The Impact of Entrepreneurship Education on the Entrepreneurial Competences of Students in TVET Colleges In South Africa

South Africa, as a country, requires an economic, science, and entrepreneurship curriculum that is skills-based and career-oriented, as corporate industries need workers possessing appropriate entrepreneurship skills. Technical and vocational education is used as a comprehensive term referring to those aspects of the educational process involving, in addition to general education, the study of technologies and related sciences, and the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, understanding, and knowledge related to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life. Therefore, the aim of this study is to ascertain students’ perceptions of the entrepreneurship education curricula offered in TVET Colleges in promoting entrepreneurial competencies. Moreover, authors detected the role of lecturers, curriculum, teaching methods, workshops, mentorship, and other factors in the process of entrepreneurship education development at the Faculty of Entrepreneurship. This study employed a convenience sampling method, commonly used in entrepreneurship education studies, to collect data from 136 final-year students who were enrolled in purposively selected Technical Vocational Education and Training Colleges in KwaZulu-Natal and were chosen to participate in this study. The findings demonstrated that entrepreneurship education has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial competences. Additionally, entrepreneurship education was found to have a positive and significant impact on mediating the relationship between entrepreneurial competences and business start-ups. This finding highlights the importance of educators seeking to build an entrepreneurial mindset within entrepreneurship education, in addition to developing students’ entrepreneurial alertness by focusing on opportunity identification and recognition. The study addresses a gap in the literature regarding the relationship between entrepreneurship education, business start-ups, and entrepreneurial competences, and furthers the understanding of the impact of entrepreneurship education. The results inform educational practice, as ensuring TVET students recognize entrepreneurial opportunities is an important element of business creation. The study recommends that TVET Colleges should design entrepreneurship education programs that emphasize experiential learning. This can be achieved through practical activities such as business simulations, internships, and business incubators, where students can engage in hands-on learning and experimentation.