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Skills Conference

Private training providers attend 2011 skills conference

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:33

The National Skills Authority in collaboration with the Department of Higher Education and Training has allocated 20 seats to APPETD to attend a skills conference which will be opened by the Minister of Higher Education and Training at the Emperors Palace on 4th October 2011.

There are 6 major themes of the conference that will consist of 12 commissions. Each constituency, that is, business, labour, community and providers will be given opportunity to have representatives that will participate in discussions and debate the topics on hand.

This is the first major event this year, when private providers will have the opportunity to make an input on key discussions around post school education and training, the role of SETAs in relation tothe National Skills Development Strategy III implementation, and the SETA funding models. Of specific interest to us is the issue of partnerships and collaboration between public and private institutions towards building the capacity of institutions for the delivery of skills development.

Thus far, we have a National Strategy that has made the public FET colleges central to skills development for the next five years, despite the challenges experienced by many of these institutions. We have had poor throughput rates from this sector with their current mandate of educating young people who have exited the schooling sector and we have now placed on these colleges another huge responsibility to deliver skills development for both the employed and unemployed individuals.

In addition, the National Skills Fund will allocate funding for public FET colleges to build infrastructure and pay salaries of staff specifically for skills development, despite the R 1.2 billion that has gone unaccounted for in the past few years that was allocated to public FET colleges for “recapitalisation”.

Since the launch of the National Skills Development Strategy III, FET colleges have been flooded by private training institutions to form partnerships and each is doing this on an individual basis. This raises many unanswered questions which require further exploration:

1. How does a public institution decide which private institution to partner with?
2. What would be the basis of this partnership?
3. Who owns the intellectual property of the learning materials that have been previously accredited?
4. What would be the combined costs for implementation?
5. Are SETAs allowed to use the services of a private training institution without a public FET college being included in the request for proposals if the private institution has shown the capacity to deliver on its own?
6. Who becomes accountable for the quality of the delivery of the programme in a partnership?
7. Will public FET colleges be expected to tender for SETA projects or be allocated projects unfairlywith or without the ability to indicate its capacity to successfully role out a project?

Perhaps there will be opportunity for all stakeholders attending the conference to question the practicality of proposed partnerships at a strategic level and perhaps there will be a process that will be agreed upon on how these partnerships are formed so that the situation is not open to encouraging more tenderpreneurs.

We look forward to our participation in such an important event and hope to engage in robust and thought provoking discussions that will reach consensus on matters such as quality education and training for all, fair competition amongst role players in skills development and transparency in processes of funding allocation.

APPETD is proud to announce that its Chairperson, Professor Sakkie van der Merwe, has been nominated to present the pledge on behalf of all providers inclusive of universities, FET colleges, ABET centres and private training institutions at the closure of the National Skills Conference. This takes place in the presence of the Honourable Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr. Blade Nzimande and the Deputy President of South Africa KgalemaMotlanthe.

We are regretful that we were given such limited numbers for participation in the conference, but hope that we can meet the expectations of our members in our deliberations over the two days. We also realise that there are many of you that may not be members of APPETD, but who would like to submit comment and put forward ideas that will assist us during our discussions with all the major role players attending the conference.

If you would like to send in your comments please e-mail rrajab@ril.co.za as your National Skills Authority representative.