A GENERATION without opportunity

EDUCATION STUDIES

How many school-leavers find jobs the year after grade 12? And should they be in the labour market? In the following article Michael Cosser addresses these and related questions.

A study tracing the destinations of learners who were in grade 12 in 2005 has revealed that 9% of the group that participated in the study (40 002 matriculants) were working in 2006 - less than half the percentage (20%) of those who had aspired to a job.

Thirty-two per cent of the cohort (138 240 learners) were unemployed and seeking employment - a higher percentage than the official unemployment figure of Statistics SA's Labour Force Survey of 25.5% in September 2006.

Learners in employment

Of the 9% of learners who were employed, the largest proportion - nearly a quarter (24%) - found employment by going from place to place asking for work. This finding represents a noteworthy departure from the situation in 2002, when an HSRC survey of the destinations of the grade 12 cohort of 2001 showed that only 12% found work through this means.

In 2006, 42% of all working learners found employment through networks operating within their spheres of activity.

On average, it took those learners who did find a job, 4.3 months before succeeding.

The three variables  most strongly influencing learners' perceptions of what facilitated finding employment, were personality (4.3 on a 5-point Likert-type scale), ability to speak English well (4.3) and possession of a Senior Certificate (4.0). The only two factors that scored above 4 have to do with presentation in the interview. While having grade 12 was clearly important, it ranked only third in the table - and was far more influential for women (4.2) than for men (3.8).

Race exerted a negligible influence in learners' minds on their finding employment: the score was 2.3 for Africans and 1.6 for whites.

Not surprisingly, most of the first-time entrants into the labour market (77%) were working for a company or organisation, while 15% assisted someone else in a business. Fifty-seven per cent were employed in a private company, 24% in government or the public service, and 19% in a non-governmental or community-based organisation.

The vast majority of employed post-grade 12 learners were employed in the wholesale, retail, repairs and hotel sector (60%), followed by community, social, or personal services (14%), financial, insurance, real estate or business (11%) and construction (4%).

Thirty-nine per cent of those employed were working as service workers, shop and market sales workers, 20% were employed as clerks, 17% worked in elementary occupations, 8% as technicians and associate professionals, 7% as craft and related trades workers, 6% as plant and machine operators and assemblers, 2% as professionals, and 1% as legislators, senior officials and managers - again, a not unexpected finding given that these are learners straight out of school.

School qualifications do not skill for work

Those employed rated alignment between the knowledge and skills they acquired at school and use of these attributes in their jobs at 3.6 on a 5-point scale. Seventy-one per cent indicated that their jobs were neither appropriate nor linked to their school qualifications, most indicating that they took the job because they needed to support themselves and or their families (76% of responses), that they could gain valuable experience in their current jobs (45% of responses), and that they could not find a job linked to their level of education (37% of responses).

That the cohort of employed learners includes those working part-time (half of those employed) places the high percentage (71%) of learners who took jobs not linked to their schooling in perspective. However, only 7% of those employed ascribe their decision to take their current jobs to the need for the flexibility (being able to work where and when they want to) which part-time work affords them.

The high percentage of those employed who indicated that their jobs were neither appropriate nor linked to their school qualifications is a sobering comment - albeit from the learners' perspective - about the extent to which school is an adequate preparation ground for work.

Unemployed, but studying

Sixty per cent of the sub-set of those not working (which includes those studying) were in need of employment, underscoring the extent to which studying and unemployment are not mutually exclusive categories for many South African youth - studying being used as a holding mechanism until the finding of a job.

The average length of time unemployed learners had been looking for employment was 8.5 months.

The reasons provided by the unemployed for their not having jobs included insufficiently high qualification levels (56%); the absence of job opportunities where they lived (48%); lacking the skills/experience for the job (35%); and having no money to look for work (23%). The first and third of these point to the mismatch between school supply and labour market demand, suggesting high under-qualification for employment.

Unemployed learners indicated that neither race (2.7), level of physical ability (2.4), nor gender (2.5) had exerted any perceptible effect on their employment status.

The five main strategies that according to respondents might have enhanced their employability were: acquiring more practical training (61% of responses); applying for more jobs (47%); moving to another area where there might be work (38%); sending a CV to employers (36%); and sending a CV to an employment agency (34%).

The high percentage of unemployed learners the year after school, the correspondingly low percentage of learners in employment, the high under-qualification for the labour market, and employers' apparent demand that learners bring experience to the job market, underscore the inherently skewed nature of post-school trajectories.

Learners should either be studying towards the achievement of a Senior Certificate the year after school (if they have failed at the first attempt), or be continuing with their studies - either in further or in higher education. That 41% of a school-leaving cohort enters the labour market in any one year signals a generation without opportunity.

If that generation is not to replicate itself - as Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande pronounced in his budget speech - the multitude of young people (2.8 million) who are not employed, in education, or training, suggests that young people should be encouraged to remain in education for as long as possible.

This article is based on Michael Cosser and Sekinah Sehlola, Ambitions Revised: Grade 12 Learner Destinations One Year On, HSRC Press, 2009, available on http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/.