African Wildlife and Environment Issue 67

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Eco-schools This international and award-winning programme remains one of the cornerstones of achieving transformation in schools. In keeping with the international process, the programme now has a rolling registration process so that schools can register at any time of the year and submit their portfolios within eight to twelve months from registration, and there are eleven themes on which schools can focus their attention. Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) and Learning about Forests (LEAF) These two new international programmes are combined in one pillar and focus on enabling young people to both conduct research into their local environment and respond to environmental challenges and develop skills that will support their future endeavours. Water – Energy – Food nexus These three core issues are at the heart of achieving sustainability. School Entrepreneurship Programme (SEP) There are currently ten million people in South Africa aged between 15 and 24 and approximately one third are neither in school or college, nor employed; that means there are about 3.3 million youth who literally have nothing to do. Is this WESSA’s problem and if so, what do we do about it? And if we are going to do something about it, what should we do, and how do we go about doing something about it? The Schools team has grappled with these questions, and it is clear that this multi dimensional issue is fraught with challenges. We have delved deeper to gain a better understanding of the cause of the problem as well as the consequences. The Quarterly Labour Force Survey released by StatsSA shows that unemployment in South Africa is not being reduced and it is particularly troubling for the youth; the grim reality is that more young people than ever face an uncertain future without a realistic opportunity to make their way into a productive life. The number of unemployable youth increases every year and it places an enormous tax burden on the country; if we, society, do not address this, then the consequences for all of us are both dire and eventually will be irreversible. What then, can we, as WESSA, do about this? The SEP looks to address the issue for both in-school youth and out-of-school youth; • How can WESSA help to keep learners engaged in school, and to keep learners in school until they achieve a successful matric certificate? • How can WESSA engage young people who have left school before graduating from high school and support them to carve out a productive future for themselves? Making a difference for learners The first question to ask is why almost six out of ten

learners leave school before finishing high school. StatsSA show that there is no one dominant cause to this, but there are trends that WESSA can respond to. The two most significant causes are financial pressure and poor academic achievement. Research shows that the better someone’s education, the greater their chances of achieving success in life – more than half of South Africa’s scholars leave school before their matric year, and they do so without the skills needed in order to enter the job market. The same applies to learners who fail their matriculation exams. Statistics released earlier this year show that three out of five youth in South Africa have never had a job. This places an enormous tax burden on the economically active population. It also has a detrimental impact on the local environment because when people become active in the informal economy (which is roughly 25% of people), without the knowledge and skills to do so with a good grounding in the environmental consequences of production activities, it can lead to a negative impact on the ecology. The first step is to keep learners in school so that they do matriculate with success – and the key to that is engagement and experiential learning. Once a learner has graduated, they must have the confidence and ambition to either become economically active or embark on further studies. From WESSA’s point of view, the ideal is to support young people to become proactive and confident in their future path, and to do so with environmental sustainability. There is no silver bullet for these challenges, and the one thing that will not, and cannot happen is that there will suddenly be 300 000 new jobs available for job seekers.

WHY LEARNERS LEAVE SCHOOL BEFORE MATRICULATION

Don’t want to go further

Education is useless

Illness or disability

Family commitments Poor academic achievement No money for fees Don’t want to go further

Poor academic achievement Illness or disability No money for fees

Family commitments Education is useless

37 | African Wildlife & Environment | 67 (2017)