Education exists for one reason – to equip learners with tools to achieve whatever goals they may possess. The education curriculum exists to bring learners closer to their desired hopes and dreams for the future. The education system should not deviate learners from what they wish to achieve and replace it with something else – providing a curriculum that blocks what learners love for what the system believes is right for the learners. Some learners in South Africa and across the world are athletes, highly talented and hold a remarkable desire to become sportsmen and women. Normally, learners of such nature would struggle academically and excel in one or various sporting codes. These learners also deserve a curriculum that will compliment their individualistic traits. Matured education system would make educational provisions to accommodate athletes and talented learners. Thus this paper seeks to reveal the curriculum solution for athletes and talented learners.

School does not teach and emphasize the fact that learners can make life out of sport. Instead the system forces a learner to do Math, English literature etc. without realizing the damage it does to the individualistic traits learners hold within themselves. The school curriculum is forcing a child to do all this because the curriculum has no answer for the educational need of  athletic learner – it’s a phenomenon the current education system has no answer too. Being involved in sport can result into being a superstar – professional footballer, rugby star, cricketer, netballer etc. Sport can make one become a coach or development coach. Sport provides explicit opportunities to travel and play on an international platform. Sports help become a sport agent (a person who markets players abilities to different local and international clubs to secure a lucrative deal for them). Sport help one become a sport analyst and pundit (a person who analyse games and do punditry on national media platforms). There are many careers in sport that the school system and its teachers never teach, talk about and reveal to the learners because the school curriculum is forcing the learner to be academic inclined, and once the learner is struggling academically, they have no solution to rescue the learner.

The unfortunate reality about the curriculum forcing athletes and talented learners to be academics is that these learners end up struggling academically and drop out of school or averagely pass their Matric and struggle to get admission in higher education institutions. Some fall statistic to the “upgrade” “matric rewrite”  etc. Remember, they are encouraged and pressured by their teachers and parents to dump sport and “concentrate” on their studies. When all is done after Matric year, the child is now without a promising career out of it. One may wonder what is a solution to this problem and how to help athletic and gifted learners with exposition to the careers in sport.

Under the reign of Personalized Education Curriculum System (PECS) there would be “Schools of sports” – rugby, soccer, netball, tennis, volleyball, hockey etc. These schools will be only offering subjects such as: English (only for communication skills, no literature), Business of trade (A subject that exposes learners into sport business venture – to own a club, buying of club shares, forming of partnerships with sports club sponsors, sports investment etc.), Life Orientation (which is important for sports people as they have to know how to conduct their life style in order to protect themselves and others) and coaching license subjects (these would be offered by associations of various sporting codes, SAFA, SARU, etc. And the rest of the activities in these schools would be practical training scheduled twice or three times a day with English, Business of Trade, and Life Orientation classes in between.

Under the education system of PECS, Department of Sports and recreation in collaboration with Department of basic education will have a responsibility to ensure the budget for quality sports equipment delivered to schools of sport. Sport associations such as SAFA, Rugby associations and other associations will be partners in education by providing professional services to schools like coaching and officiating courses and providing the professional guidance on the map out of the sport education curriculum in South Africa. Sports clubs, with proper proposal and communications from the education sector, can adopt a school of sport and partner with these schools by providing legends (former players still within the structures of the clubs) to schools to unearth talent and promote it for developmental structures of these clubs. Sport is business (it’s a market), and at Simnandi Solutions (Pty) Ltd we believe that the market has a critical role to play in education and it’s curriculum (refer to the Simnandi article ” The overlooked influence of the market in education”https://simnandisolutions.co.za/2020/06/26/the-overlooked-influence-of-the-market-in-education/

This type of partnership will be beneficial to all parties – our learners getting exposure and assessed and trained by capable coaches rather than being trained by teachers who lack skill and dynamic knowledge of that particular sport as it is the case under the current education system. The sport clubs will benefit the recruitment of the best talent these players (our learners) are bringing. The education sector will be relevant, and the society will have faith in the education system.

This is the only way the highly talented and athletic learners in schools will realize the meaning and importance of schooling. The learners will feel their curriculum is drawing them closer to their dreams than being blocked and forced to do subjects irrelevant from their future aspirations. These learners will, for the first time, feel important and accepted as they feel stupid and disgruntled in the classroom because they are failing Math, Literature, Physical Sciences etc, and these are subjects they don’t even need for their future.

Our conclusion, the proposed Personalized Education Curriculum System (PECS) is proving to be the only hope  for learners such as these. PECS is the only education system that will set our learners free from a compulsory future disadvantaging  current curriculum under which South Africa operates. PECS considers the individuality and personal traits of a learner and provide the desired curriculum thereafter. Education system is meant to respond to the concerns of the learners, if not , then that education system is irrelevant.