The Skills Handbook Blog

Innovative Campaign to Support Youth Employment Targets the Public TVET College Sector

2018-09-07T15:38:00.001+02:00

Many of you may have heard of the likes of Harambee, Mentec, Careerbox, the EOH Youth Job Creation Initiative and the Impact Sourcing Academy in the ongoing discussions about South Africa's youth unemployment crisis.

These organisations reflect new approaches to supporting youth employment by crafting a much closer link with employer talent needs, than is commonly seen in public education systems around the world.

While many people would agree that employment is not the sole purpose of education, an education system that fails to result in at least some form of employability for its students is surely failing them (and the country that funds it) on a fundamental level.

The Rockefeller Foundation supported significant research into the causal dynamics of youth unemployment and developed an initiative - Digital Jobs Africa - that tackled both the supply-side and demand-side features of this phenomena.

Many government led initiatives to reduce youth unemployment focus only on the supply-side dimension (education and incentives) because the demand-side dimension (recruitment and enterprise development) is typically in the hands of private sector stakeholders who hire new entrants to the workforce and expand business operations.

Digital Jobs Africa tackled both the supply and demand dimensions of youth unemployment across 6 African countries between 2013 - 2017, with an emphasis on placing high potential, but disadvantaged youth, into entry level digital jobs.

The initiative was successful in co-ordinating a wide range of stakeholders towards a common purpose and deploying a research-based shared methodology with a clear business case.

However the public education system in South Africa could not directly participate in DJA due to the novel and complex nature of the changes it would have required of them, in a short period of time.

Fortunately for our public TVET colleges, the DJA initiative has given South Africa a toolkit and a campaign to help them understand how they can adapt their college environments and programmes to develop greater youth employability. The WorkFit Campaign runs from November 2017 - June 2018 and offers a free download of the WorkFit Toolkit, to guide colleges in understanding demand-driven training.

The Toolkit is based on a research framework developed by studying the best practices of the top ten global demand-driven training providers (the organisations mentioned at the top of the article are four of those organisations), and is available as a free download from www.WorkFitCampus.org.za.

If you are part of the broader youth employability ecosystem, you can follow WorkFit on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates, and if you are a TVET college lecturer or support staff, be sure to attend one of their monthly public workshops on the Toolkit.

****
Making Cents International developed the Demand Driven Training Toolkit (DDTT) with support from the Rockeller Foundation. The WorkFit Toolkit is the local adaptation of the DDTT. You can visit the global version of the Toolkit here and can find more information on MCI's work here.

New Work Readiness Guide for public TVET colleges and students

2017-11-06T22:09:00.001+02:00

The Department of Higher Education & Training (DHET) has published Ikusasa Lami (My Future) to support the work readiness of public TVET college students.

The development of the publication was sponsored by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and authored by myself with great inputs and improvements throughout the process by the DHET Student Development and Support Directorate.

View more on edocr

The publication can be searched, downloaded and embedded in your own website using the following HTML code:

<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe height="550" width="425" src="https://www.edocr.com/embed/xmz9po3l"></iframe><p style="text-align: center; font-size: .8em;"><a href="https://www.edocr.com" target="_blank">View more on edocr</a></p></div>

Please use the above code to embed the publication in your website, rather than downloading it and re-upping it, as the Department can learn a lot about the effectiveness of the publication through the analytics provided by edocr, which hosts the publication. This information will help us publish new editions of the book that have greater impact.

Ikusasa Lami is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. This means it can be published for non-profit purposes provided that attribution is made to the publisher, the Department of Higher Education & Training. To understand more about the license visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ .

This post will be updated with additional information on the publication in the weeks to come.

Event - National Skills Authority Roundtable on the New Skills Development Landscape

2016-04-06T15:09:00.000+02:00

The National Skills Authority (NSA) has been tasked with advising the Minister of Higher Education & Training on the proposed new skills development landscape, which comes into effect from March 2018.

To advise the Minister on how stakeholders feel about the proposals, the NSA has been conducting nation-wide public hearings to provide information on the proposals, encourage discussion around the impact of the changes and gather feedback for the Minister.

Yesterday's roundtable at the Midrand Conference Centre in Johannsburg was aimed at a wide variety of organisations which play important roles in the post-schooling sector. The NSA provided feedback on the public hearings and gave the organisations an opportunity to share their views on the proposals, and answer questions from the audience.

You can download the event presentations later in this post.

The SABPP and the New Skills Development Landscape

I attended the roundtable representing the South African Board for People Practices (SABPP) along with our CEO, Marius Meyer, and our Learning & Quality Assurance Manager, Naren Vassan.

The SABPP is a key role-player in the post-school sector because its members are the human resource and learning & development (L&D) managers responsible for on-boarding university, college and other graduates into the workplace, and for providing workplace learning.

The SABPP made a submission to the Minister on the new proposals, which you can download here, or view below. More information on the NSLP proposals is available on an earlier blog post here, including a link to download the proposal document. DHET referes to the proposals by the acronymn "NSLP" - National Skills Development Strategy & SETA Landscape Proposal 2015.

The event programme

The full event programme is embedded below.

Almost every key stakeholder in the skills development landscape was well represented in the programme, with the exception of professional bodies (there is a Professional Body Forum which represents this sector). However on behalf of SAQA, Professor Shirley Walters emphasised this point during her presentation.

Professional Bodies play critical role in NQF & the national skills development system
- Prof S Walters of @SAQALive #NSARoundtable @SABPP1
— Mike Stuart (@mpgstuart) April 5, 2016

Labour was only represented by Cosatu which elicited an objection from Eddie De Klerk, the Fedusa education and training representative, who was in the audience.

It was great seeing the Department of Basic Education represented, as a holistic solution to South Africa's human development challenges needs to tackle the full life-cycle of education and training.

The presentations

The NSA has made some of the presentations available already and the rest will be added to the folder below as soon as they are made available.

I tweeted the highlights of the event on the hashtag #NSARoundtable.

Tweets about #NSARoundtable @mpgstuart

Some highlights

It was sad to hear Joyce Mashabela (representing the QCTO and the CHE) still begging for funding for the QCTO (which since its inception has not been properly funded) but her appeal for stability, consistency and an end to continual changes in the sector is likely to be a sentiment felt by everyone. The people staffing our SETAs and the QCTO operate under a continual threat of termination (SETAs are established for 5 year periods, and the QCTO can only budget in two year time-spans at the moment). This is not a great environment to get the best performance out of people but fortunately the proposals for the new Skills Development Landscape contain some solutions for both SETAs and the QCTO.

On this point, the SABPP submission to DHET suggested that 10% of the total Skills Development Levy be allocated to the administration of the QCTO, the NSA, the HRDC and the NSDA.

Silo-busting and integration are key themes for any organisation seeking to positively impact their environment in our increasingly complex world. So it was great to hear Ms Lewin from the DHET mention that we have a Task Team on Cross-cutting Issues and Integration working on the implementation plan for the White Paper on PSET. It was also refreshing to hear the acknowledgement, "we have more questions than answers at the moment" from Ms Lewin because the task of implementing the White Paper is formidable and requires humility. The DHET is aiming to have a draft implementation plan ready by early 2017 which is a very ambitious target, but since the White Paper was published in January 2014 it needs to start implementation as soon as possible.

Several presenters criticised the NSLP 2015 as being too operational and not proceeding from a solid strategic starting point. While the document is very operational, it does point to the White Paper as being its strategic reference point, and does anchor several of its propositions in the objectives of the White Paper, so I don't agree with this criticism. What would be helpful is if we had a Human Resource Development strategy which was cascaded down to a National Skills Development Strategy. Theoretically this is the case, but the strategies are often developed several years apart from each other and then retrospectively updated which does not make for continuity nor a clear transmission of the original intent of the apex strategies.

It was good to hear several stakeholders insisting on a demand-driven approach to the new landscape (rather than a supply-led approach), as this has been a weakness in the South African education and training landscape for a long time now.

The strongest opposition to the DHET's proposals came from Dr Moloko, representing Chairpersons of SETA boards, and Chair of the SETA CEO association, Ms Nxesi.

Three presenters called for the country to leverage disruptive technologies to overcome the increasing costs of access to education, something the SABPP welcomes and dedicated a section of its submission to DHET to (see pages 6 - 7).

Conclusion

I will continue to follow developments around the new Skills Development Landscape on this blog, including an initiative I am supporting to host a series of national debates, preceded and followed by research papers, which will hopefully raise the tempo and quality of the national conversation on this important topic.

Given the significant scope of changes the country is currently considering with regard to this sector, we have not yet been able to published the next edition of the Skills Handbook. I apologise to readers, advertisers and sponsors for this delay. Had we published any earlier, the book would be considered irrelevant now.

Proposed New Skills Development Landscape

2015-10-28T17:42:00.002+02:00

The Department of Higher Education & Training (DHET) published on 10 November 2015 a draft proposal for a new National Skills Development landscape which would take effect on 1 March 2018.

The proposal is a government gazette with a deadline of 20 January 2016 for public comments.

With National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) III finishing its five year life-span in 2016 (now extended to March 2018), it was expected that a fine-tuning of the key skills development institutions would take place to support the new NSDS. The proposed new landscape is however a significant evolution in the institutional landscape and one which therefore requires significant consideration and discussion among stakeholders.

The title of the DHET document is "Proposal for the New National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) and Sector Education & Training Authorities (SETAs) Landscape (NSLP 2015)".

Please use the hashtag #NSDSIV to tweet on this topic (other more specific hashtags are in use).

What changes are proposed?

Summarised below are the primary changes envisaged in NSLP 2015. Refer to the 46 page source document for detail.

Changes to SETAs

SETAs would be absorbed into the Department of Higher Education & Training but constituted as Specialised Delivery Units (Section 7B of the Public Service Act)
They would become permanent structures, rather than have 5 year renewable life-spans
They would remain 21 in number (no immediate mergers but clustered into five synergistic groupings)
SETA Boards would remain unchanged but have greater representation from government departments in line with a stronger public sector focus

Changes to Funding

80% of the current SETA Discretionary Grant would be shifted to the National Skills Fund (equivalent to the entire current PIVOTAL Grant)
Employers would still be able to apply for a 20% Mandatory Grant (unchanged) and a 20% Discretionary Grant (renamed Sector Specific Grant)
SETA administration costs would remain at 10% of the Skills Development Levy, but likely reduced over time as a shared services unit realises bulk savings, and as other bodies take up previous SETA functions, such as Skills Planning
Public sector organisations would spend 1% of their personnel budget on quality assured education and training leading to NQF qualifications and fulfill the same reporting obligations as the private sector so as to qualify for funding from the National Skills Fund

Changes to the NSDS

These changes relate to the development of the National Skills Development Strategy IV, the fourth successive five year skills strategy, which will now run from March 2018 - March 2023.

The unit of analysis for the NSDS would be that of the occupation, as used in the Organising Framework for Occupations
There would be an emphasis on building the capacity of providers and the relevance of their programmes to occupational learning
NSDS IV would be drafted by DHET, informed by consultation with bodies including the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC), and finalised by the Minister of Higher Education and Training
NSDS IV would act as a guide for the allocation of all funding in the post-school sector (both Skills Development Levy funding and funding from the fiscus, or voted funds) via a Ministerial Statement

Other changes

The National Skills Fund would directly fund the Quality Council for Trades & Occupations (QCTO), currently the QCTO is funded separately by contributions from each SETA
The National Skills Authority would perform a monitoring and evaluation function of the SETABs and be responsible for the skills development of SETA employees
The DHET would be responsible for a central skills planning unit which would inform all of the post-school sector institutions

Why are these changes proposed?

The overarching reason for these changes is the White Paper for Post-school Education and Training, published by DHET in January 2014, setting out a vision for the post-school sector till 2030. A blog post on the Paper is available on this site, and includes links to the source document.

Other reasons for the proposed changes include:

Better co-ordination of skills funding through a central mechanism which can optimise spending and impact
Alignment with research and evaluation of the SETA system which proposed a more focused mandate for SETAs (moving quality assurance to the QCTO, and skills planning to the DHET)
Recognition that many occupations are cross-sectoral and are not optimally served by the current sectoral focus of SETAs
Recognition that institutional learning (generally funded by the fiscus, or voted funds) and workplace learning (generally funded by the Skills Development Levy) are complimentary to occupational learning and therefore need to be funded in a complimentary manner and from a cross-sectoral perspective

The NSLP 2015 proposal document

The document is gazetted as Government Gazette No. 39386. Download the 46 page document here (2 MB PDF).

Comments and suggestions

It is essential for everyone involved in the skills development landscape to reflect on these proposals and provide input on improvements so that the final policy document can incorporate the broad collective experience of the sector.

Public comment is ~~due by 20 January 2016~~ - extended to 29 February 2016 by Government Gazette 39592. Please email your comments to the DHET at setalandscape@dhet.gov.za.

Enquiries can be directed to any of the following DHET officials:

Ms M. Erra on 012 312 5432
Ms V. Patuleni on 012 312 5295
Mr N. Radzilani on 012 312 6088

The SA Board for People Practice is also coordinating a submission which you can give input to by emailing Naren Vassan (LQA Manager) with the subject of the email beginning "Comments to Proposed SETA Landscape".

Skills Handbook Pre-order Edition Now Available

2015-06-01T13:16:00.002+02:00

Last week, on the 25 May, the Skills Handbook Pre-order Edition (version 0.1) was published.

This 98 page teaser is a downloadable eBook which is made available to anyone pre-ordering the 554 page Print Edition, available later this year.

Click image to zoom in

While the Print Edition consists of 249 chapters, of between 1 - 8 pages each, the Pre-order Edition consists of the following six chapters, with a distinctly artisan development focus:

Artisan Development
Artisan Development - Funding
Artisan Development - History of
NAMB - National Artisan Moderating Body
SETA Sector - Grant Regulations, Amended
SETAs - Finance and Accounting Services SETA - FASSET

To access the Pre-order Edition, please click here to visit our online shop, and place a pre-order for the Print Edition, at R300 ex VAT (normal price will be R500 ex VAT).

Updates

The Pre-order Edition is updated approximately monthly until the book is printed. Each time it is updated you will be emailed a download link to access the updates.

Advertising

Should you wish to advertise, please click here for more information. On finalisation of your booking, your advert will be placed in the next Pre-order Edition update, and your 12 months of exposure will be counted from the date the book is printed.

What to expect in version 0.2

The next version update is planned for 20 October and will include the following new chapters and updates:

National Scarce Skills List (2 pages)
Interview with Brent Wyborn (Business) (4 pages)
Updates to the Artisan Development chapters based on the recent publication of the Trade Test Regulations and the Draft Trade Test Quality Improvement Strategy 2015
Updates to the SETA Grant Regulations chapter, based on BUSA's successful legal challenge (now under appeal)

The full list of chapters covered by the Print Edition is available here. If you would like to see other topics prioritised, please comment at the bottom of this page.

Employers & Youth Employability - interview with Brent Wyborn, HR Director (Hollard Insurance Group)

2014-10-02T17:09:00.001+02:00

Large employers do what they have to in terms of the social problems in their markets. They can't exactly avoid legal responsiblities, but a few employers go beyond the minimum.

An even smaller group of employers try to find a sustainable business model to drive their social investment projects, knowing that such projects will outlive the variable sources of funding which they normally depend on.

Hollard Insurance Group is one such company, and the social investment project is Harambee Work For Work, an innovative new approach to youth unemployment which intersects with the universal business need for talented new entrants.

Hollard employs 2,547 people, who are served by 35 HR practitioners, administering an annual payroll of R1,2 billion, and paying a Skills Development Levy of approximately R12 million.

From Holland to Hollard, from HR Officer to HR Director - Brent Wyborn

The full interview with Brent will appear in the 2015 edition of the Skills Handbook. Below are some snippets:

Brent job shadowed an HR Manager at SABMiller after completing his matric, and before studying at varsity. He went on to read for a B.Com, studying economics and industrial psychology.
He completed an International Management Studies degree in Netherlands at the University of Maastricht, where courses and materials were provided in both English and Dutch, worked for Pepkor as an HR Officer for a short period, and then in 1999 was hired by Hollard and has been with them since then, during a period of very rapid growth for the organisation.
Brent has been in Hollard's HR function since 1999 when the company was pioneering new approaches to a very traditional (and some say boring) industry, and has supported its growth to its current multinational status. He is one of South Africa's youngest HR Directors, having just turned 40.

On the value of diversity and social impact

Hollard is one of South Africa's multinational success stories, along with MTN and SABMiller, operating in Australia, India, China, UK, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, and soon Ghana.
The diversity challenges South Africa faces are one of the reasons Brent enjoys working in South Africa, and he says it gives our managers an advantage in the diverse global market place.
He suggests that senior talent are increasingly looking for organisations to work, where they have more autonomy of decision making, and more opportunity to positively impact their society, something that fits well with the Hollard ethos.

On HR practitioners becoming business leaders

His success as Head of People has spilled over to an increase in his operational responsibilities, with his role now classified as "Executive Head: Group Services", with fourteen different operational functions reporting into him, including marketing, people, IT, strategy, continuous improvement, and aspects of procurement. This is evidence of the potential for HR professionals to shape and lead their organisations way beyond the administrative back-end that some practitioners are relegated to.
Along the same theme, Brent pointed out that the new SABMiller world-wide CEO (Alan Clark) started out as a Training & Development Manager and psychologist.

On Youth unemployment

With South Africa sitting at number three in the world for youth unemployment, I asked Brent about youth employability, and what employers could do.

Brent pointed to the Harambee Work For Work success story which succeeded in its job creation target of 10,000 people by the end of 2014.
Harambee was birthed in a human capital exchange forum between Hollard and its sister companies over four years ago and has now gone on to add 77 corporate employers in several other industry sectors, based on a sustainable business idea (sourcing quality new staff) with potential for major social benefit (reducing youth unemployment).
Brent pointed out several ways in which employers could be more innovative in redesigning work and jobs in order to open up more work opportunities for youth, including:

Having two entry level employees doing work that was previously done by one employee
Scaling back a more complex job into two simpler jobs which ultimately career-path to the original job
Re-evaluating jobs that are considered too complex for new entrants, and finding ways of adjusting them so that they can be tackled by youth. Hollard has successfully experimented with many job roles for unemployed youth that were previously thought too advanced for them to handle.

More info on Harambee for employers can be found here. Work seekers can click here for more information.

Read the full interview in the Skills Handbook which you can order here.

National Scarce Skills List - Call for Comments

2014-05-28T11:20:00.000+02:00

You may remember Dept Labour's National Scarce Skills List? It has not been updated for a long time, due to changes and improvements taking place in the way it is developed. Now the DHET has just released a call for comments on the top 100 occupations identified in the updated National Scarce Skills List.

Why comment?

Your comments are important. The National Scarce Skills List informs the immigration policy of the Department of Home Affairs, and also guides and directs considerable investment by the public and private sector in educating and training people to fill the identified scarce skills. The list also informs the career choices of students.

View or download the list below and submit comments to Ms Mmaphake Ramasodi by 20 June 2014. Please also tweet your comments with the hashtag #scarceskills, and these will be listed below as they appear on Twitter.

What is a scarce skill again?

If you need to be reminded what a scarce skill is, click here.

Questions about the National Scarce Skills List

Professor Hoosen Rasool was part of the team that developed the List. If you have any questions about how it was prepared, please post them in the comments section below and we will ask him to respond to you, and post his replies here.

What is in the List?

The document is 24 pages long, is comprehensive but easy to read. It contains the following headings which help contextualise the list, explain its origins, and how it will be used:

INTRODUCTION
PURPOSE
LIFESPAN OF LIST
KEY CONCEPTS
UTILITY OF NATIONAL SCARCE SKILLS LIST
PROCESSES FOLLOWED IN COMPILING THE NATIONAL LIST OF SCARCE SKILLS
INFORMATION SOURCES
CONSULTATIONS
KEY FINDINGS
RANKING SCORECARD FOR NATIONAL SCARCE SKILLS LIST (2014)
NATIONAL SCARCE SKILLS LIST (2014)
REFERENCES
ANNEXURE A: CLUSTER OF OCCUPATION

The National Scarce Skills List (draft)

This is the draft list, awaiting comments from the public before it will be finalised.

Tweets

Tweets about "#scarceskills"

Frequently Asked Questions

I don’t see any listing of entrepreneurial skills? Business management and the like?

Correct. While entrepreneurship is a national priority (see the National Integrated HRD Plan, 2014), this is viewed as a critical skill not a scarce skill (see the List above for definitions of the two).

When will the final National Scarce Skills List be available?

Approximately the end of August is a likely date.

SAQA's new NQFpedia - helping you navigate the acronym jungle

2014-04-22T19:59:00.000+02:00

NQFpedia is a great tool just launched by SAQA to help simplify the NQF for new-comers, and experts who have to keep up with the continual changes:

Besides providing a one-stop shop for all NQF acronyms and terminology, the site allows commenting on each term, and cross-references related terms.

You can also download the whole glossary as a PDF file, though we suggest you rather popularise the live website link so that we can start a social media process of commenting on the terms and providing feedback to SAQA.

The Green Paper, White Paper and various research reports since 2009 have called for a simplification of the NQF, and noted the difficulty of navigating its complex terminology. The NQFpedia is a welcome response from SAQA to make it easier to understand these important terms, and how they differ across the three sub-frameworks of the NQF.

Not content with one new development, SAQA has simultaneously relaunched its website, which is in our opinion simpler and friendlier, as well as more social (see the Tweet Bar on the right).

By the way SAQA announces a lot of useful news on their Twitter channel, @SAQALive, so its worth following.

You may also want to follow Joe Samuels, the CEO, at @SAQACEO2, and James Keevy (Director: International Liaison) at @jameskeevy, for tweets related to the NQF, or education and training in South Africa.

The White Paper & Private Sector HRD Practice (Event)

2014-03-16T21:33:00.000+02:00

If you haven't had time yet to read and digest the significance of the White Paper for Post School Education & Training, then this short event this week organised by the SA Board for People Practice (SABPP), will summarise the key themes and how they impact practitioners in the private sector.

What have you heard said about the White Paper? Some have dismissed it out of hand as just another layer of irrelevant government policy, "same old, same old," divorced from the tough realities of the private sector.

Far from being that, the White Paper represents a significant evolution in the vision of the Dept for Higher Education & Training (DHET), one which is more mature and more in alignment with private sector realities than anything we have seen since 2009.

However the White Paper ups the game for L&D practitioners in the private sector.
The environment now becomes more supportive of those learning initiatives that, indirectly or directly, support the broader social and educational priorities, and less supportive of those who don't.

To find out more about how the environment has changed, and what DHET's priorities will be between 2014 - 2030, attend this morning discussion at GIBS on Wednesday 19 March.

As part of my research for the 2014/15 Skills Handbook, the White Paper has been an important milestone in clarifying how government sees the challenges and solutions for the years ahead, and where it will invest our considerable resources as a country.

The days when government and the private sector could go it alone in their own silos have come to an end. Collaboration and mutual benefit have become essential for any role-player wishing to effect genuine social change or sustainable profitability. This event will help make you aware of the areas in which your L&D practice can piggy-back on government initiatives that simultaneously further your organisational objectives.

Event details:

The event is on Wednesday 19 March, so please book immediately to avoid disappointment
It starts at 09h30 at GIBS in Illovo (26 Melville, Road - click the "location" link at the bottom of this post to open a Google Map of the address)
It costs R500 per person for SABPP members, GIBS partners, and accredited providers, or R750 for others
The event includes a Q&A response segment as well as a segment to collectively reflect on and discuss the White Paper and write a formal feedback report to DHET based on our perspective as HR practitioners
Joining us will be John Pampallis, Team Leader of the White Paper Development Team, and special advisor to the Minister of Higher Education & Training
I will be presenting a segment on the "Private Sector & the White Paper" which will look at aspects of specific relevance to employers, providers and practitioners outside of government
Attendance at the event credits you with 2 CPD points via the SABPP

The booking form can be viewed and downloaded below.

See you there...!

New HRD Plan for South Africa Launches on 3 March 2014

2014-02-19T12:11:00.001+02:00

Update at 18 March 2014 - You can now download the newly released 2014 - 208 National Integrated HRD Plan, or fetch it from the folder below, which includes the 18 Task Team Research Papers that were made public at the Summit.

The Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) was established in March 2010 to co-ordinate the work of building South Africa's human capital across the wide range of stakeholders involved. Modeled on the successful, but temporary JIPSA initiative, the HRD Council signals the awareness by both state and non-government actors that HRD is an apex level priority that deserves collaboration between presidential, CEO and labour union leaders.

Next week will witness a significant milestone in the work of the Council, with the launch of its National Integrated Human Resource Development Plan at Gallagher's Estate in Midrand, Gauteng.

The launch of the Plan comes just two month's after the launch of the White Paper on Post School Education & Training, from the Department of Higher Education & Training, which is the lead government department on the Council.

Together these two developments signal a sharpening focus around the country's grasp of its education and training challenges, and the solutions it is adopting to meet them.

One of the objectives of the event is to share with the public the substantial research that has been done by the Council into bottlenecks effecting the HRD pipeline. The areas covered by this research are showin in the draft programme for the event which can be viewed or downloaded below:

Please join us at the event if you can, otherwise check back here on Monday and Tuesday this week to get updates to this post.

If you are interested in more information on the HRD Council, check out their website: http://www.hrdcsa.org.za. You can view and download the draft HRD Strategy here.

The HRD Council website announces the launch

USA pilots career-focused high school model similar to German and Swiss vocational schools

2014-02-16T16:20:00.004+02:00

There is an interesting article out in this month's Time Magazine - about a new high school model called the P-Tech program (Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools).

Its about getting high schools to link more closely to employers which has several benefits for the schools:

more funding and sponsorships
help with making the curriculum more relevant in terms of employability, and
building pathways into the workplace for students to start experiencing job shadowing, work experience and internships.

The US cover is to the left and to the right is the Africa edition cover, but the article is the same in both editions and starts on page 31 in the Africa edition.

Unfortunately you have to subscribe to read the full article but I have summarised the article in some tweets below.

Tweets about "mpgstuart Time Mag"

These developments are interesting to those of us working in the post school education and training sector because they mirror the shift towards Work Integrated Learning that we are seeing in the public TVET / FET colleges, as well as the trend towards labour market responsiveness in some of the public universities (University of Johannesburg for example).

What is surprising of course is that in the US they are taking these trends down to high school level. But then in Germany and Switzerland, the "Berufsschule" have offered youth this opportunity for a long time and these countries have among the lowest youth unemployment in the world.

The Minister of Higher Education and Training recently spoke about working more closely with his counterpart in the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on this issue of vocational learning and the technical high schools (there are questions around the overlap between the technical high schools and the TVET / FET colleges).

Perhaps this discussion needs to go deeper and include DBE reflecting on partnerships with workplaces.

The White Paper on Post School Education & Training

2014-01-16T17:06:00.001+02:00

"Education is the great engine of personal development" states Nelson Mandela's billboard at the Theo van Wyk building on UNISA Muckleneuk Campus, where the White Paper was launched today

22 July 2014 Update: The Minister of Higher Education & Training gave his budget speech today and indicated that the White Paper would form the basis for a re-alignment of all higher education and training related legislation:

" Our White Paper provides a solid policy framework for our work going forward and all higher education and training legislation must be aligned with it. Consequently all legislation pertaining to higher education and training will be reviewed. Amendments to at least the Higher Education Act, 1997; Skills Development Act; National Qualifications Framework Act, 2008 and the Continuing Education and Training Act, 2006 are envisaged. During the next five years we will concentrate on amendments to legislation and their implementation to enhance the current system."

Please scroll down to view the headings listed below:

Overview
Purpose
Vision
Background
Highlights (in Tweets)
Timeline
Green Paper vs White Paper
SETAs
New developments
Still to come
Enrollment targets
Authors & contributors
Downloads

Overview

Any document that has been in the making for three years is anticipated with a certain amount of awe.

Even more so, given the flurry of activity generated by Minister Nzimande's Department of Higher Education & Training (DHET) since its inception in 2009.

Rather than be intimidated by the sheer size, complexity and independence of institutions in the post school sector, Minister Nzimande showed an appetite for streamlining the sector which equally matched the massive task in front of him (a task which had been somehow avoided by each education administration before him).

For all his opponents' criticism about the direction he was taking the DHET, and the speed with which he was moving, Minister Nzimande's White Paper has now delivered a clear statement of the DHET vision for 2014 - 2030. It is a vision statement based on the hard experience gathered by the Department since 2009, rather than the theoretical musings of a new administration, which may have been the case if it was issued five years ago.

Education & Training practitioners in this space who have been run off their legs keeping up with the rapid pace of change, can sigh in relief that the document contains no shockers or exotic new strategies. Instead the document consolidates and clarifies the frantic activity since 2009 into a concise vision statement of the potential future post school sector.

The vision of the White Paper is however no less dramatic and bold than the other developments we have seen in this space since 2009. The importance of work integrated learning (i.e. structured learning in real workplaces linked to formal theory in an institution) is the clearest and loudest message in the White Paper. It is a message which will resonate with employers and workplace learning practitioners and hopefully impact positively on employment creation by improving the work readiness of new entrants to the labour market.

Other than this, the White Paper also expands on some good ideas that started emerging already since 2010, such as the proposal for Community Colleges (for learners not served by the universities, colleges or skills development providers) a push to get Open Learning resources more freely available, and the centralisation of certain key DHET functions that have been devolved to other parties without the expected impact (skills planning, quality assurance of occupational learning, and funding).

The White Paper for the first time has a chapter on private provision, and acknowledges that "Private institutions play a significant role in providing post-school education to South Africans" (pg 42). It acknowledges that the drive to get every SETA to set up offices in every public FET / TVET colleges, is unrealistic, and it acknowledges the danger of bureaucratisation that our quality assurance systems have often frustratingly fallen into.

The short, 7 page executive summary of the White Paper is well written and covers all the main features of the main document. I recommend you read at least the executive summary, if you don't have time to read the whole document, or the blog post below, which covers some of the highlights of specific relevance to workplace learning practitioners.

Purpose

The purpose of the White Paper is to communicate government's focus and priorities between now and 2030.

It will therefore shape future government strategies and operational plans for the post school system (e.g. NSDS IV). An operational plan to match the White Paper is to expected to follow later this year.

Vision

The vision of the White Paper is an expanded, effective and integrated post school system.

Integration is a key issue because the DHET was formed in 2009 out of the skills branch of the Department of Labour and the vocational and university branches of the previous Department of Education. The institutions inherited from this merger were not well co-ordinated across the post school sector, yet the logic of their work necessitated close integration.

Background

The period between 2009 and the White Paper has involved a huge amount of work in trying to get the diverse institutions that now make up DHET's responsibility to be accountable to governance, to talk to one another, share resources, and to all pull together towards one unified purpose.

This is not a negative reflection on those institutions, but a natural outcome of the fact that they were separated by different national and provincial government reporting lines, resulting in a "silo approach" that made integration impossible.

Thus since 2009 there have been several strategy documents, accords, regulations and task teams aimed at bringing more cohesion and understanding to the diverse sector. These have included:

The National Skills Conference - 2013
The Determination of Sub-Frameworks - 2013
The National Artisan Development Funding Framework - 2013
The Green Paper - 2012
The National Programme for Artisan Development - 2012
The National Skills Accord - 2011
The National Skills Development Strategy III - 2011
10 Ministerial Task Teams - 2009 - ongoing
Several regulations aimed at improving governance and accountability across the TVET / FET colleges, the SETAs, the public universities, and institutions such as the National Skills Fund and the National Skills Authority among others
The draft Human Resource Development Strategy - currently being aligned to the New Growth Path and the National Development Plan

The White Paper's vision helps DHET prioritise and organise all these ongoing developments.

Highlights

The tweets below highlight some of the surprises and more relevant developments in the White Paper. Please follow me on Twitter to get updates and breaking news.

Tweets about "#WhitePaper mpgstuart"

Timeline

White Paper on Post School Education & Training on Dipity.

Green Paper vs White Paper

As you can see from the timeline above, there was a two year gap between the Green Paper, which was issued to gather public comment, and its finalisation in the White Paper. Nearly two hundred public comments were received during this period, and various bodies held briefings on the Green Paper to develop a national conversation about what the new post school vision should look like.

So what were the shifts that took place between the Green Paper (January 2012) and the White Paper (2014)?

The following data shows some interesting comparisons between the two documents based on a simple textual analysis. Both documents were a similar page length (98 pages - Green Paper, 96 pages - White Paper), allowing a rough comparison to be made.

The data in orange rows below shows the top increases in words and terms between both Papers. Inserted in white and blue rows are terms that are associated with "workplace learning" in general.

	Green Paper	White Paper	DIFFERENCE	%
Work-integrated learning	1	13	12	1200%
Workplaces	6	23	17	283%
Workplace	53	81	28	53%
Professional	35	48	13	37%
Labour market	23	30	7	30%
Learning	129	167	38	29%
Employers	60	76	16	27%
Work	276	324	48	17%
Occupational	57	22	-35	-61%
Expanded	13	63	50	385%
Linking	1	4	3	300%
Integrated	26	81	55	212%
Effective	24	87	63	263%
Staffing	4	11	7	175%
RPL	3	8	5	167%
Public sector	4	10	6	150%
Responsiveness	4	8	4	100%

For the full data set click here. For notes on the decrease in the term "occupational" see the end of this post.

As we will discuss in a forthcoming section, "Themes", the White Paper has come a long way from the Green Paper when it comes to understanding the importance of workplace learning in the overall post school education and training sector.

This was immediately evident in the fact that the Green Paper had a one page chapter dedicated to "Workplace based learning", and no dedicated section for the skills development sub-system. The White Paper on the other hand has an entire 12 page chapter dedicated to "Linking Education & the Workplace" (well worth reading).

Note: a simple textual analysis of this kind is useful in highlighting a preponderance of words related to a specific topic, but should not be used to extract more subtle conclusions. For example the 40% decrease in the word "Funding" does not necessarily mean that funding is no longer important in the White Paper, but rather that funding issues have now been resolved.

SETAs

"Supporting education and training provision for workplaces was always one of the reasons for the establishment of the SETAs. It will now be seen as a key focus." (pg 61)

Many research reports and task teams have acknowledged that SETAs were established with far too broad a scope in the year 2000. The White Paper builds on this realisation by envisioning a more narrow role for SETAs focussing on their role in (1) building strong linkages and relationships between the educational system and the workplace, and (2) supporting education and training provision for workplaces.

SETAs will focus on (pg 58):

Engaging with stakeholders in the workplace
Establishing the needs of workplaces and agreeing on the best way to meet them
Facilitating access to learning programmes identified
Ensuring that providers have the capacity to to deliver these programmes

Other changes relating to SETAs:

Skills planning, funding and quality assurance, functions previously located within SETAs will be centralised

While the centralisation of skills planning has already been seen in the establishment of the Labour Market Intelligence Project, and the centralisation of quality assurance has already been planned for in the QCTO, the centralisation of SETA funding operations is a new development

Sector specific skills planning data will be fed into a new centralised skills planning unit at DHET

SETAs will test scenarios that emerge from the skills planning unit with their constituencies and provide feedback to DHET

SETAs will work with education and training providers to understand the long, medium and short-term learning priorities, and how these can be addressed by different learning programmes and workplace experience. SETAs will then support the capacity development of providers in line with these priorities (pg 61)
SETAs will produce only one strategic plan for the three year period ahead, and update it annually

This will replace the current five year Sector Skills Plan (pg 67)
SETA Service Level Agreements with DHET will be based on these plans

They will not all be expected to have a footprint in each province (pg 58)
A further reduction in the number of SETAs may be considered for the end of National Skills Development Strategy III, in 2016 (pg 68)

Until then SETA clustering is to be pursued to bring about more collaboration and efficiency between SETAs. This will include:

Sharing of research within related economic sectors
Collaboration in cross-sectoral training such as along supply chains and occupational pathways
Sharing TVET college infrastructure and projects
Sharing provincial and local level resources
Developing common approaches to qualifications and programmes that are cross-sectoral

New developments

The White Paper is full of new developments, some of which are covered under specific headings elsewhere in this article (e.g. SETAs, above), and the rest of which are grouped in this section.

Community Colleges

A new role-player in the post school education and training system is introduced in the form of community colleges to meet the need for learners who are not serviced by other parts of the post school education and training system.

Who will community colleges cater for?

People such as:

Those who can't or don't want to enter a TVET college, university or SETA learning programme

Can't - when they may not have achieved a high enough level of education to gain entrance
Don't want to - when the programme offerings may be too long, not suitable for their needs, or may involve travelling long distances

Those looking for skills sets or educational achievements that can immediately improve their income generation

For example skills in baking, bicycle repair, fencing, market gardening, sewing etc (more detail below)

Those who dropped out of school and want another chance at completing their Grade 12 certificate

There are over 2 million young people with less than a Grade 10 education who are unemployed and not in education or training

Those looking for courses that are uniquely focused on community needs, and not available elsewhere

For example community health care; parenting and childcare; early childhood development; care for the aged; care for those with HIV/AIDS and other diseases; citizenship education etc (more detail below)

Adults who have been unemployed for a long time, and have little chance of gaining employment, may want to learn alternative ways to earn sustainable livelihoods
Adults who have graduated from the Department of Basic Education's KhaRiGude mass literacy initiative and want to continue their education
Retrenched adults who were made redundant by new technologies and now want to re-skill themselves

Where do community colleges come from?

South Africa has a long history of informal and semi-formal learning for adults, including the worker's night schools in the 1920's and more recently the anti-apartheid community education initiatives organised by NGOs, churches, trade unions and political parties. Such initiatives can be very vibrant and effective at meeting the needs of community learners due to the closeness of the relationship with the local community and its needs, and the intersection of learning for personal, social, family and employment purposes. Given the small scale of operation for a typical community college, it can be significantly easier to build linkages between local government, local business, co-operatives, community organisations and individuals, and turn these linkages into a cycle of lifelong learning that serves adults at a variety of stages in their lives.

What will community colleges look like?

They will be multi-campus institutions which cluster the 3,200 Public Adult Learning Centres (PALCs) across the country, which currently serve about 265,000 learners.
Additional campuses will be added when required by enrolments
Although publicly owned, they may enter into partnerships with community owned or private institutions
They will have well qualified adult educators and be administered national by DHET (not provincially, as was the case with the PALCs)
They will link to state funded programmes such as the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), Community Works Programmes (CWPs), the infrastructure development programme, the Community Development Workers (CDW) and Community Health Workers (CHW) programmes
They will partner with the DTI's small business creation unit and with SETAs

What learning programmes will community colleges offer?

They will offer literacy, numeracy, vocational, skills development and non-formal programmes

This will include programmes in income generating skills such as baking, bicycle repair, fencing, market gardening, sewing, book-keeping, cell-phone repair etc and
It will also include programmes of relevance to communities such as community health care; parenting and childcare; early childhood development; care for the aged; care for those with HIV/AIDS and other diseases; citizenship education; community organisation; using new technologies (such as the internet and smart phones) to find information, market local products and organise community action; arts and crafts.

They will offer the GETC and Senior Certificate programmes currently offered, as well as the proposed new National Senior Certificate for Adults (NASCA) and skills or occupational programmes funded by SETAs or the National Skills Fund
At first they will focus on contact education (face-to-face) but will make use of distance learning technologies in the future
Articulation efforts will focus on enabling community college learners a pathway into the TVET / FET colleges, SETA programmes and even university programmes

Community colleges will be rolled out in a phased approach and preceded by pilot projects to help confirm the most appropriate implementation methodology. DHET aims to support one million learners in Community colleges by 2030.Community colleges will be supported by he SA Institute for Vocational & Continuing Education & Training (SAIVCET) - see heading below.

The concept of community colleges was introduced in the Green Paper under the name "Community Education & Training Centres" (pg 30) but was only 2 pages in detail, whereas in the White Paper it has been fleshed out considerably to 5 pages. For more information on the community colleges read this section in the White Paper here.

SAIVCET (The SA Institute for Vocational & Continuing Education & Training)

Another idea floated in the Green Paper was for an institute called SAIVCET.

In the Green Paper SAIVCET was to support the FET college sector, the SETAs and continuing education in general (continuing education includes CPD, short courses, industry specific courses and part-time learning, all for adults).

In the White Paper SAIVCET is more narrowly focused on supporting the TVET / FET colleges and the community colleges (clearly the SETAs do not need support :)!

The creation of SAIVCET can be seen as part of the centralisation theme that is common across the White Paper (for example skills planning, quality assurance and funding being centralised away from SETAs into specific entities).

SAIVCET will bring dedicated and expert support to the TVET college sector, (as well as presumably offering cost savings where duplication of this support across individual colleges can be eliminated). This support will primarily focus on curriculum innovation and development, and lecturer professional development. Currently such specialised support capacity does not exist in DHET.

SAIVCET follows an international trend in vocational education and training, where institutions like this are generally created outside of direct government but directly in support of its objectives. Other countries with similar institutes include India, South Korea, Switzerland and Germany.

Many responses to the SAIVCET proposal in the Green Paper warned about creating too much bureaucracy and yet another state funded institution. In response the White Paper promises that SAIVCET will have a small full-time staff and will focus instead on building a network of specialists from universities, NGOs and other organisations.

SAIVCET's several additional functions are outlined on page 25 - 26 of the White Paper. One of the more interesting functions mentioned here is that it will have a monitoring and evaluation unit that will perform 360 degree assessments of colleges and present the resulting reports to the relevant college as well as the DHET, highlighting challenges identified as well as recommending corrective measures.

Open learning

The White Paper dedicates a 7 page chapter to "Open Learning through Diverse Modes of Provision" (up from 4 pages in the Green Paper), realising that in order to expand access to education to more and more people, from more diverse backgrounds, creative solutions to the provision of learning will need to be adopted.

Open learning, in this context, is defined (from a much earlier White Paper) as:

Definition of Open Learning used in the White Paper on Post School Education & Training

Open learning is not limited to distance learning - in fact the White Paper notes that most learning in South Africa is either face-to-face learning (classroom based) or distance learning, and too little learning takes place in the continuum between these two extremes.

However digital technology, e-learning and distance learning are all modalities that can support the ideals of open learning. In South Africa distance learning already makes up just less than 40% of all head-count enrolments in the university sector, showing just how important a role these modalities can play.

DHET's open learning landscape is "a network of education providers supported by learning support centres and/or connectivity for students."

Other new developments

The White Paper mentions that the Central Application Service (CAS), will replace all university application systems, so that student walk-ins will be prevented as all student university applications get processed and administered from one central point. It also mentions that the CAS will be expanded to support applications to the TVET / FET colleges. CAS saves students from paying multiple application fees (and submitting multiple application documents to universities). It also enables students to be routed to alternative universities (and in future TVET / FET colleges) should their first choice of study not be approved.

Other developments you can read about in the White Paper include (click the hyperlink to jump to the referenced page in the White Paper):

A National Institute for Humanities & the Social Sciences to reverse the "decline of the humanities" mentioned in the National Development Plan (page 37)

Still to come

The White Paper mentions several developments we can expect to flow from its vision in the future (click the hyperlink to jump to the place being referenced in the White Paper):

An operational plan for the period 2014 - 2030 to action the White Paper - page viii
The establishment of the DHET central skills planning unit - page 58
A review of the entire gamut of vocational programmes offered by the Department, in conjunction with the Department of Basic Education - page 14
A thorough review of the regulation and quality assurance of private education and training providers based on comprehensive research and analysis to be performed - page 43
The finalisation of a national RPL strategy (currently under development) to ensure the embedding of RPL into the whole education and training system, and a RPL co-ordinating mechanism - page 74
A DHET integrated ICT Plan for improving equitable access to and use of technology - page 53
A DHET e-Skills Plan aligned to the national e-Skills Plan - page 53
A policy framework on intellectual property rights and copyright in the post school sector - page 54
An open licensing framework to address the dissemination, adaptation and use of education resources developed using public funds - page 54
A policy for the recruitment and retention of academics in higher education - page xiv
A strategic policy framework to guide the improvement of access to and success for people with disabilities in the post school sector - pg 46

Enrollment targets for 2030

These targets say a lot about where the focus and resources of the Department will be focused over the next 16 years (click the hyperlink to jump to the place being referenced in the White Paper):

2,500,000 - targeted head-count enrolment in the public TVET colleges by 2030

Current figure of 650,000

1,000,000 - targeted head-count enrolment in the new community colleges colleges by 2030

Current figure 265,000 (based on public adult learning centre learners in 2011)

1,600,000 - targeted head-count enrollment in the public universities by 2030

Current figure - 937,000

30,000 - targeted artisans developed (per year) by 2030

this would give a head count of roughly 90,000 artisans in development, as the average artisan programme is 3 years long

500,000 - estimated head-count enrollment in the private TVET and university system by 2030

Authors & contributors

Overall credit and responsibility for the White Paper sits with the Department of Higher Education & Training which drove the process of conceptualising the document and inviting input from a diverse range of stakeholders.

Assisting the Department was the same core team of people that worked on the Green Paper for Post School Education & Training (with the exception of Kgomotso Ramushu). The team consisted of:

John Pampallis (Team Leader and Special Advisor to the Minister of Higher and Training)
Paul Kgobe (Centre for Education Policy Development)
Tsakani Chaka (Centre for Education Policy Development)
Kgomotso Ramushu (Centre for Education Policy Development)
Stephanie Allais (The Centre for Researching Education and Labour, Wits University)
Michele Berger (Mzabalazo Advisory Services)
Nadya Bhagwan (Mzabalazo Advisory Services)

Commenting on other contributors, John Pampallis stated: "There were also many other researchers and policy analysts who contributed to both the Green and White Papers, including those who sat on various Ministerial Task Teams that informed the policy. The almost 200 submission (public comments) on the Green Paper were all considered and many ideas were gleaned from them The Minister himself was the originator of many of the central concepts; the contents of the White Paper were discussed with him continuously as as the document was being developed."

Input also came from Cabinet, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Higher Education & Training, trade unions, SETAs and employer groupings.

Downloads

View, comment on, or download a soft copy of the White Paper below:

The Minister's speech is also available below:

Other documents of interest:

Comments and questions

If you have specific questions you would like answered about the White Paper, please use the comments facility below to post them.

Notes

Green Paper vs White Paper - note to the textual analysis table

The exception to the trend in the table above is the term "occupational" which took a 61% dive between the Papers. Both "occupational" and "QCTO" took a dive (see full data set). Rather than reflecting a move away from the importance of these terms, this decrease could be due to the relative closure brought to the debate around the sub-frameworks of the NQF, and the quality assurance bodies in general, in the White Paper. The Green Paper extensively explored options around the sub-frameworks and also post school institutions in general, whereas the White Paper brought closure to many of these debates. This would also explain why "NSA", "NQF", and "Quality assurance" are mentioned far less frequently in the White Paper.

The Skills Pipeline for Over R 3,6 trillion in Major Infrastructure Projects

2013-08-22T14:35:00.000+02:00

Constructing the skills pipeline for over R 3,6 trillion in major infrastructure projects* is going to take a lot more than steel and concrete...

How this blog post is structured - click to enlarge

5 January 20115 update: visit the official SIPs Skills Portal here. Click the "How to Guide.pdf" at that top of it's landing page to find out how to join the site and connect with the Occupational Teams.

1. Introduction

This post is divided into 8 separate headings as shown above.

Without the necessary skills to plan, construct, operate and maintain them, our Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs) will be an expensive exercise in outsourcing work that could otherwise have grown our local skills base and helped to spread wealth more evenly across the economy.

"The massive investment in infrastructure must leave more than just power stations, rail lines, dams and roads. It must industrialise the country, generate skills and boost much needed job creation."
President Zuma, State of the Nation Address, 14 Feb 2012.

Realising the need for a strategic Human Resource Development (HRD) plan for the SIPs, the Dept Higher Education and Training set about in April 2012 methodically gathering the data and developing the methodology to achieve the biggest project-focused learning drive in our country's history.

Their objective was not only to generate skills for the SIPs, but also additional skills through the SIPs, using this massive work project as a catalyst for building South Africa's skills base.

The first public results of this work, the launch of the Occupational Teams, took place at the DBSA Vulindlela Academy in Midrand on 6 August 2013. The thinking behind the Occupational Teams shows an advanced level of understanding of labour market supply and demand dynamics, as well as a grasp of the importance of collaborating across the traditionally divided realms of theory and practice, for the design of learning.

There are 5 key concepts to understanding the Occupational Teams concept:

DHET's Occupational Teams - Key Concepts - click to enlarge

1.1 The Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs)

Everything starts and finishes with the SIPs. The measure of success of the Occupational Teams is the extent to which they can match the supply of skills with the specific kind of skills required, in the specific time-frames and geographical locations required. In time the Teams should also help lay the skills foundation for the exploitation and use of the infrastructure, which is built for broader economic and social development.

Much has been written on the SIPs and this will not be repeated here except to highlight the following facts:

The 18 SIPs are made up of a large number of individual infrastructure plans which have been integrated into the 18 projects clusters
The SIPs comprise:

5 Geographically-focussed SIPs
3 Spatial SIPs
3 Energy SIPs
3 Social Infrastructure SIPs
2 Knowledge SIPs
1 Regional Integration SIP
1 Water and Sanitation SIP

If you want more detail on the SIPs then read or download this summary of the National Infrastructure Plan here (click the arrow in the black box, at the top right of the PDF below, to get download and printing options):

1.2 SIPs Scarce Skills List

One of the first outputs of the SIPs Scarce Skills Committee was a scarce skills list based on the skills required to design and build each of the different kinds of infrastructure projects.

Working closely with the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Committee (PICC) they developed this list over almost a year, making use of the Organising Framework for Occupations (OFO) to help group and categorise related occupations in a systematic way:


SIP Scarce Skills List - click to enlarge - or right click and open in new window, then zoom to enlarge even more

This is the first version of the list. It will be updated frequently and made available to Occupational Team members.

Critically scarce skills indicate a shortage of 50 - 100% of the need
Significantly scarce indicates 20 - 50% shortage
Some scarcity indicates 20% or less shortage

Some immediate observations from the list can be made:

Scarce skills cross the full range of the NQF from level 1 to level 10

This makes it essential that there is collaboration across Quality Councils responsible for different levels of the NQF

Scarce skills are for occupations and professions that all involve varying but significant degrees of work experience as a prerequisite for practice

The Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) has a specific focus on workplace and occupational learning related qualifications and will need to play a strategic role in facilitating qualification design and revision for the SIPs

1.3 Pathways from Entry to Expertise

"Too often when talking of ‘meeting the demand’ for particular occupations, planners focus on the initial stage only i.e. entry into and completion of the foundation programme. This is certainly important, but it is not all that is required."
DHET Document: "Meeting the Demand for SIP Scarce Skills", August 2013, Page 6

The above DHET document is aware that the unique difficulty in the kind of HRD that is required for the SIPs is in ensuring that learners traverse the full pathway from entry to expertise – a pathway that requires an integration of at least three distinct forms of learning:

Knowledge and theory
Practical skills (off-the-job, simulated practice)
Workplace experience (on-the-job, structured and mentored experience)

What makes this difficult to achieve is that there are traditionally at least four different role-players, with unique learning modalities for each of the three forms of learning identified above, who usually work in relative isolation from one another:

Schools (including technical high schools)
Post-school learning institutions (including universities, technical colleges, FET colleges, private providers and universities of technology) generally focus on knowledge and theory and some simulated practice
Technical training centres (including training centres at State Owned Companies, private firms and local government) generally supply practical skills (off-the-job practice)
Workplaces (both public and private) are the only environment where genuine workplace experience can be gained

Developing competent or even expert occupational practitioners requires therefore a pathway from entry to expertise with the carefully calibrated input of several different role-players in the supply and demand system for learning.

The DHET Learning Pathway from Entrant to Expert - click to enlarge

At each of the seven stages above there is the potential for disjunctures which can weaken the final occupational effectiveness of the learner. For example:

Between school and post-school

Poor career guidance and a lack of information on which occupations are in demand can lead to poor and expensive career choices
Some learners choose careers which require Grade 8 subject choices that they did not make

Between post-school and theoretical learning

Some theoretical learning institutions (e.g. universities) may be up to date with the advanced theory and research in a discipline, but lacking in current applied theory of that discipline to occupational and professional contexts
Some learners complete this phase of learning without the understanding of how to apply the theory to real-world application

Between theoretical learning and practical learning

Some practical learning institutions (e.g. colleges) may lack modern equipment, or their lecturers may be out of date in terms of workplace advancements
Some learners complete this phase of learning without having sufficient opportunity to gain the necessary simulated learning

Between theory learning or practical learning - and workplace learning

There is a shortage of workplaces meeting the necessary criteria, and equipped to handle the workplace learner requirements of learners effectively in their operations
Sometimes the theoretical learning was designed in isolation from the learnership or internship programme for the workplace resulting in a poor workplace learning experience

Between workplace learning and assessment

Some workplaces will only expose learners to a small range of equipment and contexts compared to what is required and tested in their final assessment - learners then perform poorly
Some workplaces can't afford to take experienced professionals out of the business cycle to mentor new entrants and this reduces the quality of the workplace learning experience

Between assessment and employment

If all the other previous steps have been of a high quality, the learner's chance of finding employment are better, otherwise top-up training with short courses, work readiness interventions, and work experience placements may be needed

Between employment and expertise

This is not automatic but requires sufficient opportunities during employment to apply all the previous learning and develop greater proficiency
Racial discrimination in the workplace has been cited as a reason for some practitioners not being able to advance in expertise at this phase

1.4 Role-players

So how do you bring together a brilliant engineering academic, an engineering lecturer and his simulator, and an experienced practicing engineer to build the kind of learning experience that modern graduates require for the kind of projects our National Infrastructure Plan calls for?

Each of the above role-players may be separated by geography, busy at different times of the day, and facing demanding performance targets of their own.

DHET drew on two previous attempts at solving a similar problem in order to develop their Occupational Teams concept, where of role-players at each of the steps in the pathway to expertise are brought together and helped to communicate, plan and collaborate.

The old Technikons (now Universities of Technology) developed Advisory Committees drawing on similar role-players to try to address each part of the workplace learning value chain. More recently the QCTO Task Team (under Department of Labour) faced exactly the same questions when they were developing their methodology during the period 2004 - 2007. The answer was formulated in the idea of communities of practice (a globally accepted notion used to support informal learning in the workplace) and a process driven approach to designing occupational qualifications that reduced the development time from years to approximately a month, with "time out of the workplace" for highly paid specialists down to a few days

Drawing on the experience of these approaches to solving the traditional challenges found in workplace learning, DHET developed the concept of Occupational Teams, where a representative of the role-players responsible for each step in the pathway to expertise joins an Occupational Team for the specific occupation or profession under development.

Looking again at the 7 step process from school to employment, the following role-players were identified:

School - career guidance professionals and agencies
Theory - academic lecturers at educational institutions
Practical - facilitators and practical lecturers who demonstrate and support the acquisition of practical (off-the-job) skills
Workplace - employers who recruit and develop the targeted skills and labour union representatives whose members practice the skills
Assessment - people and bodies who assess the competence of aspiring practitioners who have completed all the other stages of learning - typically professional bodies, trade test centres and other quality assurance bodies
Employment - recruitment practitioners and employment agencies
Experience - proficient practitioners (experts) of an occupation or profession, they are usually involved as role-players in the previous steps

1.5 Team Members

While there are potentially seven different types of role-players who could participate in an Occupational Team, the following four are absolutely essential for its effective functioning:

Theory lecturers
Practical lecturers
Assessors and professional bodies
Employers and unions

1.6 Intermediary bodies

DHET is entering into partnerships with six agencies to help them set up and establish the Occupational Teams. Each agency takes responsibility for one of the primary occupational clusters (OFO Major Groups) on the SIPs Scarce Skills List as shown below. The contact details for each Intermediary Body is provided towards the end of this article under "Contacts".

The six Intermediary Bodies - click to enlarge

2. Mandate

"Occupational Teams will stand at the interface between demand and supply"
DHET Document: "Meeting the Demand for SIP Scarce Skills", August 2013, page 9

DHET explains the mandate of Occupational Teams in terms of supply related responsibilities and demand related ones.

What Occupational Teams will do - click to enlarge -
or right click and open in new window, then zoom to enlarge even more

Supply side

Short term needs are those urgently required for the SIPs and could be addressed in the following ways:

Advising SIPs on the hiring of skilled people who are in the labour market but not necessarily "visible"

This involves collecting information on the current availability of skills around the country and encouraging qualified people to register on the Department of Labour's Employment Services online database

Offering RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) assessments to identify people who are close to competent in the required occupation so that top-up training through short programmes can result in faster certification

Medium term needs have a slightly longer lead-time and could be addressed by offering structured workplace experience opportunities to learners who have already completed the theoretical and practical components of their qualification, for example diplomates requiring Work Integrated Learning

PIVOTAL Grants from SETAs can contribute to the funding of such programmes
Employers, government departments and even infrastructure projects under the SIPs could offer the necessary workplace experience
Under the Training Standard of the Construction Industry Development Board, all infrastructure projects must set a Contract Skills Development Goal (which is included in the contract price charged for the project)

This goal can be achieved by providing quality assured structured workplace learning to apprentices, candidates for one of the professions, technicians or other occupational qualifications
The CIDB Training Standard is expected to become obligatory in November 2013, after it is gazetted, and all SIP projects will insert this requirement into their contract tenders

Long term needs enable the Occupational Teams to focus on the entire pathway to expertise. The aim will not only be to expand access to occupational programmes, but also to improve the throughput rate at institutions.

Demand side

Occupational Teams will have access, through the SIP Skills Portal (see below), to aggregated occupational information drawn from the infrastructure projects that will enable them to fore-cast the skills demands for all the infrastructure projects – and this will, in due course be across all geographical regions, and across the 20 year time-span of the SIPs. The same information will help them determine workplace experience opportunities on the infrastructure projects themselves.

Where no skills are available locally, the Occupational Teams will also be required to provide input to the Department of Home Affairs on work visa applications by employers.

3. Roles

The DHET document "Meeting the Demand for SIP Scarce Skills" covers in detail the various roles and benefits available to the four essential role-players in an Occupational Team, summarised in the mind maps below...

Colleges and universities

Colleges & Universities - benefits and roles - click to enlarge

Technical training providers

Technical Training Centres - benefits and roles - click to enlarge

Professional bodies, trade test centres and quality assurers

Professional bodies and quality assurers- benefits and roles - click to enlarge

Employers and unions

Employers and Unions benefits and roles - click to enlarge

4. Portal

5 January 2015 update: the portal URL is https://sip-skills.onlinecf.net/default.aspx.

A project as ambitious as the Occupational Teams would be almost unachievable without modern information technology, specifically team-based collaboration applications. The SIP Skills Portal makes use of Microsoft SharePoint (R) to connect Occupational Team members together across the geographical distances that separate them, and to enable sophisticated communication tools such as document revisions (seeing who modified a document last, and what changes they made), task queues, shared calendars etc.

The following image shows how Occupational Teams will report in to one consolidated platform to enable consolidated occupation information to be gathered and reports to be generated showing which occupations are required over time per location.

Occupational Teams reporting in to the IT platform from various geographical locations - click to enlarge

The next slide shows how Occupational Team members may be widely distributed across the country....

click to enlarge

... yet connected via the IT platform (this example showing the Mechanical Engineering Occupational Team and Network):

click to enlarge

5. Analysis

The launch of the Occupational Teams for the SIPs could be a very significant development in the building of a national awareness and consensus around occupational learning (which overlaps in many dimensions with workplace learning), its unique features, and how best to support occupational learning initiatives from a policy perspective.

It is said that the best way to get two parties to communicate is to give them a job to do which requires their co-operation to solve a problem.

At over R3,6 trillion, our SIPs and related infrastructure projects may very well be the biggest occupational learning problem we have ever faced, and it cannot be solved by any one role-player in the education delivery system, on their own. This could hopefully start a conversation between traditional supply-led educationalists and demand-led workplace learning practitioners to build an understanding of the unique dynamics of occupational learning across the very different delivery mechanisms of the NQF and the labour market.

Adrienne Bird heads up the special projects unit within DHET that is responsible for developing the HRD plan. She was also the first (Acting) CEO of the QCTO (Quality Council for Trades and Occupations) - the country's first cross-sectoral quality assurance body for occupational learning. Her experience at the QCTO may have nuanced her approach to the SIPs HRD plan by adding several valuable levels of understanding to the model DHET has developed. This may prove essential in the success of the SIPs, but even more valuable as a template for policy makers and industry to follow when tackling the more routine, every-day HRD requirements of the country in general.

The unique difficulty in the kind of HRD that is required for the SIPs is inherent in the nature of occupational learning - a unique mode of learning that is distinct from the traditional theoretical approach to learning common in schools and academic programmes at universities (sometimes called "chalk and talk"). Many of our country's education and training initiatives have been characterised by a theory-only approach to learning, which has missed out on the extensive range of holistic learning experiences both in the workplace and in off-site practice opportunities, which are required for genuine occupational competence. This supply-led, rather than demand-led, approach may be a key contributor to our unemployed graduates syndrome.

A supply-led approach to education puts the knowledge and theory component of competence in a profession or occupation at the centre of the learning solution, at the expense of the equally important practical aspects, and workplace experience aspects. In extreme cases, learning programmes are supplied to employers in a one-way street relationship where the experts are the educationalists, instead of the occupational practitioners (people who actually practice the occupation or profession being studied).

A demand-led approach to education puts the labour market at the centre of the learning challenge, and uses the products and services created by the occupation as the basis for determining the (1) knowledge and theory, (2) practical and (3) work experience components of the learning experience. For more information see this article.

6. Deadlines

If you want to participate in Occupational Teams, fill in the response sheet below and submit by 30 August 2013. Other deadlines are shown below...

Timelines- click to enlarge

7. Response Sheet

The person you should send this Response Sheet to depends on which Occupational Group your occupation falls under (see "Contacts" below for the list). Click the arrow in the black box, at the top right of the PDF below, to get download and printing options.

8. Contacts

The list below shows the contact people for each of the Intermediary Bodies, which has overall responsibility for a cluster of occupations in the SIP Scarce Skills List. They will be your first point of contact until the Occupational Teams are established.

Documents

The primary documents relevant to the Occupational Teams are linked to above and consolidated here below:

Secondary documents you may find helpful:

Credits

Unless otherwise noted, original source documents Dept Higher Education & Training
SIP Skills-Portal images Core Focus
Other images and mind maps - Mike Stuart
Thanks to MindMaple for their great mind-mapping software
Please re-circulate for non-profit purposes without fear of copyright reprisal - The Skills Handbook Blog by Mike Stuart (The Skills Handbook) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at mike@skillshandbook.co.za.

Notes

* R 3,6 trillion in major infrastructure projects - this figure is based on government expenditure from the fiscus (R430bn) plus R400 bn drawn from the State-owned Enterprises, plus private sector infrastructure projects. More detail available at http://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/state-spend-r827bn-infrastructure

Ground Breaking New Funding Policy from DHET for Artisan Development

2013-08-14T10:18:00.000+02:00

A ground breaking new funding policy for artisan development was launched at Olifantsfontein in Midrand on 11 July 2013. Not only will the policy remove one of the three primary blockages to boosting our artisan skills base as a country, it could also pave the way for streamlining the funding and administration of all our SETA based learning initiatives.

"It is not often that organized labour and employers agree on a policy but it seems that when it comes to artisan development there is definitely one voice."

Deputy Minister Manana at the launch of the "Policy for a Generic National Artisan Learner Grant Funding and Administration System" on 11 July 2013

Government, business and labour want more artisans, so what's the hold-up?

Artisan training is an expensive and time-consuming exercise. It takes anywhere from 2 - 4 years to train an artisan, and it costs between R200,000 to R650,000 depending on the trade. The figure of R300,000 was used as the basis for the development of this new policy.

This makes it hard for small and medium sized employers to train artisans in large numbers, but even large employers can go badly wrong if they take on a large group of artisans and run into funding or administration problems.

Deputy Minister Manana concluding the launch of the policy

Government on the other hand has identified artisan development as a key strategy to boost the manufacturing and engineering components of our economy (which are needed to grow exports), and to support job creation by absorbing school leavers and unemployed people into well-paying jobs. So government needs to get employers to scale up their current artisan training efforts to go well beyond "training for their own need" in order to increase the pool of available artisans for the big Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs).

This is one of the reasons that artisan development is one of the key priorities of the HRD Council. In June last year the Council identified funding and learner administration blockages as one of three key constraints to artisan development (artisan data and artisan RPL are the other two constraints).

For example, until the launch of this new funding policy, there were 14 different sets of grant criteria for employers across the 21 SETAs, and the National Skills Fund (NSF) also had its own criteria.

If you were successful at getting a grant, you couldn't easily plan ahead, knowing what amount your grant was going to be, as each SETA offered differing amounts. Then even if you did plan ahead successfully and get a grant, you faced the certain uncertainty of knowing that everything would change in the next financial year and you may not be able to complete (or repeat) your artisan training - because with each new financial year SETAs would adapt their grants to available funding and changes in their strategy.

"We as a country and as individual citizens have become completely confused with the multi sector approach to artisan development and as a result have lost huge knowledge of how a real national artisan system works. This policy helps us to get that national system back in place."

Deputy Minister Manana 11 July 2013

Ayesha Itzkin, CEO of the Chemical Industries Education & Training Authority (CHIETA) at the launch

Given these difficulties in planning and administering apprentices, its no surprise that only the largest employers showed an appetite for artisan development, and it was still difficult to get them to "train beyond need" to create some surplus for the rest of the country.

So in response the Dept Higher Education and Training launched the Policy for a Generic National Artisan Learner Grant Funding and Administration System on 11 July 2013.

The new policy means that qualifying employers will be able to access R139,350 per new learner artisan (spread over the duration of the learning programme, usually 2 - 3 years). Its a lot of money, but still well below the full cost of most artisan learning programmes: employers also have to factor in the cost of machinery and supervision, as apprentices must have access to relevant equipment and must be mentored by an experienced artisan for the duration of their apprenticeship.

For employers, a big benefit is the fact that they can depend on, predict and plan their artisan development with this R139,350 figure in mind, rather than having to adapt each year to fluctuations in SETA grant availability.

With over R 3,6 trillion in major infrastructure projects in progress or under consideration, it is critical that this money filters down throughout the economy as widely as possible, and that is only possible if local skills and expertise are available - specifically artisans. Our Strategic Integrated Projects can create hard infrastructure and also "soft infrastructure" - a skilled and experienced artisan workforce for our manufacturing, mining and logistics sectors, and also for supporting the creation of infrastructure in neighbouring SADC and African countries.

How will the funding work?

This is a summary of some of the key elements of the policy, see the links at the end of this post to download the policy and supporting documents.

Rewards for effectiveness

Employers who take up the total amount of learners allocated to them will be rewarded by getting the opportunity to take on additional learners (at the expense of employers who did not fulfil their quota!)
Government is currently planning to increase the number of new learners entering artisan learning programmes by at least 1,000 extra learners per year

Flexibility

The National Skills Fund will still be able to fund artisan development directly with employers if necessary (for example to achieve a specific national goal that may be cross-sectoral), but the amount will be the same.

Better skills planning and data

Every year by 31 October the government will be able to calculate a Total Available National Artisan Development Budget based on budgets submitted by all SETAs and the National Skills Fund
Every year by 30 November there will be a single national database of approved artisan learner workplaces which will be helpful for a number of reasons:

It can be used in planning "spatially based" training initiatives (e.g. how many workplaces in Limpopo meet the criteria for hosting artisans, and how many artisans can they host)
It will capture the demand for apprentices by approved workplaces, which tells skills planners what the total national capacity is for the year ahead

Consistency

Employers operating across one or more of the 21 sectors of the economy will no longer have to jump through sector-specific requirements for hosting apprentices - there will be one national set of workplace approval criteria applicable to all employers (expected to be published around end September 2013 - please revisit this post for updates which will be noted in red text )

The quality assurance of this process is delegated to the NAMB (National Artisan Moderating Body) by the QCTO (Quality Council for Trades & Occupations)
Currently the NAMB will quality assure this process through the SETAs

Payment of the R139,350 will be made in 4 tranches of R34,837.50 each, after key milestones have been met by the employer and validated by the SETA. The specific milestones and criteria can be viewed in the policy document and are summarised below

Efficiency

Previously the NSF and SETAs would sometimes co-fund artisan training and this could make the process more bureaucratic and expensive, as there would be two sets of project management and reporting costs

How will you apply?

There is a five-step annual process for employers which is summarised below. For details see the policy document.

Budgets - completed by 31 October

Each SETA and the NSF establishes the total rand value budget for artisan development for the next financial year
This budget is submitted to DHET for consolidation to establish the Total Available National Artisan Development (NAD)Budget

Workplaces - completed by 30 November

SETAs issue a call for grant applications from qualifying employers for funding of new artisan learners starting from April the following year
These applications can be for all trades as listed in the Government Gazette 35625
SETAs submit a summary of applications received to DHET for consolidation onto a single national database of approved artisan learner needs and workplaces for use in planning

New Learner Grant - completed by 31 January

The new learner grant is announced by 31 January, and will increase each year to cover inflation and also to incentivise what is hopefully at least 1,000 new artisan learners each year
While the grant is fixed for the year ahead, the number of learners that can be supported with the grant will change from year to year, depending on the total availability of funding

Allocations - completed by 28 February

SETAs now allocate grants to employers based on available funding and relevant SETA Board criteria - this list is submitted to DHET
DHET can now review the list of planned artisan training for the year ahead and may change allocations in line with national needs and priorities
Once the SETA receives approval or changes for their allocations they can communicate with employers and move to step 5

Disbursements - completed on verification of employer implementation by SETA

The payments are made in four tranches at 25% per tranche
Detailed criteria exist for implementation at each milestone (see the the policy document for details) basically summarised as:

25% on contractual commitment with implementation plans by employer
25% on registration of learner with a SETA
25% on achieving half-way point (to be defined and published for each trade)
25% on recommendation for certification

Where can I get more information?

Here is a list of documents you can download to get more information on the launch and the policy:

The full policy document can be read here
A summary of the policy document can be read here in the form of the official media statement
The list of official trades (Gazette 35625) can be accessed here (includes official definition of a trade)
The address by Deputy Minister Manana at the launch of the policy can be read here (contains good historical background for the policy)
The National Artisan Moderating Body (NAMB) is the lead delivery partner within DHET for all artisan related matters and can be contacted on 011 206 1000
The DHET Media Liaison team: Ms. Manana Makhanya, 072 285 8662 or Mr. Lwando Mahlasela, 082 440 5305

Is this new funding framework the future for all SETA based initiatives?

While government has not linked the new artisan funding framework to other training initiatives, the efficiencies, the quality of data and decision making allowed by the framework, and the potential for cross-sectoral synergies, will certainly catch the attention of policy makers and HRD Council members who are looking to get more value from the SETA system, at less cost.

A similar thrust towards cross-sectoral synergy is visible in the recent launch of the Occupational Teams for the Strategic Integrated Projects, where DHET is trying to bring focus and collaboration to the massive task of timing and co-ordinating employers, providers and occupational bodies to meet the 20 year time-frame SIPs. This event will be the focus of our next blog posting.

Frequently asked questions

What trades or occupations does this apply to?

All 125 artisan trades listed in the Government Gazette 35625

When does the new funding system kick-in?

From 1 April 2013, although it will only be enforced from 1 April 2014 to enable SETAs and the NSF to plan and budget according to the new requirements. Some SETAs will be following the new funding framework during 2013 if they can meet the funding and planning requirements early.

I am a small business and I can't afford to train artisans, or I don't need the workplace approval criteria. How do I get access to the artisans I need for my business?

The new policy allows the DHET (through the NSF) to prioritise funding for artisan development at State Owned Enterprises, such as Eskom, and government departments, such as the SANDF, which in the past were major contributors to the overall talent pool of artisans in the country

The State Owned Enterprises have stiff artisan development targets under the National Skills Accord and the National Development Plan continues this emphasis
"Training beyond internal need" is a strategy that increases the artisan talent pool and supports small businesses which cannot afford to train their own artisans or are unable to meet the stringent criteria for artisan development

What about grants for specific unique trades, or for specific categories of learners - they don't fit within this "one size fits all" approach

SETA Boards (and the NSF) will still be able to define their own specific criteria for grants, for example, they may choose to prioritise rural employers or BBBEE employers as beneficiaries, but the amount of the grant remains constant

Exceptions and exemptions will be funded via special projects and separate SETA or NSF grants that are approved and implemented separately. Examples of potential exceptions include:

Grants for people undergoing Recognition of Prior Learning to become artisans
Grants for learners coming from rural areas
Grants for people with disabilities
Grants for accommodation of artisan learners
Grants for infrastructure for artisan development
Grants to increase employer or provider capacity for artisan development
Grants for some occupations that have cost significantly more or substantially less than the average total cost of R300,000 per trade that this policy is based on.

These include but may not be limited to chefs, goldsmiths, diamond and gemstone setters, butchers, and bakers.

Its a great policy but how will we make sure it actually happens?

SETAs are responsible for their implementation of this policy in their annual service level agreements with the Director-General of the DHET
The Auditor General will also include implementation of this policy as part of its annual compliance and performance audit processes for SETAs and the NSF

Is the implementation of this policy dependent on (and therefore vulnerable to delays with) any other pending legislation?

The Learning Programme Regulations are awaiting ministerial sign-off and will create a single, consistent learning programme agreement for all artisan development programmes, whether they are apprenticeship- or learnership-based
The Trade Test Regulations will be finalised before April 2014 and will legislate the first ever single national trade testing system for all listed trades in South Africa
Chapter 6A of the Skills Development Act is the current primary legislative framework for Artisan Development and this will need to be amended during the 2014 Parliamentary process to add in SETA and NSF compliance to a “single guaranteed funding model for all artisan trades applicable to all sectors including single, simple artisan learner administration and grant disbursement system.”
A legal challenge by BUSA to the new SETA Grant Regulations may impact the total amount of funding available for artisan funding, but will not effect the fixed value of the grant (R139,350) nor the other aspects of this policy

Who are the people behind the development of the policy?

Many individuals and stakeholder groupings played a role in developing the policy. It was a broad consultative process led by the Artisan and Technician Development Technical Task Team of the Human Resorce Development Council chaired and coordinated by Dr Florus Prinsloo.

You can read about the process and people in Deputy Minister Manana's launch speech (pages 3 - 4). In the speech, the following people are mentioned specifically, and here we quote directly from the speech (pages 4 - 5):

Dr Raymond Patel that chairs the SETA CEO Forum Sub Committee on Artisan and Technician Development that is hosted by merSETA
Ms Lindelwa Ximiya that chairs the Government SETA CEO Forum Sub Committee on Artisan and Technician Development that is hosted by PSETA
Mr Benedict Mogadime that chairs the State Owned Committee on Artisan and Technician Development that is hosted by Department of Public Enterprises
Mr David Mabusela that chairs the Artisan Recognition of prior Learning or ARPL Steering Committee that is hosted at INDLELA
Mr Ken Duncan that is coordinating the work of the Dual System Apprenticeship Pilot Project that is hosted by the Swiss-South Africas Co-operation Initiative or SSACI; and
Dr Florus Prinsloo who currently leads the two technical forums but will soon be handing them over to other emerging leaders which DHET is developing:

The National Artisan Moderation Forum that develops assessment, moderation and recognition of prior learning instruments for trades, and
The Knowledge Management and Research Forum that includes all research and artisan data collection processes. This forum has two partners being the Human Sciences Research Council and the National Artisan Development Support Centre where the central database of all artisan data is being developed.

Dr Florus Prinsloo providing an overview of the emerging artisan development system

Please improve this FAQ by posting more questions in the comment box at the bottom of the page.

Photo credits: Sebela Machaa (DHET)

Its cool to be an artisan! - DHET 2013: Year of the Artisan

SA Board for People Practices: Joburg Breakfast Feedback

2013-06-19T15:32:00.001+02:00

The SABPP hosted its first event of the year two weeks ago in Sandton, arranged by its Gauteng Committee, who used the opportunity to introduce themselves and their targets for the year.

Programme 4 June 2013

The main event of the breakfast session though was the launch of the SABPP HR Standards & Metrics Project, which is a project to reach levels of excellence in South African human resource practice by developing an agreed set of national standards and metrics.

Strangely this is only one of three similar projects in the world, and the SA initiative is leading its Australian, US and Canadian counterparts so we might be the first country in the world to publish a full set of standards for our HR practitioners later this year.

Standardising HR practice could be likened to setting up a "Generally Accepted Accounting Practice" (GAAP) set of standards for HR which would clarify, for example, what exactly is meant by the term "Talent Management" which has almost as many definitions as the letters that make it up. Interestingly Softline VIP Payroll ran an HR conference at the beginning of June in which one of the speakers addressed the same concept ("Standard Integrated People Practice").

The basis of the project was the SA HR Competency Model developed by SABPP with input from over 1,000 local practitioners. There are over 23 HR competency models globally - South Africa is the only one with a competency called, "Citizenship for the Future: Innovation, Technology and Sustainability." The model looks like this:

Click to enlarge

With serious incidents like Medupi, Marikana and Dedoorns in our recent history, all of which had critical failures in HR practices in their creation, there is a clear need for more consistent, professional HR standards and measurement.

Human Capital is often defined as the biggest business risk facing organisations, and the metrics developed by this project will give boards and investors the tools to evaluate and manage risk at this level. The final phase of the development of the Standards and Metrics will be their incorporation into the future King IV code of corporate governance.

Please diarise the 20 - 21 August 2013 when the standards will be finalised and published at the National HR Standards Convention.

More detail on the Project is available on the SABPP website or by viewing Marius' presentation below:

Marius Meyer presentation on HR Standards & Metrics Project

This was followed by two excellent presentations from Professor Steve Bluen (GIBS), and Professor Shirley Zinn (Director of Shirley Zinn & Associates).

Professor Steve Bluen

The two presentations were very different and yet complimentary, mirroring the best South Africa has to offer in terms of business brilliance on one-hand and human leadership on the other.

Steve's presentation, "Ten Principles to Negotiate Talent Management into the Future", showed the skillful application of business know-how to HR practices and included the following insights:

Why the war on talent is global, not local:

Of the 33 million university students who recently graduated, only 14 million were from the developed world
By 2050, the workforce in developed countries will have shrunk by 11 million people, whereas in emerging economies it will have grown by 1,700 million people

Challenges for the African talent pool:

Since 1990, Africa has lost 20,000 professionals per year
300,000 African professionals live and work outside of Africa
Africa employes 150,000 expatriate professionals - this costs $4 billion per year

Some observations from Steve's ten principles:

Talent management is a joint responsiblity of HR and Line management, but in the sense that is should be owned by Line and governed by HR
Embedding corporate values and culture within the talent management process is a key to successful talent management

Ten Principles to Negotiate Talent Management into the Future

Steve was awarded the Life Time Achievement Award by the SABPP after his presentation.

Gauteng SABPP Committee Chair, Kate Freeman, awards Prof Steve Bluen
the Life Time Achievement Award

This was followed by Shirley' presentation. I must have heard Shirley present at conferences and facilitate workshops at least 10 times since I started in this field. Its not difficult to miss her because as past IPM President, Extraordinary Professor of HR (University of Pretoria), and head of HR at SARS, Nedbank and Standard Bank,. Shirley has chalked up a very visible reputation in the field.

But this was no lecture about the technicalities of HR, or how to make HR more strategic.

Shirley opened up about her personal life story, growing up in poverty in the Cape Flats, narrowly getting into university despite financial obstacles, her rapid rise to academic success from a scholarship programme in Harvard to her getting her Doctorate in Education, and finally returning to South Africa and failing to get any of the teaching positions she applied for.

Shirley Zinn starts building her personal skills pipeline at primary school

These setbacks lead her to take on a job as a Training Manager in a company that later retrenched her as it was swallowed up into Momentum Life .She then moved across to the public sector, working in what was then SAMDI (now Palama), took an appointment as an Employment Equity manager just as the EE Act was coming into force, and after that worked for a stint in a multi-national.

Shirley's wedding

Before she took her most high profile positions, in SARS, Nedbank and Standard Bank, however Shirley and her husband Kevin experienced the loss of their son Jamie at the age of 7, in 2003. This resulted in Shirley taking "time-out" which she recommends as a crucial step for HR practitioners facing loss and set-backs.

By this point in Shirley's presentation I was absorbed completely in her story and looking at the HR profession in a very different light.

After her time-out, Shirley went on to help Pravin Gordhan take SARS through a massive transformation which has made it one of the best run tax collection agencies in the world, and a model for many aspects of HR best practice.

This was followed by being hired by Tom Boardman, CEO of Nedbank, to help in the three year turn-around of this 27,000 employee bank, which was in serious financial trouble at the time. One of the most rewarding moments of Shirley's life was seeing the financial fortunes of the business turn-around in tight correlation with the change in values and culture of the organisation as it responded to the new HR practices.

Her last post (to date), was HR Director for Standard Bank South Africa and deputy Global Head of HR for the Standard Bank Group, another struggling financial institution that Shirley helped to transform. Her work there however started with the painful task of retrenching several thousand employees, and then building the confidence and motivation of those who remained. In September of 2012 Shirley left Standard Bank and set up her own consulting firm, Shirley Zinn & Associates.

I am struck by two of the slides Shirley showed us - photos of letters two of her teachers wrote to her, encouraging her to go further with her studies and realise how talented she was. Shirley explained that until she got this encouragement she was not even considering university, given the financial situation of her family. Now, one very successful career later, she encourages HR practitioners to spot talented employees and not to shy back from giving them direct words of encouragement.

"Shirley you have the attributes to make a success of anything you attempt"

"Always aim high and you will inevitably succeed"

While working on her Doctorate, Shirley ran out of funds to cover her tuition, and had to approach the faculty with her pride in her pocket, and request help. She ended up in a "pay for performance" situation where the faculty covered her tuition so long as she was getting top marks and assisting the lecturers, an amusing encounter she relates, that was an early introduction to the flexible pay and remuneration policies of corporate HR.

Shirley seems to have now really found her niche working for herself and enjoying the freedom of expression and leadership that she can now bring to the HR profession as an independent consultant. Her presentation was inspiring, open, and human, and my guess is that it resonated a lot with the HR practitioners in the room, especially those women who have made it into HR from disadvantaged backgrounds, and now find themselves often in the role of mediating success to their employees, and having to make some courageous decisions.

Career Story - Shirley Zinn

Shirley accepting the Life Time Achievement Award

Ending off the event was an introduction to the new Gauteng Committee of the SABPP by Frans Barnard, HR Director of Aranda Textiles. You can read about the vision and plans of the Gauteng Committee in the presentation below:

SABPP Gauteng Committee Launch June 2013

Some of the Gauteng Committee posing with Steve and Shirley

The seven Committee members are:

Chair - Kate Freeman
Deputy Chair - Cabangile Sithole
Recruitment - Lelo Mbuli
Stakeholder Relationship - Dee Mdeka
Community & Publicity - Fusi Motaung
HR skills building - Belia Nel
Impact Facilitation - Frans Barnard

Biography of Prof Steve Bluen -

Steve obtained his PhD in Industrial Psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand. He joined the faculty there in 1982 and in 1989 was appointed Professor of Industrial Psychology. In 1991 he became head of the Department of Psychology at Wits University. He spent a year at Queen’s University, Canada teaching, researching and consulting in various areas of organisational psychology. In 1993, Steve joined SAB as the consulting psychologist and subsequently occupied several executive positions within the company. He was appointed HR Director of the Africa and Asia division in 2000 and in 2002 became HR director at SAB Ltd., a position he held for over eight years. Throughout his time at SAB, Steve was involved in global talent management as the company moved from a local business to an international corporation. Returning to academia, Steve became a Professor of Human Resources at GIBS University in 2011. He has recently edited a book entitled “Talent Management in Emerging Markets”. He also runs a consultancy, which has worked with several multinational corporations on global talent management and diverse aspects of HR.

Source.

Biography of Prof Shirley Zinn -

Prof Shirley Zinn is the former Human Resources Director of Standard Bank South Africa and the Deputy Global Head of Human Resources for the Standard Bank Group and has since registered her own company: Shirley Zinn Consulting that provides consulting and advisory services in HR, Leadership, Transformation and Education.Prior to this she was the Group Executive HR at Nedbank. Before this, she was the General Manager for Human Resources at the South African Revenue Service (SARS). She is also currently an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria's Department of Human Resource Management and is the Past President of the Institute for People Management South Africa. She started her career as a secondary school teacher of English, then moved to the University of the Western Cape where she lectured in Teacher Education. After this, she served at Southern Life as Training Manager and then moved to the Department of Public Service and Administration's: South African Management Development Institute, in Pretoria as Director. She held the position of Executive Employment Equity at Computer Configurations Holdings. Before her appointment at SARS, she filled the role of Regional Human Resources Director for Middle East and Africa for Reckitt Benckiser, a global company listed on the London Stock Exchange.

She holds a BA (University of the Western Cape); Higher Diploma in Education (University of the Western Cape); B.Ed Honours (UNISA); M.Ed (University of the Western Cape); Ed.M (Harvard) and Doctorate in Education (Ed.D) (Harvard). In 2012, was listed in the Top 30 Wonder Women in South Africa by the Wits Business Journal.

Source.

Minister of Higher Education Budget Speech - Summary & Highlights

2013-05-22T12:53:00.000+02:00

The Minister gave his annual Budget Speech on 8 May 2013. You can read the speech in full here. Below is a summary and some selected highlights.

Summary

The speech shows the momentum that DHET is gaining in its chosen focus of building the FET and Higher Education systems to give greater access to the poor and to move towards more effective relationship with the country's economic needs. This is a massive task and will probably only bear fruit in 10 - 20 years time at the earliest. Perhaps this is why the Minister mentions 2013 as the 60th anniversary of the Bantu Education Act, and points out that the democratic government has had only 19 years opportunity at reversing the damage of these and other apartheid laws. Given that the majority of this country still live in unacceptable poverty with little hope of improving their lives, and nothing to lose through crime, revolution or anarchy, it is a focus that everyone should support. Employers and industry should still stand up for the importance of workplace training as the DHET is not focusing on what are comparatively well-resourced constituencies at this point.

Upcoming changes

Look out for the upcoming changes mentioned in the budget speech:

The change in name of the public FET colleges to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges
A new funding framework for the TVET colleges and public adult learning centres that will draw from the Skills Development Levy income
A "Policy on the Professional Qualifications for Lecturers in Technical and Vocational Education and Training" will be gazetted next month
The establishment of new Community Education and Training (CET) Colleges, absorbing the present Public Adult Learning Centres and providing new offerings to adult learners
A new comprehensive university of health and allied sciences in Limpopo
A new funding model for the public universities
Expansion of the free education approach from the public TVET colleges to the public universities

Highlights

To simplify reading I have rounded off some figures below. View the full report at the link above if you want the precise numbers

General highlights

2013 marks the 60th Anniversary of the Bantu Education Act which systematically broke down human capital of black South Africans
The DHET's budget this year is R34,3 bn, an increase of 8,6% on last year's budget

This excludes Skills Development Levy income which was was R11,4 bn last year and is expected to be R12,4 bn this year

A million youth leave school every year, looking for entry to the workforce or further study

Workplace training

The DHET has now established a dedicated Unit on Work Integrated Learning Partnerships and Innovation

This is headed up by Chief Director Zukile Mvalo who can be contacted on 012 312-5208 or Mvalo.Z@dhet.gov.za
"The unit engages with employers in both the private and public sector as well as with SETAs in order to promote and institutionalise work integrated learning"

The new SETA Grant Regulations came into operation on 1 April 2013 - we will be covering the impact of these regulations in a later post on this bog
The National Skills Fund is now annually spending what it is receiving in funding (for the first time ever). All of the historic reserves of the Fund (R7 bn) have now been earmarked for spending

This expenditure is "for improving infrastructure and programmes for expanding capacity and improving quality in the production of skills in engineering, medical and veterinary sciences, renewable energy, various trades and rural development"

The public FET sector

The public FET Colleges are soon to be renamed "Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges"

657,000 youth enrolled in TVET colleges in 2012
R17,4 bn set aside this year for the TVET colleges
187,000 of these students financially supported by DHET via NSFAS
R2,5 bn set aside for infrastructure expansion and refurbishment of TVET colleges, broken down as follows -

R2 bn for expansion of student enrolments
R365,5 mn for building institutional capacity

This is directed by the FET College Turnaround Strategy of 2012 which focused on building college capacity in management, governance and leadership, financial management, human resource management, teaching and learning, as well as student support services.
It includes a South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) project to appoint 48 Chartered Accountants as Chief Financial Officers at FET Colleges
Another SAICA partnership is the appointment of 20 Human Resources Specialists to support clusters of colleges to set up Human Resource systems, procedures and policies

R192 mn for upgrading equipment

A ministerial committee will be established to look at the funding of the TVET colleges and public adult learning centres, from sources including the fiscus and the Skills Development Levy
FET College staff are now under the authority of DHET (not their provincial governments) since 1 April 2013

A Policy on the Professional Qualifications for Lecturers in Technical and Vocational Education and Training will be gazetted next month

Community Education and Training (CET) Colleges will be established and will absorb the present Public Adult Learning Centres

CET Colleges will have additional facilities and staff and expanded offerings to provide vocational or community oriented programmes to adult learners
For more info on the CET Colleges click here to view the report of a task team which made recommendations for the community colleges

The university sector

In the university sector there was a 12% increase in undergrad enrollments, and 11% increase in graduates, a 26% increase in Masters graduates and a 15% increase in Doctoral graduates

The two new universities in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape will be legal entities by June and enrol first learners in 2014
A new comprehensive university of health and allied sciences, including veterinarian science and dentistry will be established in Limpopo,with Medunsa campus providing the foundation
DHET is looking at a fee-free approach to the university sector following its successful application of this approach in the TVET sector
Review of Funding of Universities

This is in process and a new model will be presented by the end of this year
Universities that fund the poor can expect more funding

R575 mn allocated to teaching development grants to boost the number of graduates
R205 mn allocated to foundational programmes to improve the success rate of students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds
R177 mn for research development to develop research capabilities of staff
R8 bn total investment in university infrastructure during the period up to 2015

Teacher education

Teacher education in all sectors (the pre-school, primary, secondary, FET and Universities) is a priority with an increase in teacher graduation shown below:

2008 - 6,000 graduates
2011 - 10,361 graduates
2015 (projected) - 14,000 graduates

New teacher education colleges and campuses are being established

The National Students Financial Aid Scheme

NSFAS gets R5.7 bn

R3.69 bn for loans and bursaries to universities
R1.98 bn for bursaries for TVET Colleges

Below is an embedded version of the speech in PDF format. Click the arrow in the square at the top right of the frame below to open the speech in a bigger window.

Secrecy Bill will strangle information flow - please vote against it now

2013-05-22T10:45:00.001+02:00

Update 23 May - the petition has received over 50,000 signatures in two days

The internet has brought a revolution and a renaissance in access to information across the planet, having a special benefit to poorer countries which now have access to information and communication technology to help them leap-frog their development.

However governments (and corporate media) are increasingly acting as if they feel threatened by the rapid transparency and social action that the internet has made possible, and in many countries we are seeing a crackdown on transparency, journalists and whistle-blowers. Even in traditionally strong democracies such as the United States, this trend is visible in the crackdown against Wikileaks, the Associated Press and more recently Fox News. Now in South Africa we are days away from having a Secrecy Bill signed into law by President Zuma. Despite extensive lobbying the Bill still does not include the vital "public interest" clause which would protect journalists and whistle-blowers from 25 years in prison for communicating information that is vital to the "public interest". There is the very real potential here for corruption and incompetency to be removed from public accountability if this Bill becomes law.

Note: - I do agree that the media is in need of greater accountability and transparency. In my view the way to do that is through:

professionalisation of journalists and editors (a trend we are seeing across all occupations and professions at the moment)
self-regulation through professional bodies (also a growing trend)
assistance to new and emerging media organisations
strengthening of anti-competitive legislation and oversight of the media
not through blanket media laws that limit the public's access to information

The quality of the decisions we make individually and nationally are based on the quality of the information we have available to us. Please vote against this limitation on the information you will have access to in the future. Why should someone else choose what you can know or not know about? Find more information and vote here.

Here is the body of the text from the Avaaz media flyer:

--------

Dear friends,

At any moment Zuma could sign the Secrecy Bill into law -- one of the worst attacks on democracy and free speech since Apartheid. But we can force him to give the courts a final say, saving our free speech rights from the worst parts of the law.

The President has the power to send controversial bills to the Constitutional Court before they are enacted to make sure they don't violate our most precious freedoms. But he's only going to delay the Secrecy Bill's corrupt protections for his own government if there's a massive nation-wide outcry. We only have days to make sure he hears it.

He's already feeling the heat, but the bill could be signed any day now. Click below to call on Zuma to protect our constitution and follow the law. Then forward this email to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/zumas_secret_loc/?tpbXrbb

The Secrecy Bill would be bad news for South Africa. Really bad. Under it, anyone who looks at leaked classified files (like journalists reporting on government graft or everyday citizens accessing them online -- anyone!) could get up to 25 years in jail, regardless of how important the story is to the public. The bill that passed included important revisions, but they fall far short of what's needed: far too many officials still have the power to unaccountably classify documents, and the exemption added for whistleblowers has a major loophole that could make it all but useless in practice. Altogether, the law would be a major roadblock in our ability to uncover and investigate government corruption.

Citizens can bring the Secrecy Bill to court after it's passed, but the process takes a long time and could cost millions. Even so, many legal experts say that the law pretty clearly violates our free speech rights. Zuma has the chance to give the constitution the respect it deserves and have the court review the bill before it becomes law and starts doing damage.

The clock is ticking and we don't have a moment to lose. Let's push Zuma to respect the law before it's too late. Click below to sign and forward to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/zumas_secret_loc/?tpbXrbb

When the Secrecy Bill was first tabled in 2010 and brought to vote in 2011, Avaaz members joined the national call for freedom over secrecy, along with the diverse organizations behind the Right to Know Campaign. Now we have a chance to step in again and keep the pressure up on Zuma's attack on our democracy.

With hope,

Iain, David, Emily, Sam, Ricken, Alice, and the Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Will the Secrecy Bill go to the Constitutional Court (Mail and Guardian)
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-25-will-the-secrecy-bill-go-to-the-concourt

Fury as Secrecy Bill gets nod (Independent Online)
http://www.iol.co.za/news/special-features/fury-as-secrecy-bill-gets-nod-1.1506624#.UX_bFyuG2aw

What's still wrong with the Secrecy Bill (Right to Know)
http://www.r2k.org.za/2012/08/29/whats-still-wrong-with-the-secrecy-bill-short-version/

Training is not regulated enough (not!)

2013-04-19T21:17:00.002+02:00

Take a look at these excerpts from a White Paper on Training that is scheduled to be published later this month:

"The last three decades have witnessed a raft of government policy initiatives grounded in muddled objectives. This will continue unless we address some fundamental questions about the underlying purpose of such interventions, and proceed from a realistic understanding of the place of skills training in organisations. More of the same will not do. There is an urgent need for new thinking and new approaches grounded in an honest understanding of the nature of the problems we are facing and recognition of the limitations of many of the solutions that have been offered to date."(*1)

Which South African researcher do you think this is from? What about this:

"The national skills debate is complex and nuanced. It is difficult for training professionals to step back and gain a clear overall view of current policy direction; it is hard enough simply to keep track of the bewildering number of policy initiatives that appear and disappear. This situation is not helped by the continual over-promotion of the latest initiative by government..."(*2)

But is it in fact a South African paper? Read the next excerpt:

"Undoubtedly the politically explosive issue within the VET [Vocational Education and Training] debate is youth unemployment – in particular what has become known as the growing number of NEETs (16- to 24-year-olds currently not in employment, education or training)... in the third quarter of 2011, the number of young people who were outside employment, education or training in England reached over a million [1,163,000](*3) (emphasis added)

So this is a White Paper on the state of training in the United Kingdom, not South Africa.

You know this firstly because of the reference to "England", and secondly because of the fact that we have a lot more than one million youth who are Not in Employment Education or Training (NEETs). The Green Paper(*4) put the figure at 2,8 million youth, but that was quoting a 2007 figure before we felt the economic impact of the 2007 financial crisis.

I deliberately wanted you to read it at first without knowing it was a non-South African paper. It is a paper by Prof Martyn Sloman who is currently visiting South Africa to understand our education and training landscape. I have been assisting Martyn set up interviews with people in government and the private sector who can describe to him the South African experience.

In being interviewed by Martyn however, I was struck at how similar many of the challenges the UK is facing are similar to our own. I realised that as South Africans we are often very self-critical, thinking that our problems are unique to this country. This injects an unhelpful negativity into our dialogue and attempts to find solutions.

But the above three excerpts (and there are many more examples of the same phenomena) show that other countries are struggling with many of the same issues that we are - even first world countries - and even a paradise for foreign investment like the UK.

It is sometimes said that a problem shared, is a problem halved. On some levels, the problems we face in South Africa are being faced all around the world. This means there is more help available than we think.

As we try to improve our education and training system we could look around the world to see what solutions other people may have developed for the problems we are now facing. We could avoid wasting energy "re-inventing the wheel". And we could be less harsh on ourselves.

The HRD Council is in fact taking this approach, and so is the Dept of Higher Education and Training (DHET). We currently have INAP, as well as specialists in education and training from at least the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland working on several projects with DHET in South Africa.

One last point I want to mention about Prof Sloman's visit: he is keenly aware that one of the biggest skills policy problems in the UK is the lack of government regulation.

So we have a UK researcher visiting South Africa to find out how better the UK could regulate their skills development system. Pause for thought for those who are frustrated by the amount of regulation in South Africa..

Martyn will be publishing an early article based on the findings of his South African research on the SABPP and North West University websites. We will link to it here once it is available.

I end this post with the summary of the scope and purpose of Martyn's South African research so that you can see exactly what he is up to here:

"One of the major challenges facing governments throughout the world concerns the formulation and implementation of effective policies for enhanced workplace skills. The key questions are: How can the skills needed to produce higher value goods and services be developed at the corporate level? How can the ‘economically valuable’ skills that underpin growth be developed at a national level?

Skills policy is a challenging and controversial area, not least because policies are articulated at a macro-economic level but are intended to influence behaviour at the micro-level. If organisations under-train how can their behaviour be made systematically different?

Although statements of intention and ambition are remarkably similar throughout the world, there can be considerable differences in the policy instruments that are used. Such differences are at their starkest in a comparison of South Africa and the UK. The former country has adopted an interventionist approach reflecting the government’s wider social objectives; SETAs have been established and a grant and levy system implemented. In contrast, the UK has a stated policy of non-intervention and is trying to proceed with pilot projects to transfer ownership of the skills agenda to employers.

It is therefore timely to review the range and nature of the categories of intervention in the skills policy domain. What are the best structures and best incentives to develop skills at the level of the organisation? How can policy be made more effective?"

---

Martyn Sloman is a visiting professor at Kingston Business School and a teaching fellow at Birkbeck College. Martyn was "Advisor: Learning, Training and Development" at the UK CIPD ("the world's largest chartered HR and development professional body") from 2001 - 2008. He was appointed Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, Potchefstroom in 2012 and can be contacted at martyn.sloman@trainingjournal.com. His White Paper will be published later this month on the website Training Journal.You can view an extensive online debate around skills policy in the UK at this address on the Training Journal website.

Endnotes:

*1 "Training for skills in crisis – a critique and some recommendations", Prof Martyn Sloman, April 2013 (to be published), page 2
*2 "Training for skills in crisis – a critique and some recommendations", Prof Martyn Sloman, April 2013 (to be published), pp 2-3
*3 "Training for skills in crisis – a critique and some recommendations", Prof Martyn Sloman, April 2013 (to be published), page 4
*4 "Green Paper on Post-School Education & Training" (DHET) January 2013, page 4

ASTD Conference 5 - 7 March 2013 - Part 4

2013-04-10T11:13:00.001+02:00

Click here to jump to Part 1 of this series of posts.

International Trends in HR/HRD

The ASTD does not believe in sleeping late. Although we were in the beautiful mountainous Berg region, they had us up at 7 am for breakfast and then ready by 8 am for the first presenter of the day - Prof Dr Michael Freiboth (University of Applied Sciences, Augsburg, Germany).

Michael's topic was International Trends in HRD. He also referenced the idea of mega-trends but made the point that these kind of changes are often very small on a quantitative scale, for example a "1% growth in a population with access to higher education" seems like a small change but it can have a massive impact in terms of many other aspects of society and the economy. Mega-trends therefore can often be unseen to the majority of the population but are unstoppable trends with big impact.

He used this fascinating graphic to illustrate how mega-trends are turning the world upside down (literally), with the influence of nations in the South growing, and those in the North, decreasing (with some futurists talking about a magnetic pole reversal, this shift may have an economic and physical component).

Michael then went on to illustrate with some very humorous examples, the challenges that globalisation presents in the work of developing leadership competencies across cultural boundaries. These lessons were based on his work with Ferrero, the world famous chocolate and confectionery maker which has 21,000 employees across the world and which was attempting to build an international leadership community across its multinational management team.

In China a company had tried to introduce an Employee of the Month competition to encourage performance. However shortly after announcing and recognising their first employee of the month, this employee resigned. On inquiring the management discovered that in China there is a cultural perception "the nail that stands out, is hammered in" making the Employee of the Month a negative incentive. A team-based approach was needed instead.
Michael also cited research on cross-cultural differences in saying "no" to one's boss, when asked to take on an extra task, with humorous differences between cultures shown below:

The GERMAN approach is very direct: "No, I cannot, I might have to postpone some other important work"
The CHINESE approach is less direct, "This may be not so easy to do." The cultural strategy is to never say openly "no" because this is very disrespectful. Often an attempt is made to divert from the topic.
The ITALIAN approach is indirect, "I am not sure if it is possible," leaving space for misunderstandings when the boss is from a different culture
The BRITISH approach was very indirect, "This might be a good idea" meaning that there is only a small chance that this is a good idea.

Ferrero had employees and senior management criss-crossing all of these cultures and therefore faced the challenge of ensuring clear communication and co-ordinated action despite the potentials for misunderstanding seen above.

Of course cultural differences in the workplace can extend way beyond communication styles, as Michael illustrated with this slide from his presentation:

(Polychronic people can schedule various tasks during the same time period whereas monochronic people prefer to do one thing at a time)

Some other interesting observations from Michael's presentation which again highlight the importance of globalisation, the aging workforce, and the importance of women in the workplace:

World population is expected to start declining by 2040 (after reaching about 8 billion people)

This is contrary to the Club of Rome predictions that the population would grow completely out of control
We have seen that once reproduction rates fall below 2.0 (two children per couple) in industrialised countries, they don't bounce back
The average worldwide reproduction rate is now 2.43 and it is sinking at a rate of 0.2 per decade
Statisticians reckon that in the European Union by 2050, there will be 40 million people less than today
This raises the important question, how do we sustain an effective and skilled workforce in the face of declining global population?
For African countries this likely means increasing struggle to retain local skills in the face of international poaching

In trying to attract talent, companies that are "in the front row" (as Michael calls it - they have big public brands) are less at risk. For example Audi had 83,000 unsolicited work applications in 2013 and an unwanted staff turnover rate below 2%
South Africa spends 5,4% of GDP on education, compared with Germany at 4,6% and China at 1,9% (2009)
Norway is discussing introducing a legal quota for women in company board positions, at the level of 40%

BMW has already introduced quotas of companies for women in management positions at a minimum of 16% (to be reached by 2016)

There is some great info in Michael's presentation about how companies are responding to the aging workforce by extending retirement age limits to include more elderly people in the workforce, while at the same time competing to get new talent into the organisation, and then accommodate generational differences in the way the organisation runs (see slides 54 - 59).

For example the diagram below shows how radically different the traditionalists (born before 1945) and the Generation Y/Z (born 1981 and after) employees are in terms of motivating factors and retention:

We didn't unfortunately get to finish Michael's presentation, as we ran out of time, but you can review all 72 slides at the link in the paragraph above. Next up was Judge Jim Tamm whose broad American accent was in stark contrast to Michael's crisp German English. I will cover his presentation in Part 5 of this series...

ASTD Conference 5 - 7 March 2013 - Part 3

2013-03-13T22:53:00.001+02:00

Click here to jump to Part 1 of the ASTD Conference feedback.

Next up was Agustina Mendez from the Hay Group, a global management consulting firm.

"Leadership 2030 - Leadership Characteristics of the Future"

This was a fascinating presentation giving a glimpse into the potential future and attempting to predict the kind of leadership competencies that will be required of leaders in the near future. To take an educated guess into the future the Hay Group partnered with Z_punkt, a company specialising in future scenario planning. Z_Punkt identified 20 "mega-trends" of the future that the Hay Group then worked with from an HR and leadership perspective to tease out the competencies that would be needed under these conditions.

A "mega-trend" was defined by Z_punkt as a trend which would have global consequences due to the scale of impact, the reach of the trend and the time-frame during which the trend would take place. In her presentation Agustina only had time to look at 5 of the 20 mega-trends, but the full research report can be purchased from the Hay Group. The 5 trends from the presentation were:

Globalisation 2.0
Individualisation and value pluralism (the blurring of the line between work and personal life)
Demographic change
Climate change and environmental impact
Digital life-style

Agustina also referenced research the Hay Group had done on different kinds of leadership styles one of which was titled, The Indian CEO, the other was The Chinese CEO. Both reports present a refreshing picture of new emerging global CEO styles which are very different (some would say more ethical) than the reigning European CEO and US CEO models.

Some of the insights from Agustina's presentation:

Globalisation 2.0

There are now 2 billion middle class people on the planet -a huge growth in the last few years
Globalisation is influencing organisations to adopt more "flattened" organisational structures so that information can flow more easily across global boundaries - this is challenging traditional heirarchical reporting structures
Individual loyalty is increasingly to the person's social network and not the institution they work for. This is reflected in the fact that instead of one individual resigning from an organisation, an entire team will move at once.

Individualisation and value pluralism

59% of employees in Germany changed jobs in the last 5 years
People are seeking personal fulfilment in the workplace, whereas previously they would be content to work for money and have a meaningful personal life after work

This is causing a convergence of private and working lives

We are seeing more unconventional CVs where it is clear that the person was seeking meaning in their life rather than a vertical career progression

Lateral career movements are more common in these CVs
The search for personal fulfillment is more evident in these CVs

We are seeing the rise of what Richard Florida has coined "the creative class" which is involved in creativity across the whole process of product or service design from formulation to creation to implementation of the idea

Many people in this group are not happy being micromanaged in their work and want to be self-directed and creative to a greater extent than we have seen before

Demographic change

We used to hear about the brain drain and now we hear about the brain cycle which is when people have emigrated to the developed world from a developing country, and now decide to return home to their native country, often bringing with them valuable skills and experience

This is what Bruno Rouffaer referred to as happening with the Turkish population of Europe, many of whom are now immigrating back to Turkey
This trend has been exaggerated by the financial crisis of 2007-8 which has made many developed countries less attractive than some of the the faster growing developing countries of the world

In 2009 there were 7 Western industrial countries amongst the 10 biggest economies in the world, by 2050 it is predicted there will only be 3

Digital life-style

This has significantly increased the power of customers in a business relationship, making them key partners in the whole value chain of a business and empowering them to shape the end product and the way in which it is produced
It now requires a transparency of operations that was unheard of in previous times
The (post) heroic but overwhelmed leader:

Linked to digital life-style is the issue of ethics in leadership - how do we predict when our leaders are about to bring a scandal to their organisation and damage its reputation? This was never a question in the pre-digital life-style era but now its a primary business imperative
A cornerstone leadership competence emerging out of these mega-trends is a kind of curiosity of genuinely wanting to know "how my behaviour or style as a leader is perceived (felt) by you" - also known as caring

Agustina ended her presentation with this statement to leaders, "if you are only in it for the title you are not going to be able to stick it out in the job - its just not sustainable."

You can download Agustina's presentation here.

ASTD Conference 5 - 7 March 2013 - Part 2

2013-03-12T09:43:00.002+02:00

Click here to jump to Part 1 of the ASTD Conference feedback.

Next up was Idah Zwane-Dlomo, General Manager for Corporate Services at the KZN Provincial Government Treasury. It was fitting for one of the first presentations to come out of the public service, given that:

The public service is the largest employer in South Africa
The public service will now be contributing to the Skills Development Levy in a structured way which will empower PSETA to act as a significant role player in improving public sector performance
Poor public service delivery has been a source of violent public protest now for several years

The topic of Idah's presentation was:

"Practical Strategies to Deal with the Skills Gap in the Workplace"

Idah started off by reminding us that South Africa has the paradox of an unemployment crisis existing simultaneously with an employment crisis. For example we have an official unemployment figure of about 25% of the population while the public service has an average vacancy rate of about 23%. This echoes a poignant quote from Minister Blade Nzimande some year's ago when he said almost exactly three years ago:

"While there are no instant solutions,
the cycle of poverty and hopelessness must be broken as soon as possible.
In every village and town, in every suburb
and city centre, there are gifted people
with broken dreams and no income,
who do not qualify for jobs
that must be filled."
- Minister Nzimande 25 March 2010

Some highlights from Idah's presentation:

The use of "trainee ranks" whereby work placements into the Treasury are placed three job levels below their target employment level

This reduces tension with the unions and existing employees who sometimes greet new trainees with suspicion and jealousy, seeing them as a threat to their positions
The trainees are assigned mentors to assist them reach full competency in their new positions, and vigorous Personal Development Plans and Personal Improvement Plans are applied

The shortage of internal auditors in the Treasury is addressed by learnerships including a three year contract, at the target level of employment, except where the candidate has no managerial experience in the public service in which case they are assigned a "trainee rank" while gaining the required experience

Idah concluded her presentation with a humorous quote from Mark Twain, highlighting the value in the KZN Treasury attached to real-world experience (versus knowledge and theory):

"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning "

You can download Idah's presentation here, and read more about her background here.

There was a break following this presentation where the participants got to stretch legs and meet each other.

ASTD Conference 5 - 7 March 2013 - Part 1

2013-03-10T18:48:00.002+02:00

I have just returned from ASTD South Africa's 2013 conference in the Drakensberg.

Three days (and nights) of intensive learning, sharing and networking, I am glad it coincided with the end of the week so that I could recover over the weekend.

I recommend that anyone involved in workplace learning budget and plan to attend next year's event. I attend 10 - 20 HRD related conferences and events every year and would rate this in the top 3 available.

Below some highlights from the notes I made and the photos I took. Please feel free to post questions for more details in the comments section below. I am a beginner when it comes to photography, so the pics are pretty rough.

Why is it so good?

It was the first ASTD event that I attended, so I want to just comment briefly on my perception of why its different, and better than, many of the other HRD events available at the moment:

Its not as big as the IPM Annual Conference (about 200 people versus about 900 people) - you don't feel lost in a sea of people you need to talk to but will never get around to more than just greeting. This means that you also get to chat to the international and local guest speakers more freely.
Hosted at Champagne Sports Resorts its not as noisy and distracting as Sun City can be
The level of networking and interaction with peers seems somehow more coherent and convergent, possibly because there are only 200 people there
The quality of content presented is very high and the relevance of the information is also high, possibly because the ASTD does a lot of research work into effective HRD, and also seems better able to attract international specialists in these fields (they launched their latest State of the Training Industry training report in one of the sessions)
Another interesting fact is that most of the speakers hung around for the rest of the conference, and sat in on the other sessions, unlike other events where they disappear immediately their show is over.

The story in pictures and words

So lets begin, letting my camera lead the way...

After traveling down to KZN from Joburg on the ASTD bus, we arrived at 1.30 pm at Champagne Sports Resort, just in time for the 2pm start.

The ASTD theme, "New Learning for Extraordinary Performance", greets us in the main plenary session - as well as a deliciously cold aircon.

Bruno Rouffaer and Idah Zwane-Dlomo, the first two speakers, chat in the foreground while Robin Probart (President ASTD South Africa) makes final preparations before the start in the background.

Robin welcomes everyone and talks about the need to go beyond "yesterday's logic", conquer the "data overload" facing us all, and move into a new mode of collaboration which is the most effective way to solve the latest HRD challenges.

Bruno took the first plenary session with an insightful and very motivating presentation called, "Big Bad Boss Era is Over". In his Belgian-English accent he pointed out that a fundamental change in the nature of work relationships was taking place, and the leader of tomorrow would be very different from the big bad boss stereotype. Some of the interesting points Bruno made:

Youth immigration to Europe starting to reverse, due partly to the recession, but also because young Turks, for instance, feel alienated in a Europe that sees them as Turks rather than as human beings. They are going back to Turkey and taking valuable skills and experience with them back to their home countries. At the same time many native Europeans, such as Spanish youth, are heading to Latin American countries to look for work.
China's population of higher education students is 125 million people, India: 130 million
It was the protest of a Tunisian higher education student, Mohamed Bouaziz that triggered the Arab Spring and removed four governments from power with several others waiting in line

If Wikipedia were a book, it would contain 2,25 million pages and take 123 years to read - evidence of the enormous power the internet has given us to reinvent economic, social and knowledge relationships
More than 50% of the world's population is under the age of 30 - the new generation of youth entering the workplace are looking for a holistic level of meaning that unites their work and personal life and does not split them into conflicting roles
The why component of learning is very important to the younger generation and needs to be understood before the how and what components

Interestingly Bruno owns a farm in Hluhluwe, KZN, and spends about a third of his time in South Africa, and the rest in Europe. His South African life includes supporting the Isibani Community Centre in Winterton. If you are interested in more from Bruno he has just published his book (by the same title as the presentation) and it can be ordered here.

Please check back to this blog post during the course of this week when I will be adding more pictures and snippets from the conference.

Click here to jump to Part 2 of the ASTD Conference feedback.

Launch of the Skills Handbook Blog

2013-03-03T15:44:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the new official blog of The Skills Handbook.

This blog is being launched just in time for the ASTD South Africa's 9th International Conference. I will be presenting a Skills Development Update there and also sharing some of the content on this blog over the coming weeks.

This is a list of the topics I will be covering in future posts:

ASTD Conference reportback - highlights and key new ideas discussed
The Minister of HET's January and February press briefings and what light they shed on the direction of government strategy
The Nedbank Occupational Qualifications Case Study - this could be the biggest success story in workplace learning since the year 2000, a very exciting development that will hopefully be the start of a national (and international) trend in workplace learning
Intellectual Apartheid Fights On - the debate around limiting the QCTO to NQF Level 6 qualifications: how can we still be arguing about the importance of workplace learning on the NQF?
The QCTO and the HRD Council expand their web presence - good news for workplace learning as communication from both organisations improves
Key developments expected from DHET by 1 April 2013 - there are several documents, regulations and policy updates expected as the new financial year starts

The 2013/14 Skills Handbook will be available in the following formats:

The hardcopy edition of the book (available approximately June 2013)
The eBook edition of the book, on CD-ROM (available approximately May 2013)
A downloadable PDF version of the book on Scribd (available approximately May 2013)
The free online book which will be a regular HTML website view of the book rather than a PDF version. Our hope is that this will encourage more interaction than the PDF edition of the book allows.
For those of you who can't wait until the new book is out please contact us about our in-house information sessions for HRD Teams and HR practitioners to update them on all the latest developments.

Please also subscribe to our RSS feed (bottom of the page) to get updates whenever a new post is published. Not sure what an RSS feed is? This page will help you get started.

The Skills Handbook Blog

Innovative Campaign to Support Youth Employment Targets the Public TVET College Sector

New Work Readiness Guide for public TVET colleges and students

Event - National Skills Authority Roundtable on the New Skills Development Landscape

The SABPP and the New Skills Development Landscape

The event programme

The presentations

Some highlights

Conclusion

Proposed New Skills Development Landscape

What changes are proposed?

Changes to SETAs

Changes to Funding

Changes to the NSDS

Other changes

Why are these changes proposed?

The NSLP 2015 proposal document

Comments and suggestions

Skills Handbook Pre-order Edition Now Available

Updates

Advertising

What to expect in version 0.2

Employers & Youth Employability - interview with Brent Wyborn, HR Director (Hollard Insurance Group)

From Holland to Hollard, from HR Officer to HR Director - Brent Wyborn

On the value of diversity and social impact

On HR practitioners becoming business leaders

On Youth unemployment

National Scarce Skills List - Call for Comments

Why comment?

What is a scarce skill again?

Questions about the National Scarce Skills List

What is in the List?

The National Scarce Skills List (draft)

Tweets

Frequently Asked Questions

I don’t see any listing of entrepreneurial skills? Business management and the like?

When will the final National Scarce Skills List be available?

See also

SAQA's new NQFpedia - helping you navigate the acronym jungle

The White Paper & Private Sector HRD Practice (Event)

Event details:

New HRD Plan for South Africa Launches on 3 March 2014

USA pilots career-focused high school model similar to German and Swiss vocational schools

Further reading

The White Paper on Post School Education & Training

Table of Contents

Overview

Purpose

Vision

Background

Highlights

Timeline

Green Paper vs White Paper

SETAs

New developments

Community Colleges

SAIVCET (The SA Institute for Vocational & Continuing Education & Training)

Open learning

Other new developments

Still to come

Enrollment targets for 2030

Authors & contributors

Downloads

Comments and questions

Notes

Green Paper vs White Paper - note to the textual analysis table

The Skills Pipeline for Over R 3,6 trillion in Major Infrastructure Projects

1. Introduction

1.1 The Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs)

1.2 SIPs Scarce Skills List

1.3 Pathways from Entry to Expertise

1.4 Role-players

1.5 Team Members

1.6 Intermediary bodies

2. Mandate

Supply side

Demand side

3. Roles

4. Portal

5. Analysis