Skills Development

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Skills Development in South Africa is governed under the Skills Development Act 97 of 1998, which has subsequently been amended a number of times. The national government's Department of Higher Education and Training is responsible for managing and developing all higher education and skills development training. Learnerships are a key component of the skills development drive. With a Learnership the learner can gain a national qualification without having to pay study fees. The current Minister responsible for skills development is Dr Blade Nzimande.


If I have registered an SDF and submitted a completed WSP and ATR on time, will I automatically receive a percentage of my skills levies back? There are two stages of the reclaim process:


What is the difference between Mandatory Grants and Discretionary grants?


The two reports are the Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) and the Annual Training Report. (ATR)


The refund of the skills levies is called a Mandatory grant, that is: if you comply with the conditions, then you qualify to receive the levy refund.


There are a variety of formats, some Seta reports are in Word documents, some in Excel, and some have on-line submission. Most of the Setas have now developed a single form for both reports.


Can any company benefit from special projects and discretionary grants?
Setas do have targets in their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to assist small, medium and micro enterprises.


The qualifications authority, Saqa, has found that almost 60% of the foreign qualifications they evalute are from Zimbabweans. For nine months last year almost 10 000 Zimbabweans were applying for work permits and required recognition of their qualifications to obtain skilled positions in South Africa.


A report on the Skills Portal gave figures for the number of learners on qualifying learning programmes. My question is, what is a qualifying learning programme?


The construction Seta, Ceta, has appointed Petrus Mawuku as the training authority's new CEO. Chairperson Narius Moloto praised Mawuku as, "one of the pioneers in the development of the Setas and the Construction Charter for transformation who has many years of experience on how the Setas operate".


The study, which was conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) on behalf of the Safety and Security Sector Education and Training Authority (SASSETA), also shows


"It seems to me", writes Marietta van Rooyen, "that the role of trainers in the development of skills in South Africa is grossly underestimated. When the NQF was set up the word 'Trainer' was somehow discredited and replaced by the rather ambiguous name of ETD Practitioner". So how can trainers raise their status?


Know the difference between Scarce and Critical skills? And the difference between Relative and Absolute scarcity? The Minister of Labour helps us to define these concepts and debunk some of the myths around skills shortages.

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