New bursary scheme to incubate students into employees

© Rabia Elif Aksoy – 123RF.com

The bursaries will fund three years of school fees at a Generation Education campus, ensuring that the requisite knowledge and skills are transferred. After the initial three-year bursary period, successful bursary candidates will be put through a comprehensive on-boarding process before commencing a two-year period of employment at partner companies. The bursaries will be awarded to best suited individuals, whilst also providing an opportunity for underprivileged individuals from local township schools who are financially constrained but show promise.

Fostering business relationships

During the bursary period, the Generation Education team will foster the relationship between learners and various partner companies, as well as integrate successful candidates into these businesses, ensuring that the student fully understands the business environment in which he/she will be placed. This will be done through various means such as psychometric evaluations, aptitude tests, vocational working periods and cultural alignments.

Jevron Epstein, founder and MD of Generation Education comments, “Together with like-minded businesses, our schools can assist in cultivating the journey for learners from primary education to employment, which is known as the golden thread. Employment for us is measured by sustainability, not only focusing on financial wellbeing but emotional too.

“We are proud to have Arch Retail Systems partner with us to address both education and employment which are so desperately needed in South Africa. Our aim for the next ten years is to secure bursaries for all our high school students and in so doing allow anyone with a passion to attend our schools, as the education opportunity will be based on funding businesses’ commercial needs.”

Helen Behm, HR manager at Arch Retail Solutions, adds, “We are excited to partner with Generation Education. We have bought into this concept, as we struggle to find skilled staff and can see the potential that this model has to fulfil the skills we need as a company.”

Self-marketing

Importantly, the students aged between 12 and 15 years are themselves responsible for the marketing of the bursary scheme to their target businesses across various niche industries to secure financial and vocational support. This allows companies to experience first-hand the level of expertise that Generation Education schools instil, while at the same time empowering students to be in control of their own destiny.

Generation Education combines the Montessori pedagogy in early childhood development with an international curriculum affiliated to Cambridge University. It is a 75% held subsidiary of JSE listed investment holding company Trematon Capital Investments.