Finall!, Some sound thinking...

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Fudzy

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Technical schools that cater to the needs of non-academic pupils need to be re-started.

This was the reaction of concerned educationists on Wednesday on hearing news of a new regulation from the Basic Education Department that allows pupils to be failed only once between grades 10 and 12.

They also said Further Education and Training Colleges had to be whipped into shape if the proposal by the government becomes policy.

The school system was not able to offer struggling pupils the specialised and individual attention they needed to be able eventually to earn a National Senior Certificate, they said on Wednesday.
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http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/call-for-return-of-technical-schools-1.1474231

We need more of these.
 
YingYang said:
I thought technical schools are still in existence?
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They are ... just called FET's now . Problem is, most of them have fallen into a desperate state and employers aren't exactly standing in ques to employ learners who at the end of the day seem to be worse off education-wise than kids completing an academic matric.
 
McSack said:
They are ... just called FET's now . Problem is, most of them have fallen into a desperate state and employers aren't exactly standing in ques to employ learners who at the end of the day seem to be worse off education-wise than kids completing an academic matric.
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I am not sure I understand this, they will have N3 in chosen trade by the time they matriculate along with maths, science and all the necessary or has something changed?
 
fonoi said:
I am not sure I understand this, they will have N3 in chosen trade by the time they matriculate along with maths, science and all the necessary or has something changed?
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Exactly! The problem is the current drive is to push everyone into academic fields when a) we don't have enough jobs for said academics b) the current school system pushes kids out into university that are unequipped for university education.
 
I think it would be even better if the school system and industry could work together and provide some incentive to technical schools and students (like paying school fees), to get the distubution of the trades studied to mirror what the industry needs and is lacking.
 
"This was the reaction of concerned educationists on Wednesday on hearing news of a new regulation from the Basic Education Department that allows pupils to be failed only once between grades 10 and 12. " < wtf is that ?
 
This discussion is a waste of time! Why? Because the good old I.Q. test has been dumped due to it being discrimatotry (Sp?) I am a retired artisan. A youngster I know begged me to get him a job with the comppany I was working for while I was still working. He had matric. When I left school my father got me the job as an apprentice, where I went to the labour department and completed a couple of I.Q. test, I passed! Don't laugh! They tell you whether you are mechanically minded or not. So, for 6 months I begged and pleaded with the company who eventualy accepeted the youngster as an apprentice. Errrrrrrrrrr? The I.Q. test? That's when I found out about it being discrimatory, him being NOT suitable apprentice material. IMHO After a bit of experience with him, he should have stayed as a shelf packer! He has acheived the distinction of being the only apprentice in a number of years in the whole country to fail his trade test!.
 
Mila said:
how is an IQ test discriminatory?
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I think calling someone stupid, even if they are, is discrimination.

Also, the South African IQ average is 1 point over what actually classifies as "Mild Mental Retardation" .

So actually if you call someone retarded, its about 49% chance your not discriminating.
 
I fully agree with the sentiment - a large proportion of those currently and recently going through what passes for secondary schooling would be much better served by having spent that time learning a trade, or at least receiving a trade orientated education.
 
Fudzy said:
Exactly! The problem is the current drive is to push everyone into academic fields when a) we don't have enough jobs for said academics b) the current school system pushes kids out into university that are unequipped for university education.
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Add that many university fields are useless outside of an academic setting. There are too many social scientists and creative writers and too few engineers and technologists.
 
Sector specific skills seem to play a minor role. It seems IQ is still king in deciding how well people do in their careers regardless of education. This is for USA of course. Full paper below.

This paper examines how much the increasing ‘‘residual inequality’’ in the United States can be
explained by increasing returns to cognitive skills. Also, this paper uses selection-correction
techniques to estimate the latent population distribution of unobservable skill within three
occupational sectors, and breaks down the leftover ‘‘residual’’ term into a ‘‘general’’ unobservable
component and a sector-specific unobservable component. The results indicate that sector-specific
skills have played only a minor role in the inequality trends. Increasing ‘‘residual inequality’’ is
mostly characterized by an increasing importance of general skills, either IQ or the general
unobservable skill, within all three occupations.
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http://micro5.mscc.huji.ac.il/~economics/facultye/gould/inequality_ability_labour.pdf

The
addition of IQ into the analysis reduces the returns to education, particularly for
1992, so that there is virtually no appreciable increase in the return to education in
either sector after controlling for IQ.
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