Search

This paper examines the dominant approach to entrepreneurship education in the South African education system regarding the crisis of youth unemployment. It draws on the case of the public-school sector, in conjunction with the technical vocational education and training (TVET) subsector of the post-school education sector. The comparison of the entrepreneurship education sector plan for public schools with the discourse on TVET reform shows that entrepreneurship education similarly follows the 'skills perspective' with a dominant focus on the formal economy, which is informed by a human-capital based and productivist approach to education. The authors argue that this understanding of entrepreneurship education employs a too narrow perspective on youth unemployment as it overlooks individual capabilities and agency and can contribute to an experience of youth unemployment as individual failure. The authors expand this argument by suggesting a critical entrepreneurship education approach, which is outlined based on two programmes at primary-school and post-school education (TVET) level in a poor urban area. The authors argue that a critical entrepreneurship education approach contributes to learning for capabilities, social justice and democratic citizenship.

Sprouting Entrepreneurs is a three-year teaching programme for rural primary and secondary schools that focuses on entrepreneurship in agriculture. It addresses the South African real-life challenges of food insecurity, youth unemployment and rural poverty from a classroom perspective, by linking agriculture, food and entrepreneurship as main learning areas. This paper outlines the programme in its local social and economic context. It argues for the need for a concept of entrepreneurship education that views opportunities in the context of young people's positive freedoms. Its didactical model combines the EntreComp framework with the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen and others. It emphasises the role of capabilities or freedoms in developing and implementing ideas that create value for others. The Sustainable Development Goals form a medium of learning.