Heightening the skills development in the province has taken a twist as the Eastern Cape provincial government is going all out to ensure the joint initiative on priority skills is realisable through forging partnerships with progressive institutions across the globe.
Recently, a German delegation of four from the Baden-Württemberg visited the Eastern Cape Education Department to check the readiness of Buffalo City Further Education and Training (FET) College to offer Mechatronics engineering studies to post national certificate vocational (NCV) level four students are geared for this 2011 project.
This Mechatronics course will be used to enhance the employability of these college students. Germany will support the college with an expert in this field who will train 20 students on the course for a year after they have finished their NCV level four.
The training will be linked to the market such as the car dealerships and its success will see it being spread to other provincial FET colleges. The Mechatronics courses will offer specialised subjects like car maintenance etc. The project will be headed by a German expert who will work hand in hand with a South African expert. The collaboration will see the South African taking over after in three to four years after the expert leaves. Thus far the project will require students with an NCV level four in order for them to participate in it and the project will not cater for Mercedes only but for other brands too.
The delegation consisted of Hartmut Mattes from the Ministry of Education in Baden-Württemberg, Bernd Weisschuh from the Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Peter Brugemann the Chief Executive Officer of the Landesakademie in Esslingen and Rosemarie Mattes who is the Principal Vocational Training College in Stuttgart.
The department has also entered into other partnership with the German apart from the Mechatronics engineering but will assist the agricultural colleges provincially, the in-service training for both FET and General Education and Training (GET) lecturers and educators and vocational studies programmes. Other projects will only be finalised next year but all of them will be dealing specifically with Further Education and Training colleges.
Commenting on the training of both the FET and GET lecturers and educators by the East London Education Leadership Institute (ELI), Duma Ncanywa, Chief Director for Education Professional Services said that the aim of developing and implementing the system is to first identify training need, optimise the training time through modular and continuous training interventions, centralisation of the system for the province and recruit experts for training modules to name a few.
The second project will focus on retired experts to be placed in FET colleges. This according to Khayalethu Ngaso who is the Chief Director for Vocational Education Services will be done in order to speed up the development of the FET college sector. He said that the department has reached an agreement with German retired experts to mentor and coach their South African counterparts in areas such as management advice and technical experts and advisors.
Bernd Weisschuh believes that the basic equipment needed is wonderful but learners need to be exposed to auto engineering so that they can handle glass technology which is part of the latest technology.
“FET learners need to know the basics of an engine, should know the latest technologies of engineering and should be able to work with them”, he concluded.
Issued by: Department of Education, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
24 February 2010
Source: Department of Education, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
(http://www.ecdoe.gov.za/)
