I've always said the difference between a special school or school of skills and
a mainstream school is that in a mainstream school you've got a curriculum and the learners
must adapt to the curriculum in a special school we've got a learner and
the curriculum must adapt to the learner.
school skills is the school for learners who experience barriers to learning
the barriers must be intrinsic or extrinsic.
So the learner must have either or the learner might have a combination of both.
both and these barriers would normally prevent the letter from engaging
successfully in a mainstream school setting.
What is very important is to know is,
that the school of skills learner is not necessarily a learner that's really struggling.
Yes they do struggle in mainstream schools I just think they learn differently than other people.
So we've got a school of skills
where we train them to do to do technical subjects and to get them ready
for the workplace out there. They start off only 14 years old and they do is 50%
technical 50% academic curriculum.
So we try and equip them to take their rightful place not just in the South African society,
but also in the workforce.
Anybody can attend a school of skills as long as you went through the process.
Your primary school teachers will identify a learner that's really
struggling but it's got an aptitude for technical subjects, they must go to a
psychologist then and the psychologist must refer them to a school of skills.
You go to first what's similar we do have an academic component.
More simplified we have your languages we have the mathematics and then we have the life skills.
And the life skills comprises of your personal and social
well-being, creative arts, natural science, and physics.
The difference comes in when when we were speaking about the technical subjects
There's a lot of different skills that they can do in the school. At our school we offer:
woodworking, welding, maintenance, hairdressing, panel beating, spray painting,
food production, ECD. That's basically the subjects that we offer in our school
They call our course a four-year course.
So there is no grades involved. So there level 1, 2, 3 & 4.
So they will leave with a year level 4 certificate from the WCED, and also from the school
we also will give them a skills certificate,
indicating what on what level they will perform on the skill side.
If the learner has the academic potential with the support from the
parents and financial support as well I believe that it is possible.
We've had learners in the past that applied and we were successful.
They can also get their the trade qualification on the basis of our RPL.
working in a company for a couple of years and then do the trade test.
So the TVET college is very important to us but I don't think that's
the only solution for our learners to be qualified eventually
People want to believe that school of skills are very naughty kids,
using derogatory terms to put our learners and we forget that we don't
all learn the same way it is expected search you need to follow an academic
pathway and if you can't then you stupid and classified as whatever.
I would like the community to learn and to understand that we all learn differently
and when a child comes to the school of skills we teach that child differently
we actually teach the child the strenghts that a child has, the talents that the child has.
We bring that to the forth and we need our communities and
our businesses to give our learners the opportunity.
We might not be able to read and write that well but give us a practical task
and we will show you what needs to be done.
The way the teachers handle us and the way they support an everything we do
literally everything we do.
And the teachers are always supportive so this feels like a second home to all of us.
The thing that I enjoy the most is the friends that we the friends that I've made, for the four years that I had.
Literally every teacher plays a huge role on every learner's life,
When I got to Westcliff School of Skills it changed my entire life.
I could see the world differently as well.