Creative partnerships between universities and state-owned companies may hold the key to improved outcomes in maths, science and technology subjects and open more career opportunities for matriculants. One such programme is already in place – and achieving results – at the University of the Free State (UFS) through an endowment from SANRAL to sponsor a Chair in Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Technology Education.

The need to train more high school learners in these gateway subjects is well-documented and often raised by educators, academics and leaders in government, business and civil society. The National Development Plan has elevated it to a priority. However, the most recent White Paper on post-school education and training concludes that the country ‘is still not producing enough science, engineering and technology graduates to meet its economic development objectives’.
The Academy of Science in South Africa (ASSAf) a statutory body established by its first patron, former President Nelson Mandela, has brought together some of the leading thinkers in this field and supported research studies and publications that looked at best global practices and innovations that can be adapted and introduced within the local context.
The good news can be found in the growing number of private- and publicsector initiatives that are reaching school children from early ages – especially in rural and underprivileged communities – with enrichment programmes and extra classes over holidays and at weekends, to augment the regular classroom experience.
Again, SANRAL and the University of the Free State are at the leading edge of such initiatives through its Family Math and Family Science Programme, which reaches deep into rural

communities in four provinces and provides support to both learners, teachers and parents. We produce learning material and teaching aids to make maths and natural sciences fun and we mobilise parents to encourage their children to continue with subjects that are often wrongly labelled as ‘difficult’ and ‘inaccessible’.
The steady improvement in matric pass rates over the past three years – including in the Free State, which is the best performing province – hopefully indicates that we have turned a corner, but it also encourages those of us involved in the education sector to redouble our efforts to maintain this trajectory.
Through the SANRAL Chair in Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Technology Education at UFS we take a few steps further to ensure we make a deep and lasting contribution towards solutions for this national priority.
There is broad agreement that the challenge to improve the quality of teaching and learning in science and mathematics require more than just a one-dimensional intervention. The issue that often eludes us is how to find creative ways to do it.
We follow a multi-pronged approach that combines cutting-edge research in science and maths education with the training of educators and the recruiting of talented high school students into the teaching profession.
This dual focus on both research and practice makes the SANRAL Chair initiative a truly multi-dimensional and unique intervention in science and mathematics education.
On the one level, we reach into communities by working with provincial and district education authorities, and providing teachers with support material based on the most recent trends in research and publications.
Through the programme we help to train teachers, support student-teacher interns and incentivise education results so that participating schools become centres of excellence on their own – and talented learners no longer have to migrate to better-resourced schools to access quality education.
In addition, our objective is that the learners who benefit from this initiative will become part of a talent pool from which the next generation of engineers, teachers, artisans and technicians will be drawn.