The webinar series, titled Re-Imagining TVET: The Implications of COVID-19, aims to reach out to TVET colleges stakeholders through debate and discussion to better understand the impact and implications of COVID-19 on the TVET sector in the short, medium and long-term.
The rationale for this webinar series is anchored on the depth and breadth of the debate held in the media and in the public discourse on the impact and implications of COVID-19 on schools and universities.
“Despite the breadth of this debate, there has been a notable silence when it comes to the implications of COVID-19 for TVET,” says Chair: YU, Dr Lesley Powell.
“This is regrettable as the sector is positioned as central to addressing the triple challenges, namely, unemployment, inequality and poverty facing South Africa and other developing economies.”
It is envisaged that these interactive engagements will provide fertile ground for engaging with the current crisis as well as what this might mean for South African TVET going forward.
The objective of the webinar series is to provide support to the TVET sector through advanced engagement that involves all TVET stakeholders where perspectives, experience and knowledge of the TVET college terrain will be shared in a bid to better understand and to find ways to address the implications of COVID19 on TVET colleges.
This initiative received overwhelming support in the sector and a diverse Working Group was formulated to organise the envisaged seven-part webinar series to be held at three weeks intervals as from 11 September 2020. The webinar series will run until 10 December 2020.
Mandela University’s partners in this regard are the Eastern Cape TVET Research Round Table, Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Institute for Post School Studies (University of the Western Cape), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the Centre for Researching Education and Labour (Wits University) and the United Kingdom’s Nottingham University.
