Trading Up? An evaluation of JASA's entrepreneurship academy programme

Background to the project

Junior Achievement South Africa (JASA) is an NGO, based in Johannesburg that aims to prepare young people for life after school by raising:

• their awareness of economic issues
• teaching them entrepreneurial and life skills
• providing them with an understanding of the business world and
• enhancing their sense of personal responsibility through practical business experience. 

This is particularly important in South Africa where formal employment opportunities are limited. In 2007, for example, 2,7 million South Africans aged between15 and 30 years old were unemployed, with 72% never having worked before. Education therefore needs to prepare young people for self-employment as well as enabling them to take advantage of the employment opportunities that do exist.

JASA has run programmes in entrepreneurship for many years, but these had been mainly short courses. In response to a perceived need for a more substantial offer, JASA has developed its 'entrepreneurship academy' programme, which ran in eight locations in South Africa in 2010.

Project overview and approach

The purpose of the evaluation was two-fold:

1. It was designed to help JASA improve the programme for future years by showing what aspects of the programme were working particularly well, and what aspects required improvement.
2. The evaluation was intended to provide transferable evidence on whether the approach and curriculum developed by JASA is working and what can be learnt from the programme for other organisations engaged in enterprise education.

The research surveyed 69 of the 317 learners that took part in the Entrepreneurship Academy in its pilot year, across three different schools in different communities. Two schools were located in townships in the city of Johannesburg, and one in a rural area in Mpumalanga.

The report presents the theoretical framework which informed the evaluation, and then discusses the findings with regards to the structure of the course, the course materials and course facilitation the changes learners reported in their propensity to start their own business, their skills and knowledge relating to enterprise, and their employability.

It compares results across the schools, draws conclusions about the effectiveness of the programme, and provides lessons learnt and recommendations which may be relevant to other organisations engaged in enterprise and entrepreneurship education.

Key findings

• Increased propensity to become entrepreneurs - Learners reported significant changes in their perceptions of the financial prospects of entrepreneurship, improvements in family and friends’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship as a career path, and increased confidence that they would be able to undertake a range of activities involved in setting up a business. Even though learners’ enthusiasm for entrepreneurship was tempered by their increased realism about the challenges associated with it, these changes can reasonably be expected to translate into a higher number of learners engaging in entrepreneurial activities than would have been the case had they not been exposed to the programme.
• Developing the attitudes and abilities to  run an enterprise successfully - Learners reported significant improvements in their knowledge about business principles including supply and demand, income and profit, and competitive advantage. They also felt that their practical business skills had improved after the course:  they felt more confident identifying customers, setting prices, drawing up a budget, and writing a business plan. It can be expected that these changes will have a positive impact on the success rates for those learners who do start their own business relative to success rates if the programme had been absent.
• Developing transferable skills for employment and self-employment - The evaluation found that the programme was effective in developing transferable skills such as teamwork, communication and planning. Learners also indicated that they had significantly more confidence in presenting themselves to employers after completing the programme. The high rate of youth unemployment in South Africa makes finding a job a formidable challenge for the young people engaged on these courses, and this context will clearly affect the ultimate outcomes of the programme. Nevertheless, the evaluation suggests that they will be better prepared to make use of the employment opportunities that are available.
  
  

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