In the past, the South African education system has focused solely on the academic pathway which may have lead to the high dropout and failure rate.
However, the Department of Basic Education believes that the three streams model will provide differentiated offerings to pupils and respond to the skills needed for the ever-changing world.
Dr Moses Simelane, the Chief Director of Curriculum Implementation and Monitoring at the DBE, believes that it is their own way of diversifying their curriculum offerings.
Dr Simelane stated that the three streams include academics, vocation and occupation, where the additional two streams include vocational and occupational streams.
The three streams have been introduced from Grade 10 to 12, which provided Grade 9 learners with the guidance to choose learning pathways that best suit their interests, attitudes and abilities.
Over the past few years, the model has been phased in and the department has been pleased with how successful it is.
The vocational stream began in 2016 with Grade 10s, where they were introduced to technical subjects such as mechanical technology, civil technology, electrical technology, technical mathematics and technical sciences.
When it came to introducing the vocationally orientated subjects, the department was hoping to start with 10 schools per province, however, to their surprise, 105 schools agreed to do the pilot.
The Western Cape and Gauteng actually volunteered more than 10 schools for the pilot. 23 schools from the Western Cape and 15 from Gauteng.
This year 95 of those schools began implementing the subjects in Grade 8, while the other 10 schools are set to begin the implementation in 2022.
