Bitou Schools

Partner(s):

The Department of Education (DoE) is SAIE’s partner in selecting target schools and areas for BusinessVENTURES training. Educator training for the Bitou Schools Project takes place in the Bitou Local Municipality (Municipal Code WC047). Bitou Municipality was formerly called Plettenberg Bay Municipality. Bitou is part of Eden District Municipality (District Code DC4) in the Western Cape. Bitou has 29,149 people of which 37.95% are Black African, 40.25% Colored and 21.50%. Afrikaans speaking Bitou residents are 49.3%, 14.1% are English, and 35.4% speak Xhosa. Bitou’s learner population between Grade 1 and 12 is 21926. 19897 economically active people between 15 years and 64 live in Bitou while 5970 are not economically active. There are 315 employers and 3696 unemployed people in Bitou. All the schools taking part in this schools project come from this area.

Our Involvement:

SAIE provides schools and educators with quality, innovative learning materials (BusinessVENTURES kits) and the requisite training in terms of content knowledge, methodology in Outcomes Based Education (OBE) and entrepreneurial development. SAIE’s BusinessVENTURES materials conform to the Department of Education’s (DoE) curriculum structure classified under the Economic and Management Sciences (EMS: Grade 2 to 9) and Business Studies (Grades 10 to 12). Learners are empowered through the quality materials and effective teaching, in order to develop entrepreneurial mindsets and business knowledge. This prepares them for either creating their own jobs or participating in the post school life in a more entrepreneurial way.

Project Progress:

Thirty four educators from grades 4, 5, 6 and 7 received BusinessVENTURES training in the Bitou project. Training for grade 4 educators took place on 31 January and 7 February 2005; training for grade 5 took place on 1 February and 8 February 2005; grade 6 training took place on 2 February 2005 and grade 7 training took place on 3 and 10 February 2005. On 4 February 2006, some schools were visited in order to provide assistance to educators who attended the training. On 24 to 26 April, the first follow-up visit for the schools trained in February took place. The learners from schools who received Afrikaans material were working much faster than before. Learners find the work cards much easier to interpret and educators spend less time interpreting them as well. The second follow-up visit occurred 31 July and 1 August 2006. The grade 9 learners from Plettenberg High School had made arrangements to open a market day showcasing their projects. One educator at Murray High School was eager to have the BusinessVENTURES material adopted for the Arts and Culture class. Learners from Kranshoek Intermediary had been involved in several projects since the first SAIE follow-up visit and were scheduled to showcase them to the community in September. Afrikaans materials were also distributed for grades 4 to 7 at Afrikaans medium schools. (The transalation was generously funded by the Charl van der Merwe Trust). The third follow-up visit occurred on 6 October 2006. Classroom assistance for educators and more distributions of Afrikaans material were completed.

Funder:

Product:

BusinessVentures

Location:

Western Cape