Bloemfontein

Partner(s):

SAIE’s partners with the Department of Education (DoE) in order to facilitate the identification of target schools for BusinessVENTURES training and teaching materials. Educator training for this project took place in Bloemfontein, the Free State. Bloemfontein is in Mangaung municipality (Municipal Code FS172). Mangaung falls under Motheo district (District code DC17). Motheo district’s geographical area is 13997km². Educators may however come from further regions to attend Business Ventures training. The main groups among the population of 728 228 people are: Sesotho, 53.55%; Tswana, 16.57%; Afrikaans, 15.32% and Xhosa 11.1%. Africans form 83.51% while a sizable white population reaches the 11.46% mark. Motheo district has about 548460 learners between grade 1 and 12. The economically active group between 15 and 64 is around 480140 and the non-economically active group is about 191995 people. 115481 people are unemployed and there are about 3747 employers. 47491 people have no household income, 475452 people have no personal income and those with an income below R400 are about 54895.

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:

The Grades 8 and 9 educators were trained between the periods 06 – 09 August 2007. Grade 8 training took place on 6 and 7 August 2007; twenty five (25) educators were trained. Grade 9 training took place on 8 and 9 August 2007 and 20 educators attended. Ten Schools received grade 8 kits and ten schools also received grade 9 material. The Department selected 24 schools to participate in this programme, in stead of the ten schools agreed upon. The Department received one grade 8 and one grade 9 programme. During the training some educators raised concerns that BusinessVENTURES materials should be made available in Afrikaans. Others suggested that more materials should be made available to schools with large numbers of learners. Others suggested that the materials should be re-visited to adjust the programme content and the language levels to make it more understandable to the learners at this level.

Funder:

Product:

BusinessVentures

Location:

Free State