Programme Director
Chairpersons of the SETAs
Management of INDLELA
Distinguished Guests
Members of the Media
Government Officials present here today
I would first like to thank all of you for responding to our invitation to this third meeting with the Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) Chairpersons. Once more let me also thank you for the work you have been doing to play your role in the task of turning the SETA system around so that it is able to respond effectively to the challenge of skills development for an inclusive economy.
I must express my appreciation for your commitment to your work, despite a very turbulent start to this third phase of SETAs in our country. Because of this and the other work you are doing, I am very confident that we will continue to work together to improve the system and take skills development to higher levels.
The SETAs are public entities and I, as the Minister, who is the Executive Authority, and likewise organised labour, business, professional bodies and communities are key stakeholders that have a very important role to play in the skills revolution we so urgently need in our country.
Objectives of this gathering
I therefore hope that we will use this meeting to assess progress towards our goals over the last eight months or so, with a particular focus on progress towards Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), progress towards the development of Sector Skills Plans (SSPs), as well as matters relating to governance in the SETAs. Much as SSPs are very important, from our experience in interactions with the SETAs, a lot of work still needs to be done on this front.
We must use the forthcoming months to work towards developing your SSPs. However, what is urgent now is the need to move towards finalisation of SLAs for the 2012/13 financial year, so that we collectively move towards addressing the many urgent tasks that face us. Our SLAs must have very concrete and measurable objectives and goals, as part of the realisation of the goals of the National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) III. I am looking forward to open, honest and frank exchange of views in this regard.
SETAs have a very important role to play in our country. Many developing, and even some developed, countries envy us for the fact that we have training and skills development resources through the levy system, which empowers us to transform our entire skills development profile, including tackling our seven transformation imperatives of addressing socio-economic, race and gender inequalities, to overcome geographical inequalities, the problems of unskilled youth, the disabled and tackling the HIV/AIDS scourge.
I expect SETAs to prioritise their developmental role and responsibilities in addressing the many challenges we face as a society, through decisive interventions in skills development. As you well know, my department has already started to address some concerns identified through various processes and introduced the following performance improvements with your assistance:
- refocusing SETA activities in terms of the National Skills Development Strategy III
- initiated a process to strengthen the SETA Sector Skills Plans and aligning these to the much tighter Strategic Plans and reporting mechanisms
- established the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations to improve occupational qualifications against which learnerships and apprenticeships programmes are developed
- SETA standard Constitutions as best practice guidelines to improve accountability and performance of SETA Boards and governance
- improve oversight and support from the department; and
- regulations to improve the performance of Chief Executive Officers as well as their appointment and conditions of service.
Governance, accountability and accessibility in the SETA system
To address the issues of governance, I approved the standard constitutions of the SETAs. I am also pleased to inform you that the Skills Development Amendment Bill, which now incorporates these changes in legislation, has been passed by the National Assembly. We are hopeful that next week the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) will consider and concur with this legislation, so that it may be assented to by the President as a priority.
Part of improving governance in the SETAs will also have to involve strengthening our systems to ensure that the money in the SETAs are spent prudently and for purposes for which it is meant for. In this regard I would like to urge you that where there are transgressions, including corruption, Chairpersons, together with their boards, must act decisively against these, without fear or favour. Under your leadership of the SETAs I expect nothing less than clean governance.
It is also important to realise that one of your most important tasks is that of changing the generally negative perceptions towards the SETAs. Improving governance, accountability and accessibility will go a long way towards addressing these negative perceptions.
However, I also need to add that part of the negative perceptions about the SETAs also have a lot to do about their accessibility to ordinary South Africans who require assistance from the SETAs, whether it be placement of FET College students in learnerships and apprenticeships, or students from the universities of technology or generally the unemployed who are seeking learnerships and internships.
SETAs location of their head offices in suburbs does contribute to the legitimate perception that such location only serves to privilege service providers over beneficiaries. It is often correctly argued that it is these service providers, many of whom located in the upmarket suburbs in our cities, who easily access SETAs for business opportunities often at the expense of the training needs of the majority of the poor who desperately need the services of the SETAs.
In the light of the above, I expect that as part of our SLAs, SETAs will have to start opening offices in townships and rural areas, so that their services are closer to the people. Ideally every public Further Education and Training (FET) college must have a SETA office, also as part of facilitating the work placement of college students and graduates. This will require the clustering of SETAs for purposes of sharing the financing and running of such offices.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Sector Skills Plans (SSPs) and Workplace Skills Plans (WSPs)
The Department is improving the planning framework to ensure that the NSDS III provides a stronger base for the SETAs, through their Strategic Plans and Service Level Agreements (SLA), to set targets that are aligned with the sector skills needs, i.e. not a one size fits all approach but ensuring an improved focus on the core mandate of the SETAs.
The DHET and the SETAs must continue working over the medium term on strengthening and improving the credibility of information in the SSPs. The immediate focus is to have an improved Strategic Plan and SLA between the DHET and the SETAs that will also contribute to the proposed Performance Agreement between the DHET and the SETAs to achieve the objectives and targets in terms of the NSDS III and other relevant national and government priorities.
A preliminary analysis of the SETAs’ draft Strategic Plans has identified major gaps, indicating a lack of clarity and alignment between the plans and the budgets and some of the identified weaknesses are as follows:
- no alignment to the goals of NSDS III and/or other government priorities within their respective sectors
- no alignment between the budget and the strategic goals/targets
- no Annual Performance Plans
- no alignment between the targets in SSPs and Strategic Plans;Budgets without any targets; and based on the above, my department has embarked on a process to support the SETAs to improve their SSPs, Strategic Plans and SLAs. I expect the Chairpersons to exercise the necessary oversight and leadership in this regard.
Officials of my department are meeting with individual SETAs, as well as arranging workshops with officials from National Treasury and SETAs. This is to ensure that the SSPs, Strategic Plans and SLAs will be in compliance with the legislative requirements and effectively respond to our skills development targets.
It was agreed between the SETAs and my department that through continuous support and agreed processes, that the final improved 2012/13 Strategic Plans will be submitted to me for the necessary consideration and approval, and thereafter it will be tabled in Parliament as required. SLAs should be our most immediate target.
As part of the above exercise I will also be directing the SETAs, early in the new year, to come up with very concrete plans to respond to some of government’s urgent projects. For example, both the Departments of Energy, Water and Environment urgently need skills development plans to support green energy (solar, wind) and nuclear energy.
The Department of Social Development urgently needs social workers and other related professionals and mid-level workers. This may apply to other areas as well. We will be bringing together the relevant departmental officials, SETA experts, working together with relevant departments, and bringing along FET colleges and universities to come up with concrete sectoral plans to address these priorities.
Another area that requires the urgent attention of the SETAs is that of workplace training. There are too many complaints that WSPs are approved without meaningful consultation with workers, and that sometimes, training funds are claimed from the SETAs by employers without such training having taken place at all or being of the required standards. This requires the development of SETA capacity to have effective oversight over this.
Related to the above I would like to hear from you whether the Pivotal funds are being spent in line with the objectives of this programme, and what mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure the success of Pivotal programmes.
The National Skills Accord
Our SLAs will have to include the goals and targets as set out in the National Skills Accord signed at National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) by the major social partners in July this year. Agreement has been reached to ensure that we produce the artisans, technicians and professionals needed in the economy. In addition, the National Skills Accord commits the social partners to strengthen the capacity of public FET colleges, including exposing college lecturers to latest technologies in industry.
As you know we plan to radically expand the FET college sector, and the SETAs have a very important role to play in this regard, by making use of public FET colleges for Pivotal programmes and other relevant training programmes.
The SETA’s have an important role to play in all this. They are in contact with the overwhelming number of employers in the country and they have the necessary resources to facilitate partnerships between institutions and employers. These partnerships should encourage colleges or universities to establish training partnerships so that students get both theoretical and practical knowledge.
I am pleased to announce that as at 30 September 2011, working with the SETAs, various employers have already registered 18 880 learnerships and apprenticeships against a target 30 000 placements, as part of commitments in the National Skills Accord. Specifically in regard to artisans, 8 102 apprentices this year alone have been certified as full artisans against this financial year’s target of 15 000. At this rate we are convinced that we will meet this target, thus exceeding the target set by the President by 2014.
Much as there has been some welcome progress in the placement of learners and apprentices in the wake of the signing of the National Skills Accord, a lot more can and should still be done, and SETAs are central in facilitating this. Indeed, the work of the SETAs must be guided by our slogan that ‘Every workplace must be a learning space’.
Of course, as the country’s biggest employer, the government must lead from the front.It is government’s intention to take more learnerships and internships including a targeted focus on unemployed graduates. The Department of Higher Education and Training has taken quite a sizeable number of interns this year and others are doing the same and others will follow this trend.
We will make every effort to ensure that the provinces and the municipalities also take training and skills development seriously. All this training will take place, wherever it is appropriate, in partnership with public FET colleges, universities and other colleges or academies run by the various state departments.
To ensure implementation in this regard, I have undertaken the first of a series of provincial road-shows, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), to fast track implementation of the Department’s strategy as well as the National Skills Accord in provinces and regions. Between now and the end of March I intend to visit all the other eight provinces to brief them about our skills development strategy as part of mobilising the various stakeholders to create provincial interaction. Let the SETAs continue to partner with us in all of this.
Capacity building in the SETAs
There are a number of areas in which we will have to build the capacity of the SETAs so that they are able to effectively respond to the skills challenge. The process of developing SSPs and SLAs has seriously exposed some very serious weaknesses in our SETAs. Part of this is that our SETAs have been more geared towards accreditation and compliance, important as these maybe, but with inadequate attention being paid to quality, relevance and deeper understanding of economic sectors in which they operate. We will have to address these weaknesses in earnest.
The DHET has started with capacity building work with the appointment of the Ministerial Task Team on SETA performance, with a view to identifying areas and actions required to improve the capacity of the SETAs to implement the goals of the NSDS III. We also intend appointing a team that will also look into where and how the SETAs over the past decade have spent their moneys, in what priorities and through which service providers. This is important to tell us how we can improve the functionality and effectiveness of our SETA system.
Another area that will require joint attention between the DHET and the SETAs is that of building research capacity and data collection, including labour market trends in the sectors in which the SETAs operate. Consideration here might have to be given to building central research capacity on these issues, whilst slowly building capacity in each SETA.
Nevertheless even if we build capacity in each SETA, some central research and data collection capacity is needed in the DHET and its various institutions. Some work has begun in this regard, working together with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and other research bodies.
Consideration will also have to be given to pooling together some of the resources and support services in the SETAs, for purposes of economies of scale, to rapidly build capacity, as well as to assist weaker SETAs. The DHET will start engaging on these issues in the new year, but it is important for SETAs themselves to begin discussions in this regard.
Let me conclude by also informing you that Cabinet has approved the release for public comment the Green Paper on Post-School Education and Training, which also discusses and make proposals about the SETA system and its role in our education and training. We shall be officially releasing this document to the public in the middle of January and we invite the SETAs, and all other stakeholders, to engage very seriously with the contents of the Green Paper.
I thank you.
