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MISSION Impumelelo identifies, rewards, and promotes good governance and service delivery through an annual awards programme, case study research, policy analysis, training workshops and replication.
AIMS
IMPUMELELO CASE STUDIES - SKILLS TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT -
‘Building capacity for service delivery’
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IMPUMELELO CASE STUDIES
SKILLS TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT
• To improve the quality of life of the poor; • To identify and highlight innovative and effective examples of service delivery in the country; • To encourage good governance; • To reward initiatives that break through fiscal and structural delivery constraints; • To highlight models of innovative government projects in order to encourage replication; • To recognise public and social entrepreneurs who are the backbone of exemplary programmes;
Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust PO Box 1739, Cape Town 8000, 6 Spin Street, Church Square, Cape Town 8001 Tel.: +27 21 461 3783 • Fax: +27 21 461 1340 • Email: info@impumelelo.org.za
Impumelelo series of best practice
• To provide compelling and credible portraits of the many ways in which
This publication is made possible with generous funding from the Ford Foundation,
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government contributes to public problem-solving; • To support replication of good governance projects through case studies, training, policy analysis and research;
Impumelelo series of best practice – No: 8
Sida (the Swedish International Cooperation Agency), the Open Society Foundation of South Africa and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
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‘Building capacity for service delivery’
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Focus on Skills Training and Employment The purpose of this booklet is to provide an overview of the approaches to skills training by both the state and by some innovative projects in the non-profit sector. South Africa is experiencing skills shortages in many areas, and at the same time has a high unemployment rate. While the focus of this booklet is on the contribution to skills training made by the non-profit sector, it is necessary to locate the work of this sector within the wider context of skills training by looking at state activity promoting skills training, particularly as key state-created institutions such as Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) strongly inter-relate with the non-profit sector. The booklet thus begins with presenting a brief framework of state activity in the skills training arena, which pays particular attention to SETA activity. At the core of the booklet are case studies of skills training projects carried out by non-profit organisations. Several of these studies illustrate tellingly the complex and often problematic nature of the link between them and bodies such as SETAs (Case Studies 6, 7, 9, 10,11,12). The booklet contains fourteen case studies of non-profit projects involved in skills training, which all have won an Impumelelo Innovations Awards. These case studies provide material on the innovative initiatives in the skills training area which have impact and raise a series of interesting issues about state support for them, and their replicability and sustainability. As skills training should have direct links to employment (or for the employed links into improved pay and position - although these links are not explored here) attention is given to how direct are the links between skills training offered by the projects and the employment of the learners they train.
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Series Editor: Rhoda Kadalie Writer: Prof Michael Savage ISBN: 978-0-620-39478-9 Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust
Published by Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust First Published 2007
PO Box 1739, Cape Town 8000 6 Spin Street, Church Square, Cape Town 8001
Design:
Kult Creative
Tel.: +27 21 461 3783
Reproduction:
Formeset Printers Cape
Fax: +27 21 461 1340
Printed by:
Formeset Printers Cape
Photographs by:
Ellen Elmendorp, Eric Miller,
Email: info@impumelelo.org.za
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Project Manager: Rhoda Kadalie
Skills Training and Employment
Candice Jansen and the various projects
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CONTENTS
Section One
Section Two:
Section Three:
The Framework of the State Approach to Skills Training
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Chapter 1
Brief overview
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Chapter 2
Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, and the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition
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Chapter 3
Pathways to Skills Acquisition:
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Chapter 4
Apprenticeships
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Chapter 5
Sector Education and Training Authorities
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Chapter 6
Further Education and Training Colleges
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Chapter 7
Lower Skills Training
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Case Studies of the Non-Profit Sector Approach to Skills Training
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CASE STUDY 1
Learn to Earn
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CASE STUDY 2
Bergzicht Training Project
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CASE STUDY 3
Men at the Side of the Road
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CASE STUDY 4
Uthango Enterprise Project
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CASE STUDY 5
Hantam Community Education Trust
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CASE STUDY 6
Go for Gold
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CASE STUDY 7
Cape Craft and Design Institute
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CASE STUDY 8
Phelophepa Health Train
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CASE STUDY 9
Auxiliary Nurses, Eben Dönges Hospital
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CASE STUDY 10 Film & TV Unit
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CASE STUDY 11 Primedia Skills Development
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CASE STUDY 12 Ngezandla Zethu-Talking Beads-Blue Sky Hope Centre
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CASE STUDY 13 Friends of Mosvold Scholarship Scheme
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CASE STUDY 14 Girls’ Education and Training for Science, Education and Technology
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Conclusions
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Section One: The Framework of the State Approach to Skills Training
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Section One The Framework of the State Approach to Skills Training
“I came to Cape Town in 1999 and not wanting to be idle at home, I enrolled for a sewing course at LtE in November 1999. Since completing my advanced course in 2000 LtE has helped me find employment. First I worked at Rex Trueform for four years and then when that contract ended, LtE found me work at Levi Strauss. It was in October 2004 that I decided, with the support of my husband, to leave Levi Strauss and focus on building my own business. I was receiving orders from local schools and from the parliament choir and could not fulfill those orders whilst formally employed. In 2005, I started the business achievers course at LtE so that I am better able to run and grow my business. During that same year, I took part in a fashion show at LtE and a retail company awarded me a bursary for one year to do a fashion design diploma at City Varsity. It was an amazing year for me. My designs were showcased in the Body Spectra Extravaganza at the CTICC and I felt so proud to be a part of that. I passed and graduated in February 2007 and have now been approached to lecture part-time at City Varsity on Pattern Making. When I came to LtE I did not have any thought of starting my own business, I just wanted to get a job. Now I can see that I can use my hands to make money. Now I have direction and a vision for my life.” - CHWAYITA NKUNUNU
South Africa’s skills shortage has contemporary, historical, structural and political dimensions.
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Skills Training and Employment
CHAPTER 1 A brief overview of state activity in promoting skills training N A WELL-BALANCED AND INCISIVE REPORT of the Department of Labour ‘State of Skills in South Africa, 2006’, South Africa’s progress in addressing its skills needs is assessed. Commendable progress has been made in addressing the need for skills training, and also in the need to develop a properly functioning economic system to support such training. But a close reading of this important report cannot but conclude that South Africa’s skills shortage has contemporary, historical, structural and political dimensions to it confirming that much needs to be done to address it.
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Three broad bands of skills levels exist in industrial economies: managerial and professional skills, artisan skills, and skills acquired by literate and trained workers. At all three levels South Africa is facing considerable skills shortages, which if not adequately addressed will severely hamper its economic growth, retard its social development and diminish its efforts to address poverty. While the quantification and severity of this skills shortage is a matter of some debate, there can be no doubt that a severe mis-match between South Africa’s skills needs and the available forms of skills training, form a major obstacle and a failure on the path of economic growth. However measured, South Africa has a considerable skills shortage to face, a shortage that is probably most critical at the artisan level, and next most pronounced at the professional and managerial level. The roots of these skills shortages can be seen clearly in the South African schooling system. The schooling system, yet unable to shake off the bitter inheritances of its apartheid past, is clearly failing in adequately preparing its learners either for skills training, or for employment.
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Skills shortages exist in schools and are set to continue for some time. A good indication of this is found in the levels of mathematics and science education in schools. Only 15% of mathematics teachers are qualified to teach mathematics, and a half of all secondary schools are able to offer higher grade mathematics. It is unsurprising that the 2003 report on ‘Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS)’ of Grade 8 equivalent pupils, showed South African pupils in science come last out of 46 participating countries, receiving a grading of 244 points compared to the international average of 473, and also come last in mathematics, where they obtained an average score of 244 points in contrast to the international average of 466. The skills shortage in maths and science at the school level reflects itself in the number of school-leavers receiving a school leaving certificate that would enable them to enrol for training courses, or for university subjects based on these disciplines. Of the nearly 1.7 million pupils entering the 1994 school system, on leaving it in 2006, approximately only 25 000 obtained a matriculation higher grade pass in mathematics or science that would enable them to enrol for mathematics or science- based disciplines at the university level.
Force Survey showed that 30.6% of the unemployed school leavers had completed matric and 43.5% had passed Grade 11, but that persons who had left the schooling system far earlier were much more likely to have found employment. The Minister of Labour, Membathisi Mdladlana, recently has indicated that unemployment among matriculants is deepening with 60% of the 400 000 matriculants each year failing to find employment (Business Report 10 July 2007). Such trends are clear pointers to the inadequacy of the school system in preparing learners for the labour market. They also point to the need for schools to better prepare learners for the realities of the labour market by providing vocational advice and guidance on ways to obtain employment, or to enter selfemployment. There is an urgent and clear need to better align the schooling system with the needs of the labour market, and with the needs of the country for skills.
An estimated 53% of all school leavers at all levels do not find employment. This figure excludes those going on for further education or training. Perversely an inverse relationship is now emerging between the years of school education that a learner has completed, and the likelihood of a learner finding employment on leaving school. The 2003 Labour
“South Africa was ‘sitting on a time bomb’ because of high unemployment among the youth, labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana claimed yesterday. The country produced 400 000 matriculants each year but 60% of them were not at tertiary institutions or at work.” BUSINESS REPORT 10 JULY, 2007
Section One: The Framework of the State Approach to Skills Training
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The universities, together with the technical universities, are the major producers of persons with managerial and professional skills. Universities are constricted in producing more graduates with these skills by the school system’s inability to produce more matriculants with higher grade passes in maths and science that would enable them to increase enrolments in engineering, management studies and other such disciplines. This unsurprising high level of professional skills shortages is well exemplified in engineering. Currently SA is graduating on average 1 300 engineers a year and some estimates indicate that 13 000 new engineers a year to meet current and expected demands for infrastructural development. The middle level skill band, that incorporates artisans in the building trades, for industry, and the training of other skilled personnel, likewise is woefully undersupplied, and the Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges, primarily charged with providing skills training to this band, are failing to meet national needs for technically trained labour. The country needs to produce 50 000 trained artisans a year but is not managing to produce a quarter of that number (SABC News 11.3.07). The cleaner fuels project in the petrochemical giant SASOL in 2004/5 required 2 000 artisans and supervisors and because of the inability to locate such persons in South Africa had to import 821 people to fill its needs. At the lower-skill levels band there are grave shortages of skills, most particularly in artisan skills, on the mines, in construction, in
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Skills Training and Employment
factories, in transport and engineering. Further, at this band of skills training official labour force survey figures reveal that only 10% of factory workers, and 5% of elementary and domestic workers reported on having received any training (Labour Force Survey, September 2003). Underpinning all these skills shortages is the existence of skills shortages of an important but different order – a shortage of skills among the unemployed, skills that could assist them either to obtain formal employment, or to generate income through selfemployment. In September 2006, under the strict definition of unemployment, 25.5% of the population of working age were unemployed, a figure that rises to 40% when the broader definition of unemployment is used that incorporates workers whose past experience has ‘discouraged’ them from looking for employment, or from attempting to become self-employed, in the past four weeks. Current debates about skill shortages often focus excessively on meeting the demand for technical and high level professional skills required to sustain economic growth and downplay the necessity of addressing the skills training needs of the unemployed. However, the non-profit sector pays particular attention to skills training for the unemployed to assist them find employment or to become self-employed (Case Studies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11).