Enable all young people to get their first decent job
Tens of billions of Rands could be saved each year by preventing school, college, and university drop-out, and enabling young people to stick with their first job despite home and work pressures. School and university drop-out rates in South Africa are particularly high – half [1]Spaull, N. (2015). Schooling in South Africa: How Low-quality Education Becomes a Poverty Trap. South African Child Gauge 2015. of our children drop out of school and another 15% fail Grade 12.[2]Branson N, Hofmeyr C, Lam D. Progress through school and the determinants of school dropout in South Africa, 2013. South African Labour Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town. Only 12% of young people go to university, and of these, over 40% drop out without completing their degree. [3]Council on Higher Education. South African Higher Education Reviewed: Two Years of Democracy, 2016. Access here. [4]Van Broekhuizen H, van der Berg S, Hofmeyr H (2016). Higher education access and outcomes for the 2008 national matric cohort. Bureau for Economic Research, University of Stellenbosch.
We simply can’t waste human potential and public money through high rates of dropout.
The situation for students at TVET colleges is even worse with a completion rate of between 5-10% for most TVET courses. This means that we are spending at least ten times as much as we should for every successful TVET graduate.[5]National Treasury. Post-School Education & Training, 2016. www.gtac.gov.za.
The risks of ‘letting go’ don’t stop the moment young people get a job. Often they are faced by a new set of pressures – high transport costs, family demands on their salaries, unmanageable debt because of poor financial knowledge and planning. They need to be prepared to deal with these pressures.
When young people do have a grip on opportunity, we need to do whatever we can so that they don’t let go.
References
Our goal is to build and expand student-to-work linkages.
What we will be working on…
From 2017 – 2021 we will build and expand student-to-work linkages by:
- Preventing school drop-out.
- Showing how poorer students can be supported to successfully complete further education and training.
- Supporting young people with ongoing training to succeed in work experience, or their first decent job.
Click here to read how we plan to do it.
| WHAT | HOW |
|---|---|
| Prevent school drop-out | Test and then support scale-up of interventions that are able to demonstrate reductions in school drop-out. Commission targeted pyscho-social support and high school level remedial interventions. |
| Show how poorer students can be supported to successfully complete further education & training | Support mechanisms that show how psycho-social student support can be extended to improve throughput rates. Establish an opportunity hub as part of the Buffalo City HIV prevention programme which strengthens work-links between young people attending Buffalo City and Lovedale TVET College and local industry. |
| Support young people with ongoing training to succeed in work experience, or their first decent job. | Develop and support online courses that provide continuing education to young people in their first decent job. |
