OVERVIEW
Education Online schools are booming.
The new School for Climate Change at Stellenbosch University has faculty status. Credit: SU
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he University of Cape Town announced the establishment of an online high school in 2021 with virtual classes due to start in January 2022. The school hopes to close the opportunity gap for poor students in under-resourced areas. UCT is partnering with the Valenture Institute, a South African education technology company specialising in high school education. By September 2020, the school had received more than 4 000 applications. Online learning is one of the world’s fastest-growing sectors and the investment of $3-million by Construct in a new Cape Town office is evidence that the trend is well and truly established in the Western Cape. The Construct Learning Lab supports universities in Boston, Doha and Oxford as well as companies and government bodies. The company expects to increase its staff complement by 150 over three years. Tuberculosis continues to affect the lives of thousands of South Africans so the efforts of UCT Professor Keertan Dheda and a team of researchers is a most welcome and relevant application to local conditions. They have developed a new method of diagnosing tuberculosis from skin which is non-invasive, fast and highly accurate. Another relevant piece of work by a UCT academic won for Associate Professor Gina Ziervogel the institution’s Social Responsiveness Award. As a climate change adaption expert and geographer, Ziervogel played a key role in a team that advised the City of Cape Town during the severe drought WESTERN CAPE BUSINESS 2022
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SECTOR INSIGHT Stellenbosch University has established a School for Climate Studies. that threatened water supplies. An important contribution was to stress the importance of community understanding and involvement. She and renowned environmental journalist Leonie Joubert have produced a book called Day Zero: One city’s response to a record-breaking drought. Another climate adaptation has been obser ved at Stellenbosch University where a School for Climate Studies has been launched in response to growing interest in climate resilience and trying to move away from fossil fuels. It is the first such institution in the country to enjoy the status of faculty and it
