Self-evaluation of perceived knowledge and skills of economic and management sciences teachers in South Africa

Abstract

This study outlines the importance of entrepreneurship in developing and growing the economy. South Africa is low in entrepreneurial activity when compared to other developing countries. Considering South Africa‘s high poverty and unemployment rates, retrenchments, downsizing of big businesses, high failure rate among start-ups, and the valuable contribution that effective entrepreneurship can make towards economic growth and development. It becomes very important to determine how entrepreneurship can be encouraged and promoted to yield the desired results. The key lever to increasing the pool of entrepreneurs is through education. The answer that is evident is that entrepreneurship education should be taught in schools. The South African curriculum has made provision for the teaching of entrepreneurship from an early age. There is a widespread idea that entrepreneurship education would generate more and better entrepreneurs than there have been in the past and that education would increase the chances of obtaining entrepreneurial success. To achieve this, the study attempted to find out about the status of the Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) teachers, whether they have the necessary knowledge and skills to produce learners with an entrepreneurial inclination or not. Again the study attempted to find out whether teachers would like to be trained or not. The results revealed that teachers do not have the necessary knowledge and skills to implement the EMS Learning Area and need to be trained. The study addresses the importance of training teachers in EMS and the principles of entrepreneurship. The goal is to provide teachers with the rationale, mindset, tools, skills and knowledge needed to infuse the spirit of entrepreneurship into classrooms and to expand entrepreneurial career options. Knowledgeable teachers are needed to bridge the gap between the content on paper and the actual transference of the entrepreneurial skills and attitude to the learner in order to raise South Africa’s rate of entrepreneurial activity. Education and training should be improved so that the supply of people equipped to become entrepreneurs is increased.