Department of Higher Education and Training also initiated different programmes aimed at encouraging young people to become artisans.

“In 2014 we launched the Decade of the Artisan at Ekurhuleni East TVET college which is a campaign that seeks to promote artisanship as a career of choice for South Africa’s youth as well as highlight skills development opportunities for artisans.

“This was aimed at developing qualified artisans to support the South African economy, particularly in light of the successful implementation of the Strategic Infrastructure Projects (SPIs). The theme of this campaign was “It’s cool to be a 21st century artisan,” Nzimande highlighted.

In 2017, the department started with the establishment of Centres of Specialisation in more than 20 colleges focusing on 13 designated trades.

Centres of Specialisation in the TVET College sector is a programme which aims to inform college differentiation, promote quality teaching and learning, facilitate responsiveness and provide a model for the implementation of Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTOs) trade qualifications at the same time, as it develops artisanal skills.

In relation to artisan training, Nzimande said in the 2018/2019 financial year, the number of registrations was at 29 982. However, due to economic slowdown and COVID-19, the number dropped to 16 218 in 2019/2020 year and is expected to further drop in 2020/2021 year, due to the current pandemic. – SAnews.gov.za

THE basic education sector has been hit so incredibly hard by COVID-19 that it has reversed the gains in education made over the past 20 years, casting a critical light on everything from equity issues to ed tech to school financing, according to Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.

Motshekga held a media briefing to spell out the basic education sector’s response to the impact of COVID-19 on schooling.

“The unpredicted closures of our schools, and the unplanned disruptions to teaching and learning, have resulted in the reversal of gains made in the last 20 years,” said Motshekga.

“Research indicates that lost school days, lead to foregone learning losses. International experience confirms learning losses experienced during pandemics, lead to long-term adverse effects,
including learners obtaining lower overall educational value, and ultimately lower lifetime earnings.”

According to the recent World Bank study, school closures due to COVID-19 have brought significant disruptions to education across Europe and other western countries.

Emerging evidence from some of the region’s highest-income countries indicate that the pandemic is giving rise to learning losses and increases in inequality.

To reduce and reverse the long-term negative effects, the Ukraine and other less-affluent lower-middle-income countries, which are likely to be even harder hit, needed to implement learning recovery programs, protect educational budgets, and prepare for future shocks by “building back better.”

Motshekga said in South Africa, government must also indicate that social distancing requirements, remain a challenge in some schools, but we continue to work with the Department of Health and other stakeholders to explore solutions in this regard.

“No one can deny the resurgence of COVID cases in
isolated parts of the country, which affect our schools. For instance, the Phoenix area in the Umlazi District in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Motheo District in the Free State, are cause for concern,” said Motshekga.

“The Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, continue to record high community infections, resulting in the temporary closures of schools. Other than this, the system has remained stable and functional, despite persisting learning losses attributable to the COVID-19
pandemic.”

She said the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) met on Friday to consider inputs from stakeholders, following rounds of  consultations, regarding the already amended School Calendar for the 2021 academic year.

“We wish to remind South Africans that the determination of School Calendars, is a statutory process, which involves extensive consultations with the Sector’s critical stakeholders,” she said.

“Three options emerged from the consultations; and these were presented to the CEM for consideration. In the end CEM agreed that the amended 2021 School Calendar MUST be retained as it was from its very last amendment – that the October vacation, will not be interfered with.”

CEM further recommended that the lost number of
school days, should be recovered at District and school-level, but with reasonableness, said Motshekga.

Motshekga said there was new evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM), which is a broadly
representative study or survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on South Africa, that more school-aged children are not attending school than usual.

“It is not yet clear whether this is temporary non-attendance, or may become permanent (dropout)
from schooling. In the long run, the learning losses in primary school, may lead to an increase in dropout, when these children reach the Further Education and Training (FET) Band at Grades 10, 11 and 12,” she said.

“What we know at this point, is that learners with weak learning foundations, begin to drop-out in more significant numbers, as they progress through the Grades. This creates an urgent need to recover learning that has been lost.”

The minister said the first step towards addressing the crisis of lost learning, is to prevent further disruptions to school time, and prevent other learning losses.

“Experts keep on reminding us that children are less
susceptible to COVID-19 infections. Our efforts to introduce comprehensive safety protocols in schools, and the vaccination of teachers and support staff, have created the possibility to keep schools open, and a sustained return to regular attendance,” said Motshekga.

“The second step is to introduce measures to catch-up on the time as well as the teaching and learning that was lost through the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular. We urge parents and all of our stakeholders in the sector, to support our efforts to ensure that education continues without any further delays and/or disruptions.”

* Inside Education

MANY students in South Africa’s school system have had to repeat a grade, placing significant fiscal strain on the education system.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, researchers from the Research on Socio-Economic Policy (Resep) unit at the University of Stellenbosch estimate that more than half of all pupils in grades 10 to 12 are over-age for their grade.

One in five of these students are over-age by three years or more.

The study was conducted across all the nine provinces.

The group estimates that the annual cost of having so many repeaters in the system is between R20 billion and R29 billion, as significantly more teachers are needed to teach a larger group of pupils.

If the 56% repetition rate in grade 10 were to halve, the government could save about R2 billion each year alone, they said.

The government’s repetition policy currently states that no child should be held back more than once in any education phase.

The researchers said this was particularly problematic in grade 10, where more students get ‘stuck’ and only a fraction make it to grade 12.

However, the researchers said that this does not keep repetition rates low and that many schools do not always comply with the policy.

Data published by the Telkom Foundation this week shows the Covid-19 pandemic has also hurt school learners in the critical areas of mathematics and science.

The data reveals that the lack of face-to-face learning under lockdown has seen high-school learners regressing in South Africa, especially in rural areas.

“The Telkom Foundation has been monitoring data from schools we support across the country since 2018,” said Sarah Mthintso, chief executive of the Telkom Foundation.

“Regrettably, we have seen the negative impact of the pandemic – and the unavoidable closure of schools – has had on learning.”

Globally, the World Bank estimates that the closure of schools affected 1.6 billion learners. South Africa was among those countries forced to impose strict lockdown conditions, which halted classroom learning.

The Telkom Foundations initial diagnostic assessments conducted with learners in Grade 9 found that several learners had deficiencies in math and science, many of which were carried from the intermediate phase at primary school, impacting their ability to excel in these subjects.

This meant that the Foundation had to focus on both grade-level and remedial approaches to close the gaps. The Grade 9 learners surveyed showed an improvement from a Grade 3 level understanding to a Grade 5 level before the impact of the Covid pandemic.

“Over the years, we have seen learner improvement as a result of this targeted hybrid approach, however with Covid-19 restrictions and learners missing contact learning time, some have regressed in key areas, particularly problem solving, algebra and measurement,” said Mthintso.

* Business Tech

MARTIN GUSTAFSSON|

TEACHER supply and demand is a complex matter. The ultimate aim is to have a teacher in front of every class, now and for the foreseeable future. This also implies an ideal class size. The quality of teachers is obviously important too – and a topic for another occasion.

In South Africa, the ideal class size is tacit, and not explicit, as there are no class size norms. Instead, it is the available budget and negotiated teacher pay which drive the number of teachers, which in turn largely determines the average class size. But there are other factors at play too, as we’ll explain.

If South Africa were to lower the pupil-teacher ratio from the current 30 to a typical middle income country level of around 25, it would need an additional 100,000 teachers. Government spending on schooling is already fairly high, so it would be difficult to pay that many more teachers.

Is the problem that teachers in South Africa are paid too much? We conducted an international comparison, using household assets to stand in for purchasing power. We found that South African teachers’ purchasing power was not that different from that of teachers in other middle income countries.

There is a window of opportunity which has received insufficient attention. Soon there will be a large wave of retirements among South African teachers, peaking around 2030 and ending in 2040. New, younger – and lower paid – teachers will have to take their place. But this opportunity comes with questions around the capacity of universities to rapidly increase the output of teacher graduates.

Factors influencing class size

Around half of South Africa’s primary learners are in classes with more than 40 learners. About 15% are in classes exceeding 50 learners. The averages and inequality are considerably worse than what one sees in countries such as Chile, Indonesia, Morocco and Iran.

What explains the inequality? There are four key factors.

Firstly, though policy distributes teaching posts equitably, not all posts are filled all the time. Historically disadvantaged schools have the greatest difficulty filling posts.

Secondly, the policy doesn’t take classrooms into account. Based on enrolment, 20 teaching posts could be allocated to a school with 15 classrooms.

Thirdly, there’s evidence that poor timetabling and poor use of teaching time result in too many free periods for teachers, and too few classes being taught at any time. This is especially the case beyond Grade 3, where it becomes increasingly common for teachers to specialise in a curriculum subject.

Fourthly, schools permitted to charge fees, which tend to be middle class schools, can employ additional teachers and thus reduce class sizes.

The province a school is in plays a remarkably large role. Schools with similar learner-educator ratios end up with very different class sizes, depending on province. The following graph shows that in primary schools with an educator for every 32 learners, as an example, the percentage of the school’s learners in a class exceeding 40 learners differs vastly. In Free State and Gauteng, this figure is around 30% of learners. In other provinces, it more than double that.

The learner-educator ratios used in this graph include privately paid educators in public schools, so the presence of such educators does not explain the contrast. It seems much of the explanation would lie in different approaches to using teacher time. But this is an under-researched area.

Teacher pay

A number of influential reports have argued that South Africa’s teachers enjoy the standard of living of teachers in a country like Denmark.

We conclude that evidence of sky-high pay among South Africa’s teachers is flawed. It is not just a problem with South Africa’s figures: Nigeria’s teachers are said to be better paid that those in several European Union countries.

We argue that existing international comparisons of teacher pay suffer from two serious problems. First, how pay is defined, for instance with regard to benefits and income tax, is frequently unclear, which raises comparability questions. Perhaps more seriously, purchasing power parity indices are less reliable than what is often believed. We deal with these problems by using household assets to provide what we believe is a more comparable indicator of purchasing power.

Our conclusion that the pay of South Africa’s teachers is in fact not abnormally high substantially weakens the argument that reducing class sizes by paying teachers less, and employing more of them, is a viable or justifiable option.

Teacher retirement wave

It is very clear from the current age structure of the teacher workforce that there will be a large wave of retirements until 2040. The expected surge in the inflow of younger teachers, who begin their careers at entry level salaries, will be large enough to reduce average teacher pay in real terms by as much as 15%, according to one estimate, over a period of just over ten years.

The demographic dividend will not be large enough to increase the teacher workforce by the 100,000 mentioned above, yet with careful planning, and careful negotiation between the employer and unions, one outcome could be a reduction in South Africa’s large classes.

The flipside of this dividend is that universities will need to approximately double their annual teacher graduate numbers between now and 2030.

New research, involving the Department of Basic Education and other stakeholders, on the precise effects of the demographic shifts is set to be released later this year. This will provide another piece in the puzzle of teacher supply and demand.

Tsekere Maponya, Deputy Director at the Department of Basic Education’s Education Human Resource Planning, Provisioning and Monitoring unit, also contributed to this article.Martin Gustafsson is Education economist, Stellenbosch University.

The Conversation

FOR many young South Africans, a qualification is perceived to be the passport to a good job and decent salary, opening the way to a better life for them and their families.

South Africa’s private higher education sector has grown rapidly since 1994, when the education system began to expand under democracy. The number and types of private institutions have increased and student enrolment more than doubled between 2011 and 2019.

There are currently 130 registered private higher education providers. These institutions enrol about 210,000 students, and produced more than 42,000 graduates in 2019.

The sector is diverse in terms of institutional reputation, size, ownership, fee structure and student demographic.

In South Africa, the term “university” is reserved for public higher education institutions according to the Higher Education Act. Consequently, private higher education may be perceived as not on par with university education. But there’s little difference between the sectors as far as qualification standards are concerned. All private institutions must be registered with the Department of Higher Education and Training, and need to comply with the same programme accreditation and quality assurance requirements as public universities.

One advantage that private institutions may have – because they are smaller – is the flexibility to adapt their offering relatively quickly to meet the needs of the market. Many deliver niche vocational programmes, using industry experts as educators, with the specific intention of producing more employable graduates.

But do they? Between 2018 and 2020 I conducted research into whether this goal was being achieved. I evaluated the opportunities provided by private higher education institutions in South Africa and the employability of their media graduates, specifically.

I found that the percentage of graduates who found employment was relatively high. But the employment outcomes varied between graduates, strongly shaped by personal biographies as well as enrolment choices and options, and mediated by type of institution.

These findings may be of use to higher education managers, educators, researchers and policy makers. Attention needs to be given not only to the knowledge and skills graduates require for employment but also the other factors that give graduates a better chance of earning a decent livelihood and participating in society.

Employability of graduates

The research focused on graduates who studied to work in journalism, public relations, graphic design, creative and visual communication, including radio and television production and broadcasting. These fields are rapidly changing and increasingly digitalised. Participants came from three private institutions – elite and non-elite – and had been in the workplace for between one and five years.

I found that four things counted for employability: the reputation of the institution; networks and connections; experience; and type of work.

A qualification doesn’t equate to a job. Within five years of graduating, 84% of the graduates were working. Yet some – mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds – remained unemployed. And it seemed their opportunities were diminishing.

Having a job doesn’t equate to earning a decent livelihood. Many graduates were underemployed. Some had taken jobs in factories, retail or administration, merely to earn some income.

One-third of the employed graduates earned less than R10,000 ($700) a month, and 11% of those earned below R5,000 a month. That isn’t far off the minimum wage. There was a pattern: most of the low wage earners were black graduates from non-elite institutions.

Experience is essential. Employers recruit from their industry network. Eighty percent of the study participants had participated in some form of internship to build a base of working experience. But the monthly stipend ranged from R2,000 to R4,000 (between $130 and $270), which barely covered transport costs.

This means that graduates who can be financially supported by family take on internships.

Those from poor families are less likely to be able to afford the benefit of these employment-enhancing opportunities and go in search of any job. Hence their disadvantage persists.

An institution’s reputation counts. Employers partner with higher education institutions. They contribute industry-relevant input to the curriculum and teaching, and then recruit directly from the institution’s pool of graduates. Employers admitted that they favour graduates from particular institutions while those from other institutions are overlooked.

Equipped for the real world

Deeper analysis of graduates’ employment status showed patterns of employment were divided along lines of race, socio-economic status, educational background and institution.

These findings are similar to those of studies on the employability of graduates from public universities.

They call into question the value of investing in private higher education, and whether private institutions provide equitable opportunities for all graduates.

The findings confirm that skills, knowledge and a qualification don’t ensure successful employment outcomes for graduates.

Higher education cannot overcome structural constraints such as a saturated labour market, weak economy and entrenched social inequality.

More of the same from institutions, irrespective of the quality of the education, will likely continue to reproduce unequal outcomes.

The need for private institutions in South Africa to take note of this reality is even more important in the context of COVID-19 and the recent social unrest, and the implications of these macro issues on graduates’ livelihoods and lives.

Policies should recognise that some individuals require different strategies, resources and ways of teaching to achieve the same outcomes as others.

Students need to be guided and supported in their choices from the outset, learning how to build networks, gaining real work experience, and preparing for various types of work in a range of contexts.

Graduate preparation must move beyond employers and employment. Institutions ought to focus on enhancing graduates’ abilities to navigate their way in society, to respond to opportunities to work and earn, and to be adaptable so they can thrive in an uncertain world.

–   The Conversation

MORE than 1 100 Covid-19 cases have been detected at schools in KwaZulu-Natal in the last three weeks, according to Premier Sihle Zikalala.

“These numbers are increasing daily, and more learners are testing positive. Sadly, the pandemic has claimed the lives of two 12-year-old schoolchildren, as well as a 9-year-old. The Department of Education is intensifying non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the spread of the virus in schools,” said Zikalala.

Zikalala, who addressed the media on the province’s latest developments, said the provincial Department of Education is intensifying non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the spread of the virus in schools.

“Cluster [outbreaks] have also been observed in other congregant settings, such as boarding schools, mental health facilities, centres for the visually impaired and old age homes,” said Zikalala.

“KwaZulu-Natal remains the hardest-hit province, with 2 206 people confirmed to have contracted the virus in the last 24 hours, pushing the total to 476 193 since the outbreak.” 

Zikalala said the province has registered 216 754 people aged between 18 and 34, of which over 55 302 have been vaccinated.

“This gives us an average of 7 000 vaccinations among this group per day,” he said.

The province has seen a 33% week-on-week increase in new cases and hospital admissions are on the rise.

“The upsurge in cases has moved from Uthukela, Amajuba and Umzinyathi. Currently, the districts that are recording a higher number of cases daily are eThekwini, Umgungundlovu, King Cetshwayo, Zululand, Umkhanyakude and Ilembe. These districts have for the past three weeks had continuously higher numbers, with eThekwini accounting for more than 40% cases daily,” said Zikalala.

In the last week, vaccinations in the province passed the two million mark.

The target is to ensure 7.5 million people are fully vaccinated, Zikalala said.

The programme has been bolstered by including those who are 18 and older, with 216 754 people aged between 18 and 34 registered and 55 302 of them vaccinated since 20 August.

“We would want to emphasise that, in order to defeat Covid-19, vaccination is the obvious key and most important intervention to save lives. Of course, this must be done in conjunction with non-pharmaceutical prevention measures, such as the wearing of masks, regular handwashing or hand sanitising and social distancing,” he added.

“Our vaccination effort is now in high gear. This week, the province [went] above the two million mark in terms of the number of inoculated persons,” he said.  

“Our target is to reach 60 000 daily vaccinations, which could help us reach our target of 7.2 million vaccinations by the end of March next year.”

* Inside Education