Math, science skills needed

By Christelle du Toit, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 24 Apr 2008

Mathematics and science literacy at school-level will receive urgent attention as one of the ways government wants to increase the ICT skills pool.

Speaking at the launch of the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) and Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) reports yesterday and today, deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said knowledge of these subjects is critical to developing a skilled workforce, also in the ICT industry.

She was backed up by deputy minister of education, Enver Surty, who said the deputy president`s call was already being implemented.

"Already mathematics or mathematical literacy is a compulsory subject at school, which means about 50% of the matriculants will have math skills," said Surty, explaining that the rest would only have basic math literacy.

He added that, under the new education curriculum, the old higher grade and standard grade differentiation has already been removed this year from school mathematics and one, universal paper would be written.

This is as the department found the number of A, B, and C grade passes in maths standard grade was increasing significantly, pointing to a mindset that higher grade maths is too hard, rather than a capability problem.

Jipsa has also partnered with the Department of Education to drive the Dinaledi school initiative, aimed at improving the quality of math, science, ICT and communications in schools.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said, apart from these initiatives, students should also be encouraged to stay in school, otherwise such efforts would be null and void.

"[They] must go back to school, because they are swelling the ranks of the unemployed."

Tracking students

Meanwhile, an agreement has, according to the deputy president, been reached with the retail sector to place matriculants, who do not want to go to university, in jobs in order to prevent them also being unemployed.

In addition, a national learner records database is to be established to boost the ability of policy-makers to make reliable market projections.

According to the Jipsa report, the skills initiative has commissioned a review of the feasibility of such a database in collaboration with the South African Qualifications Authority.

The idea is to access information from different government departments, such as labour and education, which Jipsa hopes could be reconfigured to create one, central database.

On top of this, Asgisa is continuing with a work placement programme, where qualified young people with scarce skills are fast-tracked into employment in order to gain experience.

According to the Asgisa 2007 report, most of these placements have been in the tourism, engineering, ICT and project management fields. More than 20 000 job offers have been received by government since 2005 - when this initiative was launched - with more than 15 000 youths placed successfully with businesses like Microsoft, Telkom and Old Mutual.