M Mdladlana: National Board for Further Education and Training National
Workshop

14 August 2006

Chairperson,
Members of Portfolio Committees and parliamentarians,
Members of the National Board for FET,
Representatives of SETAs,
Honoured guests:

It is a pleasure for me to join you all today in this workshop as you
grapple with a very important matter that is also very close to my heart and
yet continue to give me sleepless nights. The serious skills disparity levels
amongst our people to participate effectively in the socio and economic
mainstream of our country. That is what Accelerated and Shared Growth
Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) and Joint Initiative for Priority Skills
Acquisition (JIPSA) is all about.

As a country we are sitting on a youth unemployment time bomb that is about
to explode unless we provide access to learning, livelihood opportunities and
employment and other contextual and social aspects that make up the entire
socio–economic spectrum. We need to empower these young people to practice
responsible citizenry and also assist them to access opportunities available in
our society.

André Kraak (2004), in The State of Skills in SA publication of 2005,
provided some sobering statistics on the transition from schools. According to
that report:
* seven percent of matriculants enter public higher education
* 12 percent enter other forms of further and higher learning (private higher
education, public and private further education and training (FET) colleges and
pre-employment training)
* 30 percent get some kind of job
* 51 percent end up somewhere as unemployed and this may include prisons,
etc.

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) showed that only 33,6 percent of
FET college students found employment after graduation. There are also
different statistics and debates on the number of different race groups that
find employment after graduating from higher education.

I don’t like statistics personally, however, if they are correct and
notwithstanding other factors such as choice of study, geographic area and
choice of institution, then we have a serious articulation problem between the
institutions of learning and the labour market.

Public and private FET institutions, Universities of Technology,
Comprehensive Universities, Services Sector Education and Training Authorities
(SETAs) and workplaces have a crucial role to play in assisting assist our
people to gain intermediate and practical skills to build our economy and to
create the much needed decent jobs. Your efforts will enable our people to earn
a living wage, thereby improve their standard of leaving. By being active and
meaningful players you will be supporting government’s goal to halve poverty
and unemployment by 2014. Your contribution will assist us to make an impact in
the R370 billion AsgiSA projects and to host the first African and best ever
Soccer World Cup spectacular in 2010.

The public FET sector has, like the Higher Education Training (HET) sector,
undergone nothing short of a total metamorphosis, the form and shape of the
public FET sector is vastly different to the one we had under the old apartheid
government. It has taken a long time to get where it is now but signs are that
you are ready and moving very fast towards really starting to support the
skills development revolution.

Since I launched the National Skill Development Strategy (NSDS) in 2001 and
the second adjusted NSDS in 2005, the majority of providers that are
participating in the process and continue to benefit mostly from engagement
with particularly SETAs are private providers. Where public FET and HET
institutions are involved these tended to be side projects that are happening
in some obscure place between individuals or specific faculties and SETAs.
Somebody must still tell me as to why these initiatives are not part of the
institutions’ mainstream programmes because if they were I am convinced that we
would double or multiply four times, the numbers of skilled artisans that our
economy so desperately need.

We have achieved the kind of targets we have set ourselves under the first
NSDS working with private providers in the main. With collaboration, synergy
and a common understanding on what is it that we are trying to achieve across
all institutions and bodies in education and skills development, we can
compliment each other’s initiative and massify our efforts in developing
intermediate skills in our country. Let us all become collaborators rather than
competitors. There is enough skills development pie for everybody.

As part of the adjusted National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) 2005 –
2010, I have committed the funding of public and private FET / HET provisioning
by SETAs and the National Skills Fund (NSF) to continue on the basis of quality
and relevance to the needs of the economy. Preferential treatment of either
public or private sectors through some sort of government intervention given
the nature of the skills levy framework will be counter productive and only
encourage the culture of entitlement to these resources.

I have confidence though that the public sector FET/ HET will catch up and
hopefully surpass the private sector since most of our people cannot afford the
private sector fees and are depended on state funded institutions. The
re-capitalisation programme wherein government has set aside R 1,9 billion is a
very commendable initiative and well overdue. I hope that the benefits of this
recapitalisation programme accrue in the most to learners and help people to
get meaningful and sustainable employment. To this end I have engaged the
Koreans, to assist us in training the facilitators within the labour market at
Indlela in the use of some of the modern equipment as they are very good in
this area. I hope that some of the FET facilitators will use this opportunity,
especially if we are to avoid a situation wherein the new equipment is going to
end up gathering dust.

Alongside the recapitalisation programme I have also noted the development
and publication of the draft bill on FET colleges, allowing for the development
of a legislative framework that is separate and unique from other educational
framework such as schools or universities. This is also a very laudable
approach and will go a long way in strengthening the already existing two
pathways under our legislation on learnership and apprenticeships. This move
with added work place learning and collaboration with SETAs will create
opportunities of learning that will allow our young people to develop skills
that are much more aligned to the world of work.

Apart from other proposed changes that are to be introduced is the proposal
to establish councils that must include persons from organised business and
organised labour. This is in line with the way we have set up SETAs as they are
run by organised business and organised labour. This is an excellent idea and I
fully support it simply because it will help the SETAs and the public FET
sector to get even closer together. In the near future I can clearly see a
person serving on a SETA council also serving on an FET council. The end result
is going to be dynamic and will bring desired results especially if we have the
correct people on these councils who know why they are there. The opposite is
also going to be frightening especially if we can have people who are just
there to collect meeting attendance allowance and to run away from their daily
responsibilities where they are employed as I have noticed some SETAs.

Where I am concerned with the bill is with the registration of private
providers of FET. While the bill does make provision for the private providers,
it appears as if workplace providers that offer full qualifications are
excluded. I will be making follow-up with my colleague, Minister of Education
to see if we cannot find a solution to this problem in the context of our
discussions on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF).
I also want to take this opportunity to highlight a major weakness in industry
and various work places within the public and private sector in planning for
future skills needs. This weakness, unless properly addressed, will continue to
make it very difficult for institutions of learning, SETAs and other bodies
involved in education and skills development to ensure the adequate supply of
relevant and competent skills levels at any given time across all sectors of
our economy. All of us need to make it our collective problem and do something
about it. It cannot be left to some junior human resources (HR) managers in our
work places.

The reason why we have a debate on the number of artisans, technicians,
engineers needed, including the numbers we should be producing per annum etc,
is a symptom of a deep-rooted problem associated with planning. This problem
cascade further down to providers as we are not able to provide good signals on
what is needed. AsgiSA has provided us with a framework that we are beginning
to use to identify the skills that we will need in those massive projects. I
hope that business will take seriously some of the agreement we reached during
the growth and development summit and will also take a leaf out of this process
to identify their future skills needs.

The NSDS has spelled out national priority areas to which the projected
R21,9 billion skills levy income is to be used until March 2010. One of the
indicators that is of relevance to this occasion is NSDS success indicator 5.1
that reads in part “By March 2010 each SETA recognises and supports at least
five institutes of sectoral or occupational excellence (ISOE) within public and
private institutions and through public private partnerships (PPPs).”. I
believe we have provided you with a good base for collaboration.

I am told SETAs are ready and I have and can testify that they are ready as
I have seen it in those instances where they involved me in these collaborative
initiatives,  I also know that there are 12 SETAs that are still
harbouring reserves that are more than the permissible four month levy income.
I also know that there are other nine SETAs that are already in serious
financial trouble because of the media and other pressures we put on them to
spend and partly because of the loss of small, medium and micro enterprises
(SMMEs) due to the granting of the skills levy exemption. Despite these
problems I appeal to all of you to put the interest of our people and the
nation first and to use and share the little resources together in the
development of our people.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Labour
14 August 2006