Dianthus Primary School

Partner(s):

SAIE's partner in BusinessVENTURES, The Department of Education (DoE), identifies the schools that receive training. Dianthus Primary School in KwaZulu Natal serves previously disadvantaged learners - both Black and Indian learners. Although the school is an urban area, many learners come from adjacent rural and disadvantaged backgrounds. African learners commute from areas like Kwa Mashu, Inanda and Umlazi among others. Most learners cannot afford to pay school fees. Dianthus Primary School is in Verulam, a small town 28kms north of Durban in KwaZulu Natal. Verulam was named after the Patron of the 400 British Methodists who settled there in 1850, the Earl of Verulam. Most of the 60 000 inhabitants are Indians. The town contains densely populated residential and industrial areas. The outskirts of Verulam has large farming areas, several built-up townships, and rural townships. Verulam is now part of eThekwini municipality (Municipal Code ETH). eThekwini has 3,090,126 people and 68.30% are Black African, 19.90% Indian/Asian and 8.98% are White. 63.04% Speak Zulu, 29.96 speak English and 3.43% Xhosa and 1.44% Afrikaans. 2323258 learners are in Grade 1 to 12. 2106664 people are between 15 and 64 (economically active) while 744942 are inactive. 591025 people are unemployed, and 8996 are employers. 2042125 people have no personal income, and 121085 have an income below R400 while 186664 people have no household income.

Our Involvement:

Our objective is to establish "Entrepreneurial Learning Centres of Excellence" in each of all 6 grades (Grades 2 - 7) at Dianthus Primary by providing educator training and follow up workshops for the BusinessVENTURES learning materials. 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:

Training for Grade 2 and grade 3 educators took place in April 2007. Part of the training was disrupted by the educator strike in June 2007. The remaining educators will be trained in October 2007to 7 educators will most likely take place at the end of April.

Funder:

Product:

BusinessVentures

Location:

KwaZulu-Natal