OVERVIEW Education and
OVERVIEW Education and training An ambitious scheme aims to prepare young people for the world of work. SECTOR INSIGHT A skills audit of municipal officials is underway. Universities The AFDA campus in Durban caters for film, television and arts students. Credit: AFDA The Sukuma 100 000 programme was launched in 2020 by the Provincial Government of KwaZulu-Natal with the goal of helping young people make the transition from an educational environment into the world of work. With the assistance of the private sector, the Youth Directorate in the Office of the Premier wants 100 000 young people to benefit every year from in-service training, apprenticeships and internships. State-owned entities and government departments will also participate in the programme, which is scheduled to last five years. In another initiative related to competencies, a skills audit is to be conducted among senior officials across the province. The audit began in municipalities and will be extended to provincial departments and agencies of the province in due course. KwaZulu-Natal has nine Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges with a total enrolment of about 80 000. Coastal KZN TVET College gives students practical experience through facilities such as the Nongalo Industrial Park. The college hosts the Samsung Engineering Academy, a Tooling Centre of Excellence and a manufacturing plant for sanitary towels. The college has several sites on the South Coast and caters for 15 400 students. Majuba TVET College is a Centre of Specialisation for boilermaking. The Mnambithi TVET College is located in the Battlefields Route tourism area and offers National Diploma courses in tourism, among other qualifications. A satellite campus operates at Estcourt. There are two universities and two universities of technology in KwaZulu-Natal, and the national distance university, the University of South Africa (Unisa), has a presence in five locations. USB Executive Development offers business courses for executives. UKZN has close to 40 000 students studying on five campuses in two cities. Greater Durban hosts Howard College, Berea (environment, engineering, law, humanities) and the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at Congella. The UKZN administration and the Graduate School of Business are based at Westville (also science, engineering: and health) whereas the Edgewood, Pinetown, campus focusses on and education. The Pietermaritzburg campus offers a broad academic programme but its specialities are fine art, theology and agriculture. UKZN also hosts the National Research Foundation. The Durban University of Technology (DUT) has six faculties operating in seven campuses in Durban and in the Midlands. DUT is well known for its outstanding graphic-design school and offers one of only two chiropractic programmes in South Africa. KWAZULU-NATAL BUSINESS 2021/22 40
OVERVIEW The University of Zululand offers diploma and degree courses on two campuses at Empangeni and Richards Bay. Several provincial government departments make tertiary bursaries available to qualifying students, including Agriculture and Rural Development, Human Settlements, Public Works, Transport and the Treasury. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) supports 26 public universities across the country in advancing payment of registration fees for poor students. The private sector also actively supports education through bursaries. A crowdfunding platform set up by Standard Bank, the Feenix Trust, raised more than R35-million in three years to support more than 1 000 students. The bank’s Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme (ISFAP) provides bursaries for students from families earning less than R600 000 per annum. Schools KwaZulu-Natal has 2.8-million school pupils, many of whom are in rural areas. With 30% of South Africa’s pupils in its schools, the province’s results have a big bearing on how the nation fares in annual examinations. There is now near universal access to primary and secondary schooling and a new drive to enrol pre-school children in Grade R has achieved a 70% success rate. The province has 1 689 early childhood development centres. Transport is provided to 350 schools, covering 59 000 pupils and 2 400 bicycles have been made available under the Shovakalula programme. The Anton Lembede Mathematics, Sciences and Technology Academy in La Mercy north of Durban welcomed its first Grade 8 pupils in 2021. Enrolment is expected to reach 600 for the school, which caters to grades 8 to 12. The long-planned project cost R255-million and is part of a wider provincial programme that includes a Special School for Autism and two Schools of Excellence scheduled to be started ONLINE RESOURCES Council of Higher Education: www.che.ac.za Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa: www.isasa.org KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education: www.kzneducation.gov.za National Research Foundation: www.nrf.ac.za National Skills Authority: www.nationalskillsauthority.org.za in 2021, for Agriculture in Umgungundlovu and Maritime studies in Umlazi. A primary school in the Harry Gwala District was the site of the launch of an e-learning infrastructure programme that is intended to be rolled out to rural areas throughout the province. Digital access will allow pupils in remote areas to be connected to the best teachers in the province. The unbundling from the successful Curro group of a separate tertiary entity which listed on the JSE as Stadio Holdings is a good indicator of the growth of the private sector in education. Stadio currently has three institutions: Southern Business School, AFDA (the School for the Creative Economy) and the Embury Institute for Higher Education which has a campus in Musgrave, Durban. There are seven schools in KwaZulu-Natal operating under Curro brands. Advtech, the other big private company in the sector, already has 27 tertiary campuses nationally, in addition to its 78 schools operating under a variety of labels. Advtech operates 10 educational sites in KwaZulu-Natal, including schools such as Crawford and Trinity House, a chefs school (Capsicum), three Varsity Colleges and the Design School for Southern Africa. ■ 41 KWAZULU-NATAL BUSINESS 2021/22
