Europion Union

Mitigating the Impact of Covid-19 in the South African Post School Education and Training Sector

Social Impact of COVID-19, Post-Schooling Education & Training, Capacity Development
Post school education, skills set up, graduate competency, throughput, and return on investment within the post school sector on the South African economy is hugely impacted and influenced by issues such as the high rates of HIV/TB/STI, as well as high incidence of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), high rates of alcohol and substance abuse, increasing cases of mental health issues, and as of earlier 2020, by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has further exacerbated some of the aforementioned challenges. In addition, COVID-19 if not appropriately responded to has the potential to impact of graduate competencies development and throughput if teaching & learning is halted in responding to the pandemic. Objective: To enable the effective functioning of the PSET sector by managing the impact and risk of COVID-19 for the sector.

Target Groups

Primary beneficiaries are students between the ages of 15-34 years, which makes up more than 95% of the over 2 million student population. 85% of our students emerge from historically disadvantaged backgrounds and face many challenges and vulnerabilities, particularly heightened by COVID-19.

Staff including Management, Students Affairs, students support services including campus security, warden, and cleaning staff with the aim to build institutional level systems, controls, and programmes to mitigate the social impact of COVID-19

Main Activities

1. Development of new and revision of existing COVID-19, GBV, Mental health and Substance Abuse Guidelines, Protocols, Minimums Standards, Checklists and Curriculums for the PSET sector.

2. Capacity Development and Skills transfer to over 3500 staff and 315 000 students.

3. Establishment of COVID-19 screening stations including expansion of a digital COVID-19 screening platform for PSET institutions – “HealthCheck”.

4.Development & roll out of social behaviour change campaigns including establishment of social compacts between students, student leadership and institutional management. The action mitigates the social impact of COVID-19, including addressing systems and controls for managing and responding to GBV, Mental Health and Substance Abuse which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic amongst students & staff within the PSET system.

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