Gen Piet Joubert School: education with a difference

Gen Piet Joubert School of Skills has educators with special hearts who currently educate 680 learners. It is a double-medium school which instructs learners with Special Educational Needs (LSEN) through the mediums of English and Afrikaans in order to equip them with practical, career aimed skills.
“The school functions on two components namely a Scholastic Section – comprising of a Junior School and a Senior School, as well as a Technical Section – comprising of different centres where learners are taught skills or a trade,” Nic Pieterse, Principal of the school informed.
The Junior Scholastic Section builds a bridge between primary schools and the Skills School. It accommodates learners from the age of 11 to age 14, and is called Orientation 1. After Orientation 1, learners progress to Orientation 2, Grade 7, Grade 8 and Grade 9.

Gen Piet Joubert School offers English and Afrikaans as Home Language or First Additional Language, Mathematics, Life Skills, Natural Sciences, Economic and Management Sciences, Creative Arts and Computer Literacy on LSEN level.
Girls start with Basic Skills in the Skills Centre, where they are taught the basics of all the skills centres. After their first year, they have a choice between Shop and Office Practice and Hairdressing, and between Needlework and Home Economics. The main aim in these centres is to teach the girls to become entrepreneurs and be self-sufficient as well as to equip them to be able to care for their families in the future.
The Technical Section where boys are trained consists of centres for Woodwork, Welding, Panel Beating, Spray Painting, Motor Mechanics and Building (which includes electricity, carpentry, plumbing and brick laying).
The boys rotate through all these centres in the Orientation 2 phase. At the end of the first year, the boys are guided by their parents and teachers to choose the centre in which they want to specialise.
In the Senior Phase, which comprises boys in the age group of 15 to 18 years old, the learners specialise in the centre of their choice from Grade 7 to Grade 9. They are trained by capable educators and artisans who develop their abilities to a high level and which enables the school to serve the community in the production of furniture, the service of motor vehicles, panel beating and spray painting as well as the manufacture of steel products.
Pieterse invites the community to make use of the above-mentioned services, at affordable tariffs, which money is used for materials necessary for training the artisans of the future.
The school offers athletics up to national level, soccer, netball and cross country running. “Our learners also have the opportunity to take part in the Eisteddfod to broaden their culture development,” Pieterse said.
School leavers receive certificates of qualifications at the end of Grade 9.A new curriculum will be followed by the School of Skills as from 2017.

Featured Photo: Nelie Erasmus – Mahlatse Kadiaka, Mabyana Namane and Tilly Radzilani with items they made in the woodwork class.

NELIE ERASMUS
>>nelie.observer@gmail.com