The structural and systematic overhaul of the Post School Education and Training Sector (PSeT) must seize our immediate horizon, writes Thabo Masombuka.
Although the month of June marked the country’s renewed sense of the commitment towards the upliftment of the youth into the mainstream of the economy, whether the impact of this is reliable remains arguable and debatable. Especially given the stubbornly persistent unemployment numbers amongst young people.
With problems, protests, and complaints having featured prominently in the work of the National Skills Fund (NSF), the NSFAS, and SETAs in recent months, with students demanding accommodation and necessities in tertiary institutions, it has now become increasingly clear that new forms of interventions, innovations, and leadership is needed to revamp the PSeT sector and make it what it was intended to achieve, especially towards the 2030 national development planning goals.
Whilst the recent negative attention that surrounded the re-appointment of the boards and accounting authorities of the SETAs is unfortunate, it cannot become a defining feature. There is certainly no doubt that good positive work in the sector has happened in the past few years and such must be enhanced for the better.
Already, the rate and levels of drop-out ratios in these NSF and SETA funded programmes is disturbingly alarming. Which is the reason why a stronger, much more impact based programme roll-out, in compulsory partnerships with the TVET (especially rurally based) and Higher Learning Institutions, is non-negotiable.
This calls out for the need for new ways and methods of training and skills enhancement. Gone are the days when old, unresponsive ways of training are preferred without an emphasis on new relevant training pathways. The Quality Council for Trade and Occupations (QCTO) must clear up their accreditation backlog and increase the number of accredited training providers who offer such competencies.
In doing so, the partnerships with industry players and commerce must dominate the type of initiatives and programmes that must seize ongoing emphasis.
Otherwise the factors that are responsible for the drop-outs and lack of sustainable implementation, continue to pile up with very little or no industry absorption for those who have completed the theoretical training.
Chief amongst these ongoing drop-outs is, amongst other things, the skewed nature of the SA economy, which, unlike in Asia and Europe, especially in Germany, where a large part of the training approach has been borrowed—the recruitment of learners should in fact be done by the industries, who would place learners in work places where the focus is on the priorities of the world of work.
Does the stipend allowances payable really serves as a sufficient incentive to keep the learners enrolled?
As more learners migrate from one SETA programme to another, in pursuit of a better stipend paying SETAs, an integrated learner verification platform—which has been developed by the Media, Information and Communication & Training SETA (MiCT)—has been long overdue. This integrated system should respond to the challenges posed by duplications and double-dippings of the system. This has been raised sharply and highlighted by the Auditor General of SA in its audit assessment of SETAs.
In fact, the arguable reality of the South African PSeT sector is that, in truth, what we describe as a stipend—which should be used to take care of lunches, toiletries, and transport—is in fact, a household income to the majority of SA families, as these participants actually use the stipend money to support their immediate families. So, inevitably, poverty and unemployment continues to be a huge contributing factor in the enrollment of skills development programmes.
The previous forum of SETA chairpersons has been at pains, constantly engaging the Department of Higher Education in consistently advocating for a centralised and uniform stipend regime that would not only curb this phenomena, but would also ensure that training outputs are directly aligned to industry training and development needs, with the national skills summit of 2024 having resolved to adopt an even much more high-impact and collaborative stakeholder initiatives to maximise sector based skills initiatives.
In this case, the phenomena of young people who are Not In Education, Employment and Training (NEET) would be significantly eliminated, as these contribute towards the forever rising unemployment numbers.
However, another contradiction and sad reality is that the SETAs would never be of the same monetary contribution size as the levy payers in various industries do not have the same number of employees, and therefore, the 1% Skills Development levy mandated by the SDA will always cary from one employer to another.
Does the amalgamation and reconfiguration of the SETA regime offers any prospective solution?
Part of the solution is in the need to amalgamate and consolidate SETAs who operate in the same economic clusters. An initiative that was previously attempted by the former Minister of Higher Education and Training, Naledi Pandor in 2016. The gazette for such amalgamation and clustering of SETAs has since been withdrawn and parked.
For an example, this would have resulted in some SETAs with an overlapping mandate to being amalgamated together.
Food & Beverage SETA would seamlessly work better with Agriculture, Energy, Water, and Forestry SETAs.
Arguably, the Insurance, Banking and Finance SETAs would make sense working together, as the construction, MerSeTA and Transport would also be logical in becoming a consolidated mega SETA.
Not only would such amalgamation reduce the operational costs and exposure of such institutions, but would also reduce leakages, in a way raising more levy revenues that are so greatly needed to implement initiatives with higher impact at the level of training and programmes delivery.
