FRTC’s core function is to provide quality teaching and training mainly to employed professionals in competitive financial corporates that want to develop their employees by empowering them with current skills to improve their competencies. Therefore, the organisation prioritises an environment where, educators, students and all staff operates within a clearly identifiable leadership structure that underpin quality as the cornerstone of all we do at FRTC to produce world class graduates and maintain a successful relationship with our clients.
According to Hija (2010), “efficient teacher recruitment, proper deployment, and utilization are necessary to ensure good professionalism. Clearly defined criteria and guidelines to identify, attract, train, and retain good teachers must be in place so as to facilitate the selection of trainable teachers capable of preparing students to successfully face the emerging local and global challenges”.

Continuous Improvement to Underpin Quality

The Managing Director Bernadette Felix together with all staff of FRTC ensures that continuous improvement of quality of teaching and learning is not exclusively focused on the educator. At FRTC everyone has a responsibility to ensure that the educators and students experience is exceptional during the entire course of the learning program up to the point of graduation.

FRTC over the past twelve years has introduced many initiatives to continuously improve teaching and learning, however, the most important and currently relevant successful initiatives are mentioned below: a) management, academics and support staff regularly: • receive relevant staff development such as leadership skills, risk management, student support, interpreting and applying the ten level descriptors, preparation of lesson plans etc; • are monitored and evaluated for example before performance appraisal everyone is required to conduct a performance self-evaluation; • and feedback is provided to eliminate weaknesses, deal with challenges, reinforce strengths and continuously strive to be innovative; b) A LMS & Online learning system has been implemented to deliver a better student-educator experience and to help management prioritise responsibilities to continuously improve quality at an institution- wide level, programme level and individual level;

c) links between teaching and research has been strengthened by the implementation of all staff within FRTC: • the support of our librarian and new e-library and the library located at head office; • the launch of Journal of Banking, Insurance and Management Sciences (JBIMS); • and training and development of academic staff to conduct research aligned to BANKSETA, INSETA and QCTO programmes offered and write journal articles. d) During this lockdown period FRTC found innovative self-motivating ways such as online competitions that offer vouchers to the value of R500 to engage clients, students and the KUYASA learnership to interact with FRTC online and focus on their studies as follows: • in April students were encouraged to post photographs on social media with their FRTC module guides while studying online and interacting with their lecturers and the top three winners were identified; • in May the KUYASA learnership was required to write an interesting thank you card to BANKSETA for sponsoring the Generic Management learnership and the top four winners were announced through live streaming on Facebook and Instagram; • and June’s competition encouraged clients and students to follow FRTC on social media platforms and they had to share FRTC’s last three posts on social media to increase their chances of winning.

In conclusion, we must seriously understand why quality education is the foundation of a nation as Nelson Mandela reminds South Africa in his autobiography, “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”

“We cannot, as a country, improve economically, socially, and culturally without quality education.” LUCIO TAN

REFERENCE 1. Hija I.M. (2010) Teacher Recruitment International Encyclopedia of Education (Third Edition), (1) pages 896-903 Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/socia l-sciences/teacher-recruitment (Accessed 1 June 2020) 2. Mandela. R. N. (1995) Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela Little, Brown Book Group UK