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SA suffers slow ICT skills transfer

By Lwavela Jongilanga, Portals journalist
Johannesburg, 02 Jul 2014
There is a lack of qualified technical educators in our school system, says Dariel Solutions' Malcolm Rabson.
There is a lack of qualified technical educators in our school system, says Dariel Solutions' Malcolm Rabson.

SA has a crisis on its hands at the moment in line with the number of graduates from ICT-related courses that needs to be addressed. There is a very slow pace of skills transfer specifically in the ICT industry where industry is finding an insufficient amount of students to fill positions.

This is according to Malcolm Rabson, MD at Dariel Solutions, who notes that there are a number of factors hindering skills development in SA. The concerns start at school level where there isn't enough being done by teachers or parents to push ICT-related subjects at schools and make it appealing for students to pursue careers in this particular sector, he says.

Additionally, there is a lack of qualified technical educators in our school system, which makes exceeding in the subjects difficult, he points out.

"We have also noticed that university graduates' entries are very low for IT-related courses, which clearly show a skills shortage being produced in South Africa, which will inevitably affect the growth of the economy," he says.

"Due to the lack of technical educators in our school systems, this is filtering down to the students as they are not being exposed to the full knowledge, which is stifling their learning process. This is a serious issue especially in high school as at this stage students should be moulded to ensure their grades are good enough to carry them through their tertiary careers - and allow them to enter into the IT and sciences space."

There is so much red tape from SETAs which are supposed to provide training that potential tutors get discouraged in seeing the process to the end, says Rabson.

As a result, SA is not producing enough qualified professionals in the industry to service the country and continent's needs. "We, therefore, find ourselves in a situation where we have to outsource services internationally. In fact, in most cases we are depending on international companies to find solutions for our market when we should be doing this locally."

He points out that if this issue is not treated as urgent, SA will find itself stuck with the same problem for years to come.

According to Rabson, there are some successful programmes that have been implemented globally and are making a huge difference in the industry, and he believes that SA needs to start implementing such programmes to ensure a positive and necessary change.

Furthermore, government needs to assist by partnering with industry to develop pragmatic solutions as there is generally a lack of understanding of what is needed in the curriculum and what's needed in industry in terms of skills, he urges.

The recently released World Economic Forum's report - which ranked SA's quality of mathematics and science education as last among 148 countries - is accurate, says Rabson. The results our students are producing aren't great. This is certainly evident at tertiary level, as BCom Science application numbers are way lower than other courses.

SA needs to improve its school systems; get the right tutors for the job, and start positioning maths and science as important subjects that will affect us in all in the long run.

In conclusion, Rabson notes that while these subjects aren't easy, they are certainly manageable and if enthusiasm and support can be shown from primary school level, we will see an improvement in these subjects.

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