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National Skills Development Strategy

Professional bodies to launch skills "confederation"

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:27

The recently renamed Association for Skills Development in South Africa (ASDSA) and two other leading professional bodies have joined forces in an unprecedented initiative to improve governance and standards of practice among skills development’s coalface workers. It will also help skills development practitioners and those in related professions to lobby more effectively.

Collectively, the ASDSA, SA Board for People Practices (SABPP) and Chartered Institute for the Management of Assessment Practice (CIMAP) represent the interests of many of the professions tasked with implementing the National Skills Development Strategy. These include training providers, skills development facilitators, moderators, assessors, human resources and organisational development practitioners.

The three bodies have drawn up a memorandum of understanding whereby they will launch an informal confederation of professional associations within the next few months. They are urging other likeminded bodies to join them. Professions that would be applicable to join include training providers, coaches, mentors and verification agents since skills development plays an important part of BBBEE compliance.

“This is not an initiative that is dominated by any one body,” insists SABPP chief executive Marius Meyer. “It is a meeting place of equals who are prepared to put aside their individual interests to promote the greater skills development cause. He points out that about a third of the Board’s members are learning and development practitioners – quite a few of whom are skills development facilitators – and it is primarily within this specialist cluster that the SABPP sees opportunities for collaborating with the ASDSA.

“This is the biggest grouping within the SABPP and it’s one of the reasons we are so serious about skills development. These people are involved with skills development on a daily basis.”

Meyer adds: “South Africa is sitting with a skills crisis. The different role-players have traditionally all done their own thing with the result that the entire skills development system is badly fragmented.”

Alliance talks were sparked after the SABPP – which was established in 1982 – and ASDSA came together two years ago in a working group convened by the Services Seta (sector education and training authority) to develop vocational qualifications for skills development facilitators.

“This was the first step towards formal discussions on ways we and other bodies could work together to determine the gaps in the skills development system and find ways to bridge them,” says Meyer.

Another important benefit of participating in the coalition is that skills development practitioners will be afforded a collective voice with which to lobby government, business and institutions such as Nedlac (National Economic, Development and Labour Council) and the National Skills Authority.

ASDSA chairperson Gill Connellan says each participating body will maintain its unique identity and focus, but that overlaps in both strategic objectives and membership mean there are more synergies than differences. “The Association was formed in 2003 as a direct result of a provision in the original Skills Development Act that created a profession where previously there had been none.

“The first skills development facilitators were little more than information conduits between companies and the Setas with which they were registered, with many of them having the role thrust upon them in addition to their full-time HR, finance, training or other functions,” maintains Connellan.

Each of the (then) 25 Setas – and therefore every economic sector – had its own SDFs and, while there were several common roles they played such as compiling workplace skills plans and annual training reports, each sector had unique requirements.

“Every Seta saw the SDF role a bit differently,” adds Ms Connellan, “with the result that there were no generally accepted standards of competence or practice. Without benchmarks there can be no effective governance and the consequence was that facilitators were looked upon as conniving and, often, downright dishonest.”

The establishment, consolidation and growth of the body (initially known as the Association for Skills Development Facilitation in South Africa) as well as its adherence to a standard of good practice and code of conduct for its members had gone a long way to changing these perceptions, she says.

“One thing that hasn’t changed is that our members are still the information conduits between the originators of skills development policy (government), its implementers (business and the Setas) and its beneficiaries (workers, unemployed people and learners).

“Skills development practitioners are the people who get their hands dirty. They know better than anyone else what works and what doesn’t in the real world. As such, they should be encouraged to provide constructive inputs upwards along the supply chain,” insists Connellan.

In addition, she says, “by sharing resources and achieving scale efficiencies, we will be able to develop better professional qualifications and continuing professional development programmes across the entire spectrum of skills development-related occupations. This will benefit the members of all participating bodies.”

CIMAP chairperson Dr Michele Serfontein says the maturation of the National Skills Development Strategy has placed a greater emphasis on the role of assessors and moderators. However, as has been the case with skills development facilitators, a lack of standardisation and regulation has called assessment practices into question.“Standardisation is important because our system fails when the people on whom we rely who implement national policy are neither monitored nor held accountable because there are no benchmarks of practice.”

The Institute was established last year by following closely, Serfontein acknowledges, the trail blazed by the ASDSA. As such, she says, collaboration has already paid huge dividends.

“Our biggest challenge is that assessment takes place across industries as well as ETQAs (education and training quality assurance bodies. This mirrors the challenge the ASDSA has been able to overcome and CIMAP would be foolish not to draw on the Association’s experience.”

As far as the immediate road ahead for the coalition is concerned, she feels that the focus must be on “sharing our knowledge resources and dovetailing activities in order to gain the ultimate exposure and leverage for everyone involved”.