NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE NSDP BALL

How do we meet the NDP’s 2030 skills goals? JAMES FRANCIS reports

THE NDP’s 2030 SKILLS GOALS

The National Skills Development Plan (NSDP) was gazetted in 2019 to meet the National Development Plan’s (NDP) skills requirements. It articulates several performance indicators and needs such as the roles of different training establishments, identifying the most crucially needed skills, and highlighting the need for public-private collaboration.

“Exciting progress is being made in some areas, while in others there is almost none at all,” says Prof Stephanie Allais, research chair of skills development and professor of education at Wits University’s Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL).

“The NSDP is not a failure, but it needs realignment. The pandemic has made clear the extent to which we have to build ‘surge capacity’ so that institutions have additional capacity to draw on to shift direction in moments of diffi culty. Our current funding models, based rather tightly on learner enrolments, do not make it easy for institutions to develop such capacity. The result is that providers can’t respond when there are short-term urgent requirements – such as reskilling workers who have lost their jobs because of COVID-19.”

Other shortcomings include insuffi cient means to support remote/online learning and limited access to workplace exposure. Allais also argues that there is a need to adjust quality assurance requirements for qualifi cations and programmes in targeted sectors and to make short-term adjustments to funding mechanisms for immediate training needs. Furthermore, existing technical and vocational education programmes need updating to meet demand in key sectors within the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan. Additional interventions proposed by REAL are retraining to preserve existing jobs and embedding skills planning into sectoral processes.

The state of primary education is another barrier, says Dr Lydia Cillie-Schmidt, director of The Talent Hub International. “The NSDP acknowledges the challenges in basic education, but if issues earlier in the education system are not addressed, the NSDP would probably not achieve its outcomes. Achieving some of these by 2030 seems too ambitious, given South Africa’s reality in terms of basic education.” A draft report from the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation on NSDP progress reveals several hits and misses. For example, university enrolments are up, crossing the million mark in 2020 from 975 837 in 2016. But, technical vocational education and training enrolments are down from 705 397 (2016) to 500 000 today. There are some examples of skills training success, especially among public-private partnerships (PPPs). Microsoft runs the country’s largest internship programme, having trained over 10 000 school-leavers over the past eight years. It provides digital literacy, digital training for such as reskilling workers who have lost their sectors and to make short-term adjustments to funding mechanisms for immediate training updating to meet demand in key sectors within the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery teachers, and careful evaluations to reduce dropout rates and supply in-demand skills. When industries and their big players take the initiative, many of the NDP and NSDP’s goals are achievable.

But there are two caveats. The fi rst, said several interviewees, is that government needs to be more proactive, aggressive and co-ordinated with nuanced plans that complement the NSDP’s broad strokes. And, adds Siyabonga Madyibi, executive director: Corporate, External and Legal Affairs at Microsoft South Africa, we need to move beyond pockets of excellence. “Many PPPs work in pockets and depend on which departments are proactive as part of the broader national skills development plan. There has to be a single point of entry from a government perspective to co-ordinate how these public-private partnerships work.”

Complacency carries some responsibility for the lag. But there is also action – in April, the artisan grant was raised substantially. Yet the effects of the NSDP aren’t quite reaching where it’s needed most. For that to happen, realignment of focus, collaboration, and integration of effort needs to take place.

Dr Lydia Cillie-Schmidt • Expand the college system • One million learning opportunities through community education and training centres • 80 per cent throughput rate • 70 per cent university enrolment rate • 450 000 students eligible to study science and maths degrees • 75 per cent of higher education staff have PhDs • 100 doctoral graduates per million • Increase government’s R&D spending

Siyabonga Madyibi