Sacred Heart College hosted a CEO breakfast that tackled the topic of independent education
The Sacred Heart College CEO breakfast panelists included Standard Bank CEO, Simphiwe Tshabalal and Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Welsh.
In light of Sacred Heart College in Sandringham launching its foundation, the school hosted a CEO breakfast to discuss South Africa’s national competitive advantage and the role of education.
Hosted at Protea Hotel Balalaika on August 2, the panellists included Sacred Heart College alumni, CEO of Standard Bank Simphiwe Tshabalala, Sacred Heart College principal Heather Blanckensee, Dr and author Sizwe Mpofu-Welsh, Dr Jefferson Yu-Je Chen and Paul Kapelus.
Tshabalala who tackled South Africa’s national competitive advantage (an attribute that allows an organisation to outperform its competitors) said as a person from business, he naturally approached this topic from the perspective of national economic competitiveness.
“Since the panel that will follow is talking about education, I will start by stating an important truth: Education is an extremely important input into competitiveness,” he said. “One can see this very clearly by looking at South Africa’s most internationally competitive sectors. For example, finance requires high levels of numeracy and literacy in all employees, and also needs a lot of people with advanced skills in areas including mathematics and statistics, accounting, law, psychology, marketing and communications.”
He added people should not forget that the country’s education sector was, in itself, a key source of competitive advantage. “We have five genuinely world-class universities, another six which are very good by international standards, and a few hundred exceptionally good schools.”
Blanckensee believed the independent education sector was under immense pressure because of the economic environment of the country. She added education was about remaining relevant which was why all schools, public or private, have a responsibility to shift the paradigm that teachers have around teaching the schools’ curriculum.
Mpofu-Welsh said, “We tend to assume that education and equipping learners for the future in this country is about only the hard technical skills of mathematics and science and there is no doubt of the importance of them, but I think what we may be getting wrong in our education system is that ultimately, we want people to go through an education system and be able to navigate the world. Be able to navigate the complex society that SA is.”
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