In almost all professions or occupations in South Africa, government has introduced legislation aimed at bringing professions under tighter regulation. This has put most sectors under extreme pressure to qualify large numbers of people who may have the competence, but do not hold the required qualification.
In the case of insurance brokers, for example, there are about 72 000 people who need to be "qualified' in order to continue their professional practice. Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is clearly the central mechanism for qualifying large numbers of people who are demonstrably competent but who lack certification.
RPL is an assessment process that measures and, where appropriate, certificates competences that an individual may have acquired during his or her career. The competence being assessed has usually been acquired through informal or non-formal learning.
For this reason, RPL is commonly motivated as part of an equity agenda aimed at people who missed out on formal education and training opportunities. The Institute of People Development (IPD) completed a pilot project with 60 Occupation-Directed (OD) Education, Training and Development (ETD) practitioners and found that more than just people development emerged from this study - it also had strong business spin-offs.
Systemic Benefits
The potential benefits of RPL cluster around a common set of themes that impact at three different levels: individual; organisational and sectoral or systemic. The individual benefits are obvious but the pilot study showed organisational and sectoral impacts that make sound economic sense.
At the organisational level, improved staff competence assists in fulfilling succession planning and meeting employment equity and other skills development targets. More multi-skilled staff leads to a more flexible organisation with a flatter organisational structure. In addition, organisations can access the Skills Levy Fund to pay for RPL, which means that fewer staffing hours are spent away on training.
The sector improves its performance with a more flexible labour market that offers more strategically focused employment skills and portable qualifications. The improved efficiency of skills development system leads to profit. In the OD ETD field, current legal obligations only require assessors to be formally certificated.
However, many employers (including government) have set deadlines by which all their HR training staff will be competent against a full OD ETD qualification. Clearly, it is neither necessary nor affordable for these targets to be achieved solely through training.
Lessons learned
RPL is not a simple process of matching evidence to outcomes. The conditions under which RPL candidates have acquired their competence should shape the assessment process and tools.
For most candidates - in most sectors - it will be easy to provide evidence of practical competence. Strategies for developing and proving foundational and reflexive competence must be built into the assessment design.
RPL should be appropriately budgeted and supported. Most candidates in the IPD pilot project were initially amazed that the assessment process would require almost a full week of work on their part.
However, this should be seen in the context that candidates are being awarded a qualification equivalent to between 1 - 2 years of fulltime study. Any assessment process therefore should be rigorous if the integrity of the qualifications is to be sustained.
RPL should be embedded within broader personal development path planning within any organisation to be personally and organisationally meaningful.
Time and resources spent on training
The SAQA guidelines on recognition of prior learning specify that an RPL assessment may not cost more than would the training required to earn the qualification. In most cases where candidates plausibly have all or some of the competencies required for a qualification, RPL will always be a cost-effective strategy.
What is less well known, however, is that RPL may be funded under the skills grant system. This is true either for part of a qualification (such as a learnership) or for the qualification as a whole.
In addition, many sectors will actually be funding RPL projects in strategically important areas. It is worth planning ahead in developing a workplace skills plan to secure the resources required.