The ANC is proposing that more children take vocational training to increase skills development in order to meet the economic needs of the country.
ANC National Executive Committee member Dakota Legoete said on Sunday the party wanted to bridge the gap in the education system to meet the country’s economic needs.
He said this would help to reduce unemployment.
The unemployment figures show that most of the youth are not in the labour force.
Legoete said in some of the countries had been able to address the issue of balancing skills needs with the economy.
The curriculum at school level had to match the economic needs of the country, said Legoete.
The ANC’s policies are looking into this and it would help South Africa in a long way.
“On the issue that the ANC is not bringing new proposals on the current challenges, it is properly covered by our policy documents. For instance as part of revolutionising the skills development programme we are proposing and encouraging in our documents vocational training because currently what exacerbates unemployment in our country is that our economic needs cannot be fed by our skills capacity. Our curriculum does not correspond somehow with our economic needs,” said Legoete.
He added that South Africa as a resources- and financial- services-driven economy it is for the curriculum “to take vocational training as a primary education need, so that your skills capacity can correspond with your economic needs.”
This happened in many developed economies like China and Germany.
This was the point that has been raised by the ANC in the discussion documents.
He said out of 24 000 schools in the country about 1 500 provided vocational training to learners.
This was an anomaly that needed to be addressed to provide a balance in the education system to meet the needs of the economy.
“That is a point we are pursuing because you would realise that in our schooling programming we have more than 24 000 schools. In a resource- and services-driven economy out of 24 000 schools you have only 1 500 of them training kids on vocational space. It’s a mismatch because we have more schools that are unable to feed the economy the skills required to put the country and economy into a high trajectory,” said Legoete.
Political Bureau