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Science is the future: SANRAL expands its UFS maths and science investment programme

25 September 2019 | Story Zamuxolo Feni | Photo Liza Crawley

Read More Photo SANRAL — SANRAL Chief Executive Officer Skhumbuzo Macozoma and UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor Prof Francis Petersen cutting a cake to mark 10 years of collaboration between the two institutions.

The Science-for-the-Future (S4F) programme is fundamental to generating the required pipeline for technologically skilled entrepreneurs and workers by focusing on Mathematics and Science support to learners, teachers, and parents.

This is according to the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) Chief Executive Officer, Skhumbuzo Macozoma, who delivered a keynote address at the Annual Science for the Future Summit held at the University of the Free State (UFS) on 20 September.

The S4F is a partnership between the UFS and SANRAL, with the fundamental purpose to train Maths and Science teachers and to support learners and parents. The programme has now been extended to six other universities, namely Nelson Mandela University and Walter Sisulu University in the Eastern Cape; the University of Limpopo, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and the two recently established universities, the University of Mpumalanga and the Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape.

Dr Cobus van Breda, the Programme Director for the UFS S4S, said they developed the Family Math and Key Concepts in Science programmes to address issues that prevent learners from excelling in these critical subjects. It seeks to improve the content knowledge of teachers and provide them with more skills-teaching resources.

Macozoma said: “I am proud and deeply honoured to stand before you today in the strength of a successful 10-year partnership with the University of the Free State which we are celebrating here today, together with the hosting of the Annual Science for the Future Summit.” More than 300 teachers attended the summit.

Planning for the future

He indicated that SANRAL's long-term strategy, Horizon 2030, instructed the development of a new human-resources strategy for the organisation, which has identified three pillars that underpin SANRAL's human-capital development initiatives, namely people, skills, and performance.

“The strategic opportunities identified by SANRAL include capitalising on the opportunity presented by the digital revolution to create a new generation of technologically skilled entrepreneurs and workers; returning to good and ethical governance in both the public and private sectors; bringing back the prestige of serving the citizens of SA through state institutions: fashioning SANRAL as an employer of the future and delivering technical skills to address the glaring skills gap in engineering and other domains,” he said.

Macozoma stated that SANRAL has also decided to review and rationalise its support to institutions of higher learning in order to grow the footprint of its support programmes, increase the impact, and ensure equity.

Beyond this, he stated that SANRAL wanted to ensure that learners are equipped with fundamental competencies that are essential to complement academic teachings, including critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, and flexibility.

Facing 4IR head on

Macozoma said the most important characteristics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that must be taken into consideration by those who aim to survive it, drive it, and benefit from it, is a smart customer – who is informed and dictates what services he/she wants and how they should be delivered; technology at the fingertips – which will enable rapid, real-time, borderless services to information, services, and technology as an enabler – bringing efficiency to logistics, mobility, medicine, education, industries, the economy, the military, global trade, and politics.

Working closely with school and society

UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, said the university has an important responsibility to generate knowledge that will impact society positively.

“We have a role to work closely with our schools and society so that we can understand each other’s needs,” he said.

“We need to strengthen collaboration with all our partners so that we can travel further and make an impact in our society,” said Prof Petersen.

One of the participating teachers in the S4F programme, Grace Molante, from a primary school in Zastron, said: “It is programmes such as these that instil hope in us as teachers. Some learners could find Maths and Science very difficult and challenging subjects, but this programme makes problem solving more enjoyable and practical.”

News Archive

Inaugural lecture: Prof André Pelser

2004-06-04

Tendencies and changes in the South African population structure in future decades.

Within the next five years South Africa will for the first time in the past century enter a period where the death rate will exceed the birth rate, largely due to the impact of HIV / AIDS.

According to sociologist Prof André Pelser, sociologist at the of the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Department of Sociology, the death rate exceeding the birthrate is only one of three demographic trends which will fundamentally change South Africa’s population structure in the following decades.

He was speaking at the UFS in Bloemfontein during his inaugural lecture as professor this week.

Prof Pelser said that according to some models the South African population will decrease within the next five decades by between 10 and 26 percent.

A second important trend which will impact on the population structure is the progressive ageing of the population.

He said the group above 65 years is the only age category in the South African population which will witness sharp increases in the next few decades.

In the next 50 years, the group younger than 15 years will reflect a decrease of 39% and those older than 65 years in South Africa will increase by approximately 110% in the next two decades.

“The systematic “greying” of the South African population will create the same economic and welfare issues as those with which governments in some more developed countries are already grappling,” said Prof Pelser.

A third trend affecting the South African population structure is the constant decrease in life expectancy.

Life expectancy at birth for the total population is projected to decrease from approximately 62 years at the beginning of the 1990’s to 43 years in 2015-2020, with sharp differences between the various population groups.

These tendencies and changes to the South African population structure have serious implications, he said.

For example, he said, the reduction in life expectancy could compromise national development objectives.

“It is estimated that more than a quarter of the economically active population will be infected with HIV by 2006,” said Prof Pelser.

The increase in the population, in age category 65, will place a financial burden on government and the economically active sector.

“Especially worrying is the fact that ever-increasing proportions of the state budget will be allocated to health and welfare services and this at the expense of other priorities like education, infrastructure, criminal justice system and trade and industry, to name but a few,” he said

“A comprehensive and integrated strategy is thus vitally important in addressing the overarching issues caused by changes in the population structure,” said Prof Pelser.

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