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Johnathan Paoli
Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga addressed learners at Kgatoentle Secondary School in Ga-Rankuwa on Wednesday and said the department was working hard to ensure a diversified curriculum that included vocational skills as an option for learners.
Motshekga was joined by Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane, who visited the school in order to monitor the reopening of schools for the new academic year.
“As a department we are very conscious of the fact that and we are working very hard with experts in the field that the world of work is changing very rapidly. We are working on ICC centres, we are working on diversified skills, and we have already introduced a number of different courses compared to our academic curriculum,” Motshekga said.
The minister said that the country required graduates with technical and vocational skills, and not simply academic.
“The economies that are successful in the world, harness their skills not only in one field, which is academic. Within the leading economies of the world, such as Germany, only a third of the children who complete schooling, go to university. Which means 75% of them go to technical and vocational careers,” the minister said.
Motshekga previously said matric results for the last five years showed that the education system was stabilising, with over 900 000 candidates who wrote their matric exams between October and December last year.
Meanwhile, parents in some provinces are still struggling to obtain placements for their children in schools, with the department saying that its online admission system was not the problem but the lack of space at schools where parents want their children to be.
DBE spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said that even in a perfect system, the frustrations and delays would remain since logistics remain the cause.
“What the system does though is to help in allocating spaces to learners who have applied at a given period in the time frame that has been given by the provincial education department,” Mhlanga said.
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