Programme Director
Ministers
Deputy Minister, Mduduzi Manana
Director General
Further education and training (FET) Colleges
Sector education and training (SETA) CEOs
Quality councils
Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC) technical teams
All our Stakeholder
Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET)
Ladies and gentlemen and comrades
It is with great pleasure that I welcome all of you here today, to this exciting new initiative: the launch of Occupational Teams, which for the first time brings together all of the SETAs, the colleges, the universities and a number of key employer and union partners and offers you all a new way of working together in the national (and in student) interest.
Programme Director, let us keep in mind that August is dedicated to the women of South Africa. Women who played a role during the struggle against apartheidm should be remembered and honoured. These heroines paved the way for us to enjoy the fruits of freedom. Some, like Frances Baard, Ray Alexander and Jabu Ndlovu were unionists associated with programmes of the kind we are here to launch, relating to bridging the gap between the workplace and the lecture room.
The idea of Occupational Teams is itself not new (albeit a new name). It builds on the old Advisory Committee model which served the Technikons so well, and continues to play a somewhat muted role in the University of Technology environment - committees which provided a platform for structured engagement between industry and institutions of learning. This old idea is being dusted off and re-invigorated as a consequence of a massive push from the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission or PICC.
Under this authoritative umbrella, driven by our President, the Honourable Jacob Zuma, a truly massive investment into infrastructure is being rolled out across our country. The roll-out is an integral part of our broader growth and development plans to reverse poverty, unemployment and inequality in our land. How? Not only by themselves providing employment during their construction and maintenance phases, but also by creating an enabling an environment for subsequent investment by those whose efforts depend on such services.
It’s obvious: without water and energy there can be no mines and no factories; without railways we can’t get many of our goods to local or international markets; without roads many neglected areas will remain isolated. And on the other side,without more schools, colleges and universities as well as more health facilities, too many of our people will be unable to realise their full potential and in due course will not be able to make their contribution to our growing and prosperous country.
Surely we must agree the case is made that the strategic integrated projects (SIPs) are key vehicles for us going forward? Surely we must do all in our power to ensure their success. The obvious question is: what should we do. Well surely the starting point is to ask what is needed.
In April 2012, I set up a Special Projects Unit dedicated to the task of finding answers to this challenge. From the start the Unit collaborated with officials in the Economic Development Department of my colleague Minister Ebrahim Patel to try and establish what skills would be needed to build and maintain this massive body of infrastructure and of these, which are scarce and essential.
And I am happy to report that a year later this team gave us what they are call a ‘first generation’ scarce skills list it is included in the packs that have been handed out today. The list gives us, for the first time, a quantified estimate of those occupations we’ll require and which are scarce.
So now we know what is needed or at least we have a good idea where we should start and we all acknowledge that the information will need to be refined and expanded as we go forward.What begs the question is: what are we going to do about it? Well, at one level the answer is not difficult to decipher: where we have shortages, we must train more! And in one way, that is exactly what we plan to do.
However, it transpires that we need to get smart eras well. Too often youngsters who train at our colleges and universities are unable to make the transition to the workplace because there are simply no bridges to help them do so. Over half of our college graduates sadly find themselves in this unenviable position.
Many Diploma students also find it difficult to qualify because they are unable to complete their Work Integrated Learning requirements and even some engineering graduates from university struggle to find the structured workplace learning they need to register as professionals. There is also the problem that many graduates complete programmes which they realise too late are simply not in demand.
Furthermore employers in both the public and private sectors tell us that the programmes they have completed have insufficiently prepared them for the challenges in the current workplaces. Is more of the same the right way to go?it is time to address these problems and it is time that the people with the greatest interest in solving the problems, namely the employers who need the skills
for production purposes and the education and training providers who deliver the relevant programmes get together and work on the problems.
We must stop accusing one another of failure or lack of concern and get down to the business of finding solutions. That is essentially what the Occupational Teams that we are launching today must do.Of course I know that this call is not new and I know too that conversations are already taking place in many places there are, for instance, a growing number of SETA offices in colleges, there is the Skills Accord and the Youth Accord where employers have committed themselves to offer work placements, there are partnerships between some SETAs and some universities too.
There are learnerships being delivered across a range of institutions and the SETAs as well as the National Skills Fund are actively contributing to the enhancement of provision at many public colleges (which I strongly support and continue to encourage).There are even initiatives which are reaching towards more system-wide collaboration, such as that between the SETA CEOs and the college principals an initiative which I again welcome.
However, we do not yet have an initiative which enables us to address problems of curriculum relevance and alignment between institution and workplace learning as well as work placement problems at a systemic, national level. It is this gap that the Occupational Teams are intended to fill for the occupations that have been identified as scarce of which I spoke earlier.
A tall order? Indeed! But essential if we are to ensure that those trained are well prepared to play their productive roles well (as assessed by those who employ them as well as by those who depend on the services they deliver or products they produce) and if we want to improve the flow-through from entry at an institution to employment as efficiently as possible so that our scarce resources can deliver the greatest number of success stories.
What then are these Occupational Teams? They are quite simply groups of people who come together to focus on the specific challenges faced by those seeking to qualify in a specific occupational area. They are made up of two principle ‘interest groups’ on the one hand are those who provide the theoretical foundation for the occupation, normally drawn from a college or a university or university of technology.
On the other are potential employers who wish to influence the programmes delivered at those institutions and in a position to provide structured workplace learning.There are, however, two further voices that need to participate in the conversation that ensues: those responsible for ensuring that the standard set for the occupation is maintained (who must also remain relevant) in other words, the professional bodies, the trade testers, the licensers issuers and so on as well as those who may provide simulated practical learning outside of the institution, where this occurs.
Today’s launch is my appeal to each one of you in all of these ‘interest groups’ to embrace this opportunity with both hands and to breathe life into the promise that these teams hold. This is the moment you have been waiting for I am declaring today that the time has come for you to ‘walk the talk’! I am giving you the vehicle that you have ostensibly wanted for a longtime. Now drive It! What does this mean in practice?
Let me briefly spell this out in a little more detail. I’m proposing that we establish a team of occupational experts for each and every one of the scarce skills on the list! For the primary members of the team: the provider and the workplace representatives, there should be a person who represents all of those who have an interest in the conversation on each side.
And here we are drawing on the ‘convener’ idea that operated in the Technikon era (and continues today in some cases). Quite literally, for colleges and universities, one person who is expert in the field, should be selected to represent all other lecturers who teach the relevant programme/s wherever they are delivered in different parts of the country.
Similarly one or two employers and qualified professionals or workers from a workplace where the occupation is applied should represent other workplaces. The latter is of course more complex but we have a fantastic opportunity here to mobilise the entire SETA community behind this initiative. They can use their workplace networks and pivotal grants to identify employers willing to offer work placements to graduates in the specific field how?
By foregrounding these occupations in your Sector Skills Plans, determining pivotal grants to encourage employers to offer training spaces, and then marketing the grants to your sector. Once a final list of workplaces has been selected, this can be brought to the Occupational Team as a national placement offering. We’ll reach across our land in this way and go far beyond the traditional reach of the old Advisory Committees!
To colleges, universities and workplace representatives I am inviting you today to identify those within your ranks with extensive knowledge and expertise of one or more of the occupations on the list and who might be willing to play the role of convener and to enter into the partnership that the Occupational Team offers. Of course if being a convener is too daunting there is always the opportunity to simply be one of those that the convener in your occupational space represents.
You can be at the end of an email link-up and hear of the issues that are being debated and comment on the solutions proposed. Look at the list.Think of areas where you have a special interest or expertise and put your hand up! To the professional bodies and other assessors present here today including the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and Quality Council representatives,
I invite you to find the folk directly involved in assessing each of the skills on the list and encourage them to commit to this process as well.And finally to those state-owned companies, local authorities and companies who have practical or simulated training centres in any one of the skill areas,
I invite you too to participate in this process, again as a convener of the field or as a networked partner.What practically should you do if you wish to participate? Well the details are in the pack you have but essentially you must send the name of your nominee to one of six people.
There is a person, who will accept all the nominations for occupations that fall under the management cluster, then there is another person for professionals and associate professionals, then there is one for service and clerical workers, one for the trades, one for plant and machine operators and one for elementary workers and non-trade production workers.
These people will receive your nominations and together with you finalise the teams.And here I must immediately thank my colleagues, the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Ms Lindiwe Sisulu for committing the services of her department for the coordination of the management cluster of occupational teams and the Minister of Public Works, Mr. Thulas Nxesi, for agreeing that the Council for the Built Environment and the Construction Industry Development Board can manage the Occupational Teams for the professionals and associate professionals and the non-trade production workers respectively. This is a tangible illustration of government working collegially for the attainment of
national goals.
Let me also use this opportunity to convey to Minister of Economic Development, Mr. Patel, and my pleasure at the level of collaboration we have achieved in this process.
And finally to the Transport SETA and to the Services SETA thank you for committing yourselves to this coordination task as well. Indlela, which is doing work for the trades, is one of us, but I thank you too for embracing this new opportunity to strengthen your collaboration with the colleges in this year of the artisan.
And as I draw to a close, let me give one or two more pointers to the ways in which we intend to support this process:
Firstly, as you will shortly hear, we have developed, in partnership with our service provider Core Focus, an electronic tool which will enable members of the Occupational Teams to remain in touch with one another at the click of a button. It will also enable us to provide occupational demand side information to team members.
So you’ll be able to find out the scale of the shortage of ‘your’ occupation, as well as information about the provincial spread of the demand and the timescale over which that demand will probably take place with great ease. Training in the use of this tool will take place once the membership of the teams is confirmed. And here let me say that we would like your nominations by the end of August please so that late input can be made into SETA, college and university plans for next year already.
The SIPs can’t wait and we must rise to the challenge they pose. This underlines the point that these are working teams and our country will be depending on them to raise our game with regards to delivering the skills we need to construct and use the infrastructure we are building.
There is more to be said about the work that needs to be done, but l assume that the time to get into the details will be when we have the teams established by mid September.Indeed my department informs me that a planning session for team members is scheduled for the end of September.
Finally I wish to invite you to be excited about the advent of Occupational Teams. Yes there are no doubt a plethora of issues you would like to discuss we’ll consider a few of these after the portal is presented, but I ask you to embrace this opportunity to collaborate across two previously divided realms at national level. Who knows, if this idea proves to be useful, it may well have application beyond the specific SIP environment.
It’s too early to say of course, but for now, we have a national duty to respond to the call of the SIPs let us not be found wanting. I now formally launch the Occupational Team initiative. Let’s get and work.
Thank you.
