Academic Support Buddies was firstly introduced by a group of 5 students in August 2018 at Ekurhuleni East TVET College (Benoni Campus) and later grown to a number of 56 after more students have shown interest to become tutors. It comprises of students who passed all their subjects from the previous level with 70% on each subject they are interested in tutoring, which is now 80% according to the policy provided by the College Council.
The aim of the tutoring program is to improve the retention, throughput and certification rate of the College the program serves the dual purpose of providing an opportunity for tutors to reinforce their knowledge and critical thinking skills while simultaneously helping their peers to achieve the same goal. Students requiring this assistance may be referred by the lecturer, by their Head of Department, the Programme Manager, and Student Liaison Officer.
We currently providing the tutoring classes to all Engineering Studies, Business studies and NCV while aiming that the program expands to our sister campuses. We find it to be a good practice to be in contact with our Academic Support Buddies since 2018, on the 22nd of August 2020 Ekurhuleni East TVET College Benoni Campus hosted a commemorative event in partnership with Zakhel’ Ukukhanya Grief Consultancy for all former tutors who dedicated their time tutoring other students during breaks, after school, free periods, in Daveyton Library during weekends and holidays. It was aimed at sharing their expertise to the current Academic Support Buddies (Peer Tutors).
“We didn’t choose to be tutors, but it is a calling as Academic Support Buddies we strongly believe in the spirit of cohesion our primary objective is to ensure that we eliminate barriers to student success,” they said. The event was to revive their passion for imparting knowledge to new academic support buddies and to students.
The tutors were trained on Emotional Intelligence in a classroom, been exposed to different characteristics of students and their behavioural patterns in an aim to bring a change by illustrating how tutors can thrive and rise above challenges and how they can become emotional intelligent.
