It is clear that in developing the National Development Plan for the post-2030 period, realistic new goals and targets must be formulated that extend access to education and training of the highest quality.
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Interconnections between Basic Education and the Post-School Education
The National Development Plan (NDP) set a goal for learner retention to the end of the Further Education and Training Phase (FET). The indicator is a “completion rate of between 80-90%, including learners in further education and training (FET) colleges”. This is currently measured by both the National Senior Certificate (NSC) offered by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) at Grade 12, and the equivalent National Certificate (Vocational) [NC(V)] offered by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges.
How are we doing?
Data interoperability across DHET and DBE means that this cannot be calculated, and mechanisms to address this are urgent. Statistics South Africa data can be used as a proxy, only if the “completed secondary” category of its surveys is understood as including the NC(V).
The DBE has consistently asserted that many of the learners who do not write the NSC have left school to enter the TVET system and have therefore not “dropped out”. However, the data does not support this. DHET data for the 2020 enrolment into TVET colleges shows that of the total NC(V) 2020 intake, nearly all had written the NSC in 2019, and the intake included virtually no learners who had left school prior to writing the NSC.
This suggests that learners are not leaving school during the FET phase to enter TVET colleges to pursue the NC(V) as an alternative pathway within the National Qualification Framework. Of the total TVET intake of 2022, ie including those registering for courses other than the NC(V), only 18,810 (33.2%) had not completed Grade 12. These 18,810 do not account for the loss of approximately 300,000 learners who leave school between the end of compulsory education in Grade 9 and the end of Grade 12.
It is important to note that registration at TVET colleges does not imply completion. The DHET’s estimated throughput rate for its TVET’s NC(V) in 2022/3 was only 40% (with a 2017 baseline of 32%). Verification of this data and its implications for achieving the NDP goal of 80-90% learner retention by the end of the FET phase across schools and colleges requires intensive collaboration between DBE and DHET. The National Planning Commission (NPC) intends to convene discussions between the two departments to accelerate this process.
There are several important policy observations that could be made on the available data on school-to-TVET transitions. These must be interrogated in conversation with the DHET and the DBE in light of the considerable fiscal implications, risks of system duplication, and inefficiencies. Hard questions must be addressed about system inefficiency when young people achieve an NQF level 4 qualification after at least 12 years of schooling (the NSC), only to enter another NQF level 4 programme [the NC(V)] for a minimum of three years.
The public resource base then invests in a minimum of 15 years of education only to achieve two qualifications at the same level – in addition to the considerable personal and family investment. This public and private investment must be read against the labour market status of TVET graduates.
The DHET figures for 2017 were that only 17% of TVET graduates were employed, 45% were “not working”, and a further 22% were in work-based learning opportunities. There are no statistics available for how many of these publicly funded opportunities result in employment. It is likely that the unemployment rate of TVET graduates is higher than 45%. This and the poor throughput of entrants raise critical questions regarding quality.
We have an inefficient and costly “FET” system across DBE and DHET, which lacks mission clarity in relation to institutional purpose in the education and training system. A further duplication of courses across these departments is likely in the proposed “three-stream-model” (TSM) – a concept developed by the DBE to refer to the creation of multiple learning pathways that will enable learners to make choices between academic, vocational and occupational subjects in schools.
The NPC is concerned about the massive costs of introducing the TSM, which will come from the budgets of fiscally constrained provinces. This will require new subjects (which replicate offerings in the PSET system), new appropriate infrastructure, the recurrent purchase of consumables, new teacher knowledge and skills, new forms of assessment and qualification assurance mechanisms – including with the Quality Council for Trade and Occupations, and new – and nimble – local capacity to understand and articulate with labour markets.
The NPC shared these concerns with the DBE and articulated the view that countries with comprehensive skill formation systems have strong links between local industries and providers of education and training. These are unlikely to be achieved at school level and are already challenging at TVET level.
The NPC has also expressed its concern at the considerable duplication of resources and infrastructure if the same NQF level 4 qualifications are offered across FET in schools and TVET colleges. Duplication of qualifications at the same level and for the same purpose must be avoided. Unfortunately, there is as yet no public policy document that explains the conceptual framework of the TSM or its alignment with the PSET system.
This will be part of the discussion between the NPC, DBE, and DHET in 2025 and will inform the NPC’s diagnostic for the next NDP. These discussions will need to grasp the nettle of unnecessary and inefficient duplication which diverts resources from other system goals in the resource constrained environment in which both departments operate.
The NPC welcomes the DBE-initiated process to, with DHET, identify potential duplication of qualifications. This will be of great assistance in this process. Nationally, we have prioritised expenditure on education above all other functions, spending 6.2% of GDP (or a R445-billion average total annual spend in the past three years). This national commitment to education requires greater efficiency and careful strategising of priorities that are aligned with the fiscal programme.
The ambiguities that arise from a lack of clear policy direction, or policy sprawl, in relation to the FET phase must be debated and resolved. The NDP is clear about the importance of an integrated and well-articulated education and training system.
Performance of the PSET system against NDP 2030 goals and targets
Hard questions must be asked about the factors inhibiting the achievement of the NDP vision that TVET colleges should provide a meaningful vocational education alternative to secondary schooling and be the backbone of technical vocational education and training. Colleges must be strengthened to become institutions of choice for the training of artisans and the production of other mid-level skills.
The NDP TVET college enrolment target for 2030 is 1.25 million – DHET’s 2024 target has reduced this to 710,000. The NDP target for the TVET throughput rate is 75% by 2030 – The DHET’s TVET NC(V) target for 2024 is only 45%. The NDP set a modest goal of the production of 30,000 artisans per year by 2030.
How are we doing?
The DHET target for 2024 was 26,500, and we are currently only producing 20,000 qualified artisans per year.
This, however, is not the only area where the DHET is not meeting NDP targets. The press of young people clamouring at the gates of universities is not only because the NSC output exceeds the available places set by DHET enrolment targets, and that space is limited, but is also an indication of our failure to significantly improve the quality and labour market value of post-school alternatives to higher education institutions (HEI), and our failure to increase access to learning other than through degree programmes.
The unemployment rate of young people aged between 15 and 24 years who are Not in Employment, Not in Education, and Not in training (NEET) has been consistently above 30% for the past decade, affecting more than three million young people of whom 2.4 million (68.5%) reside in income-poor households. These youth are not uninterested or unwilling to work – more than two million express a wish to do so.
The DHET’s PSET architecture provides for Community Education and Training (CET) colleges, which are intended to target post-school youth and adults who wish to raise the base for further learning, improve their skills for employability, enrol in workplace-based programmes, and/or progress to opportunities in the TVET colleges and university education.
The CET colleges have incorporated public adult learning centres. In 2012, the NDP set an enrolment target for CET colleges of 1.25 million students by 2030. More than 10 years later, the DHET’s estimated performance for 2022/3 was 266,400, and their 2024 target was 555,200.
A high-quality functioning CET system operating within the National Qualification Framework could provide a bridge to participation for NEET for whom TVET colleges and higher education institutions are not immediately viable goals. Realistic plans to grow the size, quality, and credibility of community colleges, possibly linked to district development plans, could be an important mechanism to create access and a broader skills base for NEET youth, as well as providing a “second chance” education.
While we are not meeting our NDP targets for PSET opportunities in TVET and community colleges, a rush to expand without clarity of institutional design and rigorous planning for quality within a credible skills planning system would be folly. The NPC’s recommendation for the five-year period before 2030 is that a key priority must be the stabilisation of quality in TVET and CET colleges before further expansion. Consideration might be given to a smaller, high-quality, responsive and agile TVET system, which supports the needs of the economy and leads to employment opportunities.
An improved skills planning system must recognise the reality that skills formation is taking place within an economy that currently has limited mid-level-skill employment opportunities.
While skills can contribute to building the economy, planning for skills must take into account the skills-absorbing capacity of the economy and identify sectors of potential growth where evidence suggests that skills are needed. Our skills “planning” institutional terrain is complex with multiple players and locations in which policies are made, targets are set, and with different sets of “rules and tools” that players are obliged to use.
There is over-regulation where the market is supposed to lead, and over-dependence on complex regulatory tools where the state is supposed to steer.
This complexity diverts Sectoral Education and Training Authorities (Setas) from strategic engagement with sectors and high-level players, and from their crucial role of sectoral skills anticipation to time-consuming compliance processes flawed by single-sector analyses, which do not necessarily provide an indication of potential shortages across the economy, and in which lower-level, poor quality data is often reproduced at an aggregate level without planning and does not take into account unpredictability in the labour market and the changing nature of the economy.
In addition, the DHET targets for Seta-supported skills learnerships are not being met. A critical review of the functioning of the Setas is necessary.
Better, more focused, more engaged, more meaningful mechanisms, processes and approaches for coordination, cooperation and dialogue are needed to anticipate skill needs and support training towards those needs.
Providers and employers should develop reciprocal insight into needs and capacities by working together on provision and delivery of specific programmes and ensure that formal programmes and on-the-job training are complementary.
The private sector, such as Harambee and the Youth Employment Service (YES) programme, has played an important role in initiating catalytic strategies to assist in the “education and training to workplace transition”.
Such strategies should be actively supported across the PSET sector.
Higher education institutions
What of higher education institutions? How are they performing against NDP targets? While the DHET is likely to reach its NDP target for HEI enrolment – driven by public demand – it appears to be doing so by compromising the efficiency and quality indicators set in the NDP, and by neglecting targets for TVET and community colleges, both of which are crucial to responding to the hunger for post-school learning opportunities, and to expanding the skills base.
The expansion of student funding in 2017 has had a negative impact on the availability of funds for university core costs, on TVET and community college funding, and on university, TVET and community college infrastructure and personnel. The massive expansion of student funding (NSFAS) has not been matched by an expansion of the core institutional funding essential to maintaining institutional quality.
The DHET’s planning documents acknowledge that implementation of its plans will require much better use of available funding, and that funding will need to be significantly reprioritised if increased access is to be accompanied by enhanced success.
It is clear that in developing the NDP for the post-2030 period, new goals and targets must be formulated that are realistic and evidence-based, which prioritise actions that are strategic given the fiscally constrained environment, and that extend access to education and training of the highest quality if we are to achieve the urgent improvement of education and training as a critical enabler of the NDP objectives of eradicating poverty, reducing inequality, and growing the economy.
Care must be taken to avoid the negative effects of a fragmented focus on individual targets, instead of on the broader systemic goals and objectives for which targets are a proxy.
There is no quick-fix comprehensive solution to the annual stress of families seeking access to post-school education and training opportunities in the search for a better life for their children. However, this remains an urgent issue. A comprehensive review of the PSET system by DHET together with all stakeholders must be a national priority. This should include a review of the growing private sector provision of PSET opportunities and of creating mechanisms to optimise this contribution. DM
Professor Mary Metcalfe is a Commissioner of the National Planning Commission.