Premier Zille hands over R100 000 prize to Sophumelela Secondary School | Western Cape Government

News

News

Premier Zille hands over R100 000 prize to Sophumelela Secondary School

6 May 2019
This morning, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille handed over a R100 000 prize to Sophumelela Secondary School as the winning school from the Western Cape Government’s Apprenticeship Game Changer Career Awareness competition.
 
During the surprise handover at the school assembly today, Premier Zille also awarded a tablet to Sinazo Gudlu, one of the individual prize winners.
 
Earlier in the week, Western Cape Education Minister, Debbie Schäfer, presented other competition awards to learners at Oval North High School and COSAT as part of the Career Awareness competition. These awards included two learners receiving a Pearson ICT Bursary to the value of R100 000 and three learners receiving Imperial Technical Training College Auto Electrician or Motor Mechanic Apprenticeships.
 
Today’s R100 000 prize awarded to Sophumelela Secondary School will enable additional Smart Classrooms for the school, which already had 12 Smart Classrooms installed in 2015.
 
Premier Zille said: “The Western Cape Government has prioritised the expansion of apprenticeships across the province because we need to ensure there are sufficiently qualified technically and vocationally skilled young people to meet the needs of our fastest growing sectors in the Western Cape namely, Tourism, Oil and Gas, Agri-processing and the enabling sectors of Renewable Energy and ICT.
 
"In order to achieve this, we need more young people to choose an apprenticeship as a career path towards a technical and vocational job.
 
"There are 1000’s of career opportunities in our five priority sectors, in fact it is estimated that these sectors can potentially provide over 230 000 jobs over the next few years.”
 
The Western Cape Government has been running various initiatives in the province, with a particular focus on our 71 Technical High and Maths and Science schools, under the Apprenticeship Game Changer, in order to ensure that there are sufficiently qualified technically and vocationally skilled young people to supply the needs of our five prioritised growth sectors in the Western Cape.
 
Our target is to produce an additional 11 300 employable apprentices with qualifications by the end of 2019. We are on track to meet this target, with 8 443 learners having successfully completed their workplace base learning programmes by December 2018.
 
One of the key focus areas remains changing people’s attitudes towards technical and vocational careers and assisting learners to make informed decisions about their future.
 
The campaign “Your Future Starts Here” encouraged learners to:
- take Mathematics as a school subject; 
- look at in-demand career options in the fastest-growing industrial sectors in the Western Cape; and 
- consider further study at Technical Training Colleges (TVETS) and Universities of Technology (UOTS) as these allow students to do apprenticeships where they can gain practical skills and work while they study.
 
As part of the Career Awareness Campaign, each Technical High School and Maths and Science School received five sets of posters for their Life Orientation classrooms, which presented the five priority sectors as 3D worlds and highlight some of the high-in-demand occupations within these sectors.
 
Premier Zille added this morning: “We are here to celebrate you and your efforts which have won your school this very big prize. Sophumelela means we are succeeding and you are proving that motto to be correct. I encourage you to keep working hard and to never give up.”
 
To encourage learners to engage with the content on these posters, the Western Cape Government ran a competition from 9 January to 28 February 2019, which learners could enter via SMS (SMSs are free) and answer a few easy questions to stand a chance of winning a range of prizes.
 
The school with the most entries stood a chance to win additional smart classrooms to the value of R100 000, while Gr. 12 learners stood a chance of winning:
- two R100 000 one-year bursaries to study a Higher Certificate in Information Systems at Pearson Institute of Higher Education at their Claremont and Durbanville campuses. This prize also includes a laptop and textbooks;
- three Auto Electrician or Motor Mechanic Apprenticeships at the Imperial Technical Training Academy in Bellville; and
- learners from Grades 8 to 11 could also enter the competition to stand a chance of winning one of a number of tablets.
 

The prize winners are:

  • Winning School: Sophumelela Secondary School
  • Pearson Bursary Winners:
    • Mickyle James – Spine Road High School;
    • Inga Kock – Oval North High School.
  • Imperial Technical Training Academy Apprenticeship Winners:
    • Sophesethu - Indwe Secondary School;
    • Ongeziwe Mute – Phillipi Secondary;
    • Shernice Booysen – Oval North High School.
  • Tablets:
    • Sinazo Gudlu – Sophumelela Secondary School;
    • Thalitha Sithembiso – COSAT;
    • Ammaarah Solomon – Oval North High School.
Media Enquiries: 

Ewald Botha
Spokesperson for Premier Helen Zille
079 694 1113
021 483 4584
ewald.botha@westerncape.gov.za