An assessment of the factors influencing the academic resilience of trainees in entrepreneurial training programmes: case of the new venture creation programme in the Saldanha Bay Municipal Area, West Coast Region, South Africa

Abstract

In the education and training environment retention and a high throughput rate of students are common objectives of many learning institutions from government sponsored community training programmes to tertiary institutions. High dropout and attrition in many of these education and training programmes is, therefore of great concern for all stakeholders in these institutions. The high dropout rate experienced in entrepreneurial training programmes is, in particular, of great concern, given its importance in the South African economy. The New Venture Creation (NVC) Learnership NQF Level 4, is one such training programme rolled out by the South African government to develop entrepreneurs in the previously disadvantaged section of the South African population for various socio-economic and political reasons. The Services SETA were responsible for the roll out NVC Learnership for previously disadvantaged individuals (PDI„s) within the Saldanha Bay Municipal area. The PDI‟s refer to those sections of the population who were isolated in terms of new venture creation during the apartheid regime. Depriving these South Africans of the necessary entrepreneurial skills for new venture creation had an impact on their participation in entrepreneurship and the formal economy. The social context of the potential entrepreneur, further, impact hugely on objectives envisaged for these programmes. One of the key objectives of the programme is to change the attitude towards entrepreneurship from the tendency to start survivalist to establishing sustainable business ventures. The entrepreneurial mind-set of the trainee and the training context, therefore, play a huge role. In order to address the issue of huge trainee dropout and develop the mind-set of trainees in NVC programmes, this study seeks to explore the issue of academic resilience as a key area of intervention to ensure higher retention and throughput rate.The current study was concerned with assessing the personal factors and other factors in the training context perceived by trainees‟ to influence their academic resilience in the New Venture Creation (NVC) training programme.An in-depth literature study was done to establish the factors on a personal level and in the training context that tend to influence the academic resilience of trainees. Graduates in a NVC Learnership in St. Helena Bay formed the case study to assess these factors by means of a structured questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The semi-structured interview offered graduates the opportunity to elaborate on certain findings in the questionnaire. A focus group session was held with another group who did a similar NVC NQF Level 4 Learnership, to corroborate and validate the findings of the interviews in the first group.The research revealed that personal and training contextual factors do influence the academic resilience of trainees in the NVC training programme. The research findings, further, revealed that these factors have huge implications for facilitation and, in particular, on a pedagogical level.