South Africa has one of the worst unemployment and youth unemployment rates in the world, but it is the poor education of those between the ages of 18 and 24 that is most troubling. More than 70% of the about 3-million people in this group do not even have a Grade 12. Is it any surprise the unemployment rate for young people is close to 50%?
via www.bdlive.co.za
Scary. And no transformation policy is every going to fix this.
Our work is in the townships on Early Childhood Development. We train the owners of home creches and I would guess the functional education level of these creche owners is generally around grade 3.
Some people who claim to have grade 12 can't count a pile of tee-shirts.
We recently advertised for an office administrative position. There were more than 400 applications, but only a few were worth interviewing, and only 2 who were capable. There really is a very large number of people who don't have jobs because all they are qualified to do is very low level work - labourer, cleaner, etc
Even Zimbabwe with all their issues has a good education system. There are any number of Zimbabweans who apply to us who I would love to employ but can't because they don't have RSA residence.
How is it possible to be so incompetent in the running of an education system?
Posted by: Richard Ferrer | November 23, 2012 at 11:10 AM