The Department of Basic Education (DBE) will release the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results on Friday, 20 January 2023. Once matriculants receive their results, they will be faced with the choice of which steps to take after completing their basic education.
Some learners will choose to further their education at a university or college, while others will choose to enter the job market. However, experts have advised matriculants to consider enrolling in skills development courses, which could boost their prospects of finding employment.
Sabelo Myeni, CEO of Sisekelo Sustainability Institute explains that universities are wrongly viewed as the only vehicle that can be used by young people to obtain skills and knowledge that will ultimately lead to employment. This is not the case and there are several pathways individuals can take where they will obtain the necessary skills to become job ready.
Apart from considering enrollment at a university or a Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college, matriculants should also consider Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA).
The role of SETAs is to ensure that there is an adequate amount of skilled individuals in several sectors critical to South Africa’s economy. SETAs perform this role by facilitating skills development programmes for individuals in several industries.
Training programmes offered by SETAs vary in their duration and can take anywhere from three months to one year to complete.
Myeni explains that SETAs work with patterns in the labour market to identify critical skills that are needed in different industries. This ensures that the skills programs individuals are participating in are current and are not outdated.
“All these programmes that fall within SETAs are in demand. If you look at cyber security as one of the biggest areas that are emerging which a few years ago we were not even talking about, but through the SETAs and ourselves working with the labour market we come up with programmes that address those gaps,” explained Myeni.
They added that SETA programmes are structured as learnerships which allows young people to learn theory and gain practical skills at the same time. These learnerships also provide participants with a stipend. Individuals are advised to pursue learnerships in their areas of interest to get started.
