Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has announced that the government is set to pilot a plan for a Grade 9 formal national certificate.
The plan for a Grade 9 formal certificate has been in the works for over a decade, along with plans for the department to offer three education streams: academic, technical/vocational, and occupational.
The department has in the past proposed that the certificate would be known as the General Education and Training Certificate.
Motshekga was speaking during the Gauteng Department of Education’s Back to School programme at the Kgatoentle Secondary School in Ga-Rankuwa, Pretoria.
She said the Grade 9 certificate would be administered by writing a national exam and stressed it was not an exit certificate, but it was also aimed at ensuring that those who dropped out around Grade 10/11 without completing their matric had a credible national certificate to show for their nine years in school.
The certificate, it is aimed at, is in the mould of the UK’s Ordinary Level Certificate, while the three-tiered education streams of academic, technical/vocational, and occupational training are a mirror image of the education system in Germany.
The Kgatoentle Secondary School in Ga Rankuwa was one of the fully resourced schools, able to accommodate all three educational streams.
“The world of work is changing rapidly; that is why we are working on ICT centres and diversifying skills. I can assure you that we have already started introducing a number of different courses as compared to our academic curriculum.
“Umalusi has quality assured them, and other learners have written those subjects because the world of work is changing rapidly. Most of the successful economies in the world do not only premise their education on academics; your leading economies like Germany, only one-third of children who finish school go to university; 75% of them go to technical/vocational careers,” said Motshekga.
Using the example of the construction of Kgatoentle Secondary, she said people with technical/vocational skills, along with those with design and engineering skills (academic), were required to complete the project.
“We are working hard to ensure that we give you a diversified curriculum,” she said, explaining that there was a great need for technical and vocational training and skills in the South African economy.
Motshekga said through collaboration with Higher Education, they had ensured that the new technical/vocational subjects could be credited accordingly, allowing pupils to go to university if they wished, but she said they could also use the skills to seek learnerships outside of the formal university environment, such as technical skills learnerships through manufacturers like BMW at the Rosslyn plant in Pretoria.
“We need you to take those technical/vocational skills so that those things we need to be done in the economy, you are able to do that for us. We are working very hard with Umalusi and Higher Education to diversify the skills of the country,” she said.
On the Grade 9 certificate, Motshekga said the formal exam was being piloted to ensure learners could be assessed and guided accordingly for the final three years of their schooling.
She stressed it was not an exit certificate, though she acknowledged it ensured those who failed to complete matric by dropping out between Grades 10 and 12 had a certificate to show.
“We don't want you to take the first national exam at Grade 12. We are not saying people should exit, but it is so sad because some fall around Grade 10, 11, and there's no evidence you have been in the system.
“This means, the only certificate you have is the birth certificate; at least the certificate will show you have nine years in the system,” she said.
Under the academic stream, students on this stream would follow a path with natural progression to university, while the technical and vocational stream would follow a skills-based path to training for skills such as manufacturing, welding, boiler-making, and artisanal skills, while the occupational pathway would encompass skills such as consumer studies, hair and beauty, hospitality, and plumbing.
Motshekga also urged learners to work hard and desist from substance abuse, violence and teenage pregnancies.
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