Businesses are ploughing large parts of their CSI budgets into the education of their current and future workforce, but say they need the active cooperation of government departments if they are to succeed.
In the 2008-09 financial year South African firms spent 38% of the R5.1-billion national CSI budget on education, according to research by Trialogue.
Out of the 105 companies interviewed, 94% said they allocate some of their CSI budget to education-related initiatives. Second most popular are CSI programmes in the HIV/Aids sector, which make up 19% of the total budget, while 10% goes towards social and community development.
Higher education clearly means business. The most popular subjects to support are maths, science and technology — because businesses hope to gain tangible benefits from learners with those skills when they enter the job market.
Early childhood development (ECD) and teacher training receive considerably less financial support.
Investments in both areas have been declining since 2003, says Delia Nzekwu, an independent research consultant who wrote her doctoral thesis on the topic.
‘ECD has a strong impact on general education and poverty alleviation. But, because its returns take a long time to manifest, it is the least resourced educational sector,” she says. ‘We need to re-prioritise this.”
Nzekwu suggests the national education department should offer companies incentives to invest in these areas, but warns that ‘CSI in education is not a panacea for poverty alleviation, although it can be an effective enabler”.
Companies can’t solve skill shortages in isolation, says Velaphi Gumbi, chief executive of the Osizweni Education and Development Centre in Mpumalanga, a science, maths and technology initiative sponsored by Sasol.
Gumbi believes the recipe for success lies in close collaboration between businesses and education departments on national, regional and municipal levels.
‘We see it as our mandate to offer strategic support to the education departments,” he says. ‘We sit down with the departments’ education specialists and debate and plan what educational needs can be addressed through our CSI programmes. That’s the only way it works.”
Gumbi knows of several examples where well-intentioned CSI initiatives have failed because they did not tie into the national education agenda.
Millions of rands have been wasted, for example, by building schools that end up standing empty because there is no budget to employ teachers.
Lack of cooperation between government departments and CSI programmes is one of the main reasons numerous CSI education initiatives are falling short.