Sol Plaatje University (SPU), Chancellor, Judge Steven Majiedt and the Standard Bank, hosted a Golf Day at the Kimberley Golf Club to raise funds for the Chancellor’s Bursary Fund on Saturday, the Talent Pipeline Programme, a pre-university enrichment programme for learners in grades 10, 11 and 12.
This programme is aimed at increasing the academic, social and psychosocial preparation of learners in order for them to enter higher education. It targets top 10% of learners with potential from a broad range of under resourced schools in the Northern Cape, with a strong emphasis on rural Schools.
Many rural learners are caught in the poverty trap after completing their basic education because they cannot find opportunities within their communities. A lot of talent therefore goes to waste because these learners, although talented, are precluded from going to university. The introduction of “free education” has helped, but there are still challenges in the missing middle category. The pipeline programme is aimed at addressing such challenges.
Northern Cape consist of areas that have the highest rate of unemployment due to the low level of education. Therefore it must be a priority to improve education in such areas by providing better teacher training, access for rural students to tertiary education and training courses for to improve levels of education.
The university would like to start the programme with 150 learners from the Northern Cape. The total cost of the programme per learner amounts to R27000 per annum, which brings the total cost per annum to R4.05 million. Therefore an amount of R12.15 million would be required to educate the students for three years.
Research has shown that a single graduate from university has an immediate impact on the lives of ten others when they return to their communities. One graduate from a rural environment can be seen as a catalyst for economic growth in the rural environment.
This programme is extremely successful in creating a pipeline of excellent learners from under resourced schools that enter university and have already produced a number of medical doctors, nurses, actuaries, accountants, economists and engineers who have impacted on their communities.
The Golf Day was sponsored through gifts and services by fifteen corporates including Standard Bank (the anchor funder), AECOM, LimCo, Civil Sense Consulting, Trencon Construction, Qualicon Construction, Enterprise Cloud, MMA Design Studio, First National Bank, Adapt IT, NEXIA SAB&T and Implementing IT. Other sponsors, OFM, Moyo Projects, Zecha, Sanlam, PSG Wealth, Ninety One and DataCentrix.
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