Kagiso Trust, Sasol Foundation partner to transform technical education

Kagiso Trust and Sasol Foundation have joined forces to advocate for the importance of vocational education in South Africa.

The collaboration between Kagiso Trust and Sasol Foundation, referred to as the Kagiso-Sasol-Project (KASA), aims to break down the misconceptions of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET colleges) and advocates for the importance of vocational education in South Africa.

South Africa has 50 TVET colleges, with 364 campuses serving roughly 800 000 students per annum to tackle the skills shortage in the country. Despite this, while universities like UKZN are receiving over 250 000 applications and can only admit 8500 first-year students with undergraduate qualifications, there is a reluctance from students wanting to enrol in TVET institutions based on misconceptions that TVET graduates are less employable and that attending a university is the only way to get a well-paying job after graduation.

Kagiso Trust hosted a Twitter Spaces discussion on 13^th February, sharing insight addressing the misconceptions and opportunities of Technical-Vocational Education and Training with speaker and partner Dr Cynthia Malinga, Technical Education Development Advisor at Sasol Foundation as well as speakers Zamokuhle Zungu, Deputy Director-General at the Department of Higher Education and Training and Lethiwe Nkosi, Network Mobilizer at Youth Capital among others.

“People believe that for you to make a living, you need to enrol at a university and not in the TVET colleges,” said Zamokuhle Zungu. “Yet if you look where you are currently: where you are seated, the clothes you are wearing, everything you see and touch, all have the touch of an artesian somewhere. Most people doing artesian work from building houses to plumbing work seem to be foreign nationals, yet we have our young people in our country who could offer that.”

Great strides have been made over the last few years to produce a more skilled workforce. Despite this, South Africa still needs many more engineers and artisans to achieve the goal of a minimum of 30 000 artisans a year by 2030.

The KASA project also works to create technical schools of excellence by providing interventions that help educators develop their skills and empower them to deliver quality vocational education to learners.

To date, the project has already made significant progress, transforming seven ordinary schools into technical schools of excellence and producing 104 vocational-occupation textbooks for years 1-4 and grades 8-9. Additionally, the Annual Technical Teachers Conference (ATTC) has created a platform for educators, researchers, and policymakers to engage in vigorous debates about the state of vocational training and come up with feasible solutions.

“The project is crucial to the success of our interventions in technical and vocational education,” said Sizakele Mphatsoe, Head of Education of Kagiso Trust. “We conduct Career Expo’s to create awareness to TVET streams, not because you did not do well academically but to empower you to get the skills in-demand in the country to help improve the high unemployment rate and keep our youth in school to develop the skills needed in life not only for employment but also as a future employer.”

“The partnership is pivotal to creating replicable models worth implementing across South Africa,as well as to assist the government with the National Development Plan to produce more artisans, technicians and technologists by 2030. We look forward to future inventions with Sasol Foundation in order to achieve this.”

Kagiso Trust work to overcome poverty by developing and implementing scalable, replicable, sustainable development programme models in the areas of education development, socio-economic development, local governance support, civil society support and financial sustainability. For more information see www.kagiso.co.za