This article reports on a study that explored how school-based teachers fulfilled their roles as mentors in response to challenges faced by pre-service teachers while learning to teach accounting. Pre-service teachers in their final year at a University of Technology in South Africa and practising teachers from six high schools participated in the study. Pre-service teachers e-mailed reflection journals on a weekly basis over a period of four months to the first author who is a teacher educator. Unstructured interviews were carried out with each pre-service teacher and their respective mentors. The results indicated that not all mentors assisted the pre-service teachers according to the expectations of their roles. Despite mentoring having the potential to enhance the preparation of pre-service teachers, in the cases studied it did not always yield positive results. It became clear that the cumulative nature of the accounting discipline requires a different type of mentoring from other disciplines. In fact, numerous factors revealed in the study influenced the failure and success of mentoring pre-service teachers. Many of these factors are ones over which the university has no control.

African and coloured students continue to perform poorly both at public schools and institutions of higher learning. There are two main reasons for their weak performance -a lack of literacy and numeracy skills, and being under-prepared. This article reports on two findings of a study that was conducted at two high schools in the Western Cape Province. The one high school was a quintile 1, and the other a quintile 4 school. The study aimed to implement intervention strategies over a threeyear period for Grade 10 to 12 learners in the business-related subjects, Accounting, Business Studies, and Economics. The objective was to develop a readiness model that public schools in South African could use to overcome the challenges so that learners could be equipped with a strong foundation in their primary schooling. The study was situated within a critical education science paradigm and used a critical participatory action research design. Two groups of 30 learners formed the main research participants. Interventions strategies were implemented with the learners when they were in Grade 10 in 2017, in Grade 11 in 2018, and in Grade 12 in 2019 The results show that both groups of learners did not have an adequate rating of 50% and more subject content knowledge and skills when they arrived in Grade 10 in 2017 in all three subjects, and they did not manage to obtain a 50% or more rating in the three subjects in their final examinations at the end of Grade 12 in 2019. Based on the four key principles of the readiness model, recommendations are proposed that would assist public schools to develop and support the learners during the early childhood and foundation phase so that a solid foundation in literacy and numeracy skills could be laid.

No abstract

Studies conducted nationally found that students with Matric Accounting knowledge performed significantly better than students without it in university-level Accounting modules (Baard, Steenkamp, and Kidd 2010; Papageorgiou 2017; Steenkamp, Baard, and Frick 2009). However, the reality at South African universities is that Accounting as a school subject is not always a requirement to pursue BCom Accounting studies. This situation means that at certain universities, Accounting as a school subject is not taken into consideration for this degree, while this is the case at some universities. This study focuses on two cohorts of students enrolled for the mainstream programme in 2017‒2019 at a South African university. The reason for focusing on these two cohorts was to establish the throughput rate of students with or without Matric Accounting knowledge. Two most significant findings of this study are that firstly, students who obtained at least 70 per cent for Matric Accounting completed the degree within the minimum three-year time frame, while students who obtained at least 80 per cent had a higher throughput rate of 48.8 per cent. Secondly, students who achieved lower than 70 per cent for Mathematics and did not complete Matric Accounting were unable to complete the degree in the minimum timeframe. The research methodology includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results can inform the selection and admission criteria at tertiary institutions and inform other stakeholders in higher education on how school subjects and grades influence students’ throughput rate.