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Matric qualification today better than under Apartheid – SAGDA

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Many an opinion has been volunteered on the contribution that the quality of our South African matric has on the high youth unemployment rate due to them being inadequately skilled and hence unlikely to be gainfully employed.

Unfortunately many of these opinion pieces, in our view, are shallow and one dimensional in their approach due to them finding their genesis in the particular world and political view of the opinion maker. We argue that this biased approach has done our country an enormous disservice.

It is the South African Graduate Development Association (SAGDA) philosophy, aka world view, that matters concerning society are by their very nature rather complex and often the result of a multiplicity of factors which conspire to cause a decline in the quality of our matric which in turn conspires with a host of others to detrimentally affect the chances of our matriculants to achieve gainful employment.

Our analysis of the school curricula, matric included, on the contrary, concludes that the quality has incrementally improved since 1996, with none of these, including the now much maligned Curriculum 2005, have been a marked improvement on the education system of apartheid South Africa. Yet we observe that the quality of the our product, aka our matriculant, has shown a general decline which bottomed out round about 2006 and has remained stubbornly close to this bottom to this date.

Influential, yet biased, opinion shapers have penned a narrative of clichés such as the lack of access to resources, poor levels of teacher training, the apartheid legacy and its inherited ills, lowering of standards through setting mediocre pass marks, inadequate parental involvement and support in the educational, and the like as being the key reasons for the decline in the quality of our education and the resultant mismatch between the demands of the economy and the skills that matriculants have generally acquired.

As much as these are important contributors to the decline in the quality of our matric; narrowly characterising this unfortunate reality in these biased terms, on the contrary, reduces them to mere clichés to be used and emphasised to suit a particular world view. That this remains a futile exercise doomed to fail in its effort to address the situation since it neglects the very essence of the problem is lost on the experts and opinion shapers who are proponents of this shallow approach to analysis.

At SAGDA we believe that analysis of social manifestations should be holistic, incisive about the subject at hand and continuously regenerative since society is dynamic and not static.

In a nutshell it is our view that the fundamental causes of the phenomena of unpreparedness of matriculants to participate in the South African economy as employees and the inability of this economy to welcome and accept these into its ranks can be found in the collective psyche of South Africans.

A rudderless social conscience, our expectations of unearned entitlement and a herd mentality are largely the genesis of our high youth unemployment rate.

In essence we argue that fixing this problem is not a technical exercise but rather an effort of the mind. It is about changing mind sets and paradigms. It is about attitudes, principles and values first before we can fully address the matters of an unfortunate legacy, teacher training, resources and the lack thereof and mediocre pass marks amongst others.
An understanding of this explains why an under resourced school in deep rural Limpopo or another in informal Orange Farm can produce results which are comparable to those attained in a school situated in our more affluent suburbs; while a principal in Soweto blames the poor pass rate at his school on the lack of resources while standing on a dilapidated tennis court in the corner of his educationally uninspiring school premises.

This however requires us to be brave and embark on the proverbial “Road Less Travelled” – a maturity, selflessness and an emotional intelligence not often witness; for us to really improve on the quality of matriculant we currently produce and the resultant bloating of the ranks of the unemployed.

SAGDA is a Non Profit Organisation which develops and empowers unemployed graduates and prepares to become active participants in the South African economy.

– By OPINION: Nono Likhoeli, Entrepeneurshio abd Business Developer: SAGDA

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