Date: 15/05/2003
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: Asmal: Launch of FET colleges
SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, AT THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF FET COLLEGES, Sandton Convention Centre, 15 May 2003
Sanibonani, Dumelang, Salaam Alikum, Shalom, Namaste
MECs
Director-General
Heads of Provincial Education Departments
Sponsors
Officials
FET Colleges Council Chairpersons
FET College Principals
Invited guests
The Further Education and Training college sector has, for a long time, been the Cinderella of our education system. In the post-Apartheid democratic South Africa of the twenty-first century, this cannot continue to be the case.
By far the most devastating effect of the apartheid legacy has been its assault upon our young people. The system deliberately excluded the majority of our youth and young adults from education and training opportunities and provided education of a poor quality to a select few. The effects of this racially based and socially engineered dehumanisation process continues to haunt us to this day. The shortage in key skills, the high rate of unemployment and the abject poverty afflicting our people are to a great extent a result of the education and training policies of the past. These are real results of a past that deliberately set out to exclude and deprive the majority of one of the most human basic rights, education.
The politically motivated choices, actions and inactions as well as outright neglect had adverse effects to the prospects of one of the critical pillars of our education system the Further Education and Training band. The sector still bears the scars of marginalisation.
Although the emergence of the technical colleges network of institutions coincided with and followed global trends, the racial segregationist policies of the time skewed the developments and gave a political flavour that was to determine the destiny and fate of many of these institutions. Following on the economic boom, a Vocational Education and Training system evolved between the 1940s and 1960s. The Job Reservation Act of the 1950s reserved skilled work for white workers and relegated blacks to low or semi-skilled jobs. The economic boom of the 1960s and early 1970s raised the demand for skills and put a severe strain on job reservation.
This coupled with the policy of industrial decentralisation, which encouraged employers, through incentives, to move to homelands led to an increase in the demand for skilled labour. Black workers were soon to be absorbed into the jobs formerly reserved for whites but at lower job designations and lower rates of pay.
Technical colleges provided for the skills needs. However, their emergence was not part of a carefully thought-out systemic approach, linked to an economic development strategy. Most were born out of political expediency rather than sound educational or economic considerations. Education institutions, including technical colleges, were used as tools to reward political loyalty and support. The result was a technical colleges landscape that was ad hoc in nature and unrelated to the economic and social needs of the country. Before long technical colleges were lying almost on top of each other, working in competition to each other and characterised by endemic tension, overlap and duplication.
This situation was made worse by the lack of political will and capacity to develop the majority of the institutions located outside designated white areas. It is with this context in mind that we should understand the nature of the sector we inherited. We need to know the past in order to understand the present and to determine the future. It is also in the light of this backdrop, and in keeping with the values enshrined in our Constitution that we can state that this dark chapter in the history of our education system and our development as a nation will be closed forever.
When we began our transformation processes in 1994, we conveyed our vision and commitment to a quality FET system for all our people. Never again shall any group be denied access to learning opportunities and be subjected to ridicule and indignity.
As we ventured into the new democratic era and took upon ourselves the responsibilities to reconstruct and develop our country we were keenly aware of a new set of challenges. Key amongst these has been the need for increased redress and equity without compromising on quality and global competitiveness.
When the idea to merge the 152 technical colleges was first mooted it invoked strong reactions from many. Most who objected did so on the basis that merging historically white state aided colleges with their historically black state colleges was tantamount to a lowering of standards and that it would force all the colleges to march at the pace of the slowest. This, it was argued, would take us many years back and work against the country's growing prospects as a major player and competitor in the global arena.
We listened carefully to these arguments but remained resolute in our mission to lay a solid foundation for a modern and high quality sector that could respond effectively to the imperatives of the Government's Human Resource Development Strategy. For the first time in the history of education in the country, we set out to advance the principles enshrined in our constitution and the Bill of Rights and linked this tightly to the imperative for economic development and growth through the Human Resource Development Strategy.
In our pursuit of this important goal we have identified the need for connecting three critical components, namely, education, skills development and enterprise education.
Whilst recognising that education is not a cure for all social ills, we continue to assert the important role education plays in improving the quality of life of people. Education may not be a miracle cure, but no one can deny that it has a very important role to play in building the new national identity which embraces diversity and creating a learning nation that accommodates and meets the demands for personal, social and economic development.
On the other hand skills development has been highlighted as a key determinant of social exclusion and poverty. Unless the workforce has the appropriate skills and competences economic growth, development and global competitiveness remain pipedreams. As recognised by the Government's Human Resource Development Strategy, the FET colleges are best positioned to provide intermediate skills needed for economic growth. Given that the provision of education in the FET band is relatively less costly but has more returns for investment, there is no doubt that our interventions will yield the required results.
It is very important that there should be a focus on enterprise development. Education providers are faced with a huge challenge to prepare students for unknown jobs. Studies indicate that new entrants in the labour market will retrain about 13 times before their retirement. This leads to an increasing difficulty in training people for specific non-dynamic jobs. The nature of the jobs as we have known them is changing rapidly. In that case therefore our public institutions have to move with the times and produce entrepreneurs who are able to reinvent themselves, to be creative and original, and to problem solve.
We have to be innovative. We cannot continue to offer more of the same old programmes that were designed during the Apartheid era. Hanging on to the old will further condemn the colleges, and by extension our students, to their previous Cinderella status. Our students must be given access to jobs and careers that, under Apartheid, were reserved for certain sections of our population.
The apartheid education and training systems were premised on an artificial divide between head and hand, between theory and practice. Georgi Dimitrov once said: "Theory without practice is barren. Practice without theory is blind." The almost exclusive emphasis on practical ability in many of the technical college programmes inherited from Apartheid cannot continue to hold. We have to create a healthy balance between head and hand, and also move further to introduce the heart into the equation. That is, we should incorporate values into our programmes.
The economic realities that indicate an exponential growth in the significance of rural and informal economies, the rise of the services sector, the rise in higher skills jobs, and the decline of low skills labour and the dominance of information technology place major challenges to institutions in this sector.
The vision that we crafted more that five years ago still holds. Two years ago, I shared with you the decisive measures the Government would be taking to ensure the kind of transformation we are looking for. These included critical measures to restructure the technical college institutional landscape, to build a new sector of larger, stronger multi-campus institutions, and that we would be putting in place some of the other essential building blocks for a modern, responsive high-quality Further Education and Training College system offering economic and social skills for the 21st Century.
In setting out these goals, I made it clear that the transformation we were calling for required courage and commitment on the part of all of us who are involved with our colleges. In particular, I called for courage and commitment from our college leaders and managers, who would have to manage a challenging and sometimes daunting process of change and development on the ground.
Given the strides we have made I find it necessary to place on record both mine and my Department's recognition for and appreciation of the courage and commitment that has been shown by the vast majority of our college leaders, managers, staff and students. Provincial departments have also had a critical role to play. The past two years have been a period of considerable uncertainty and anxiety for many of you, and you have been required to make decisions and take actions in the best interests of your institutions, and indeed in the best interests of the new institutions that have been created, even where this may appear to have placed your own position in jeopardy. I want to thank one and all for rising to this challenge, and for setting aside personal interests and concerns in order to help us build our new institutions. Thank you for you loyalty and your professionalism.
Today, at this very moment, I am pleased to launch the new 50 stronger, multi-campus FET colleges with a total of 6 756 teaching and 3 636 non-teaching staff. This moment marks the beginning of a new era. This launch marks the completion of the initial phase, achievement of the New Public FET Institutional Landscape for our colleges as planned in September 2001. Our vision is that these new colleges will become significant players in their local and regional environments and that some of them will become nationally and internationally recognised centres of excellence, with niche specialisations that serve the entire country. We have attempted to place the colleges in strategic positions so that they can continue to modernise and upgrade their delivery in response to the growing and changing demands for economic growth and social development. We want you to become the single biggest contributor of intermediate and higher skills to support employment as set out in our Human Resource Development Strategy.
Public FET colleges already show that they will play a significant role in the Government's campaign to significantly increase the number and quality of learnerships. The Department of Education and the Department of Labour have launched a campaign to establish, as a start, at least one learnership programme per SETA in each college. To date 29 colleges have been supported to recruit 2000 learners into 208 programmes across 8 SETAs. This does not include learnerships and skills programmes, which colleges have initiated in partnership with industry, commerce and local communities.
We have not been able to get this far by ourselves. The Department of Education supported by the business community and our international donor friends have put in place a number of capacity building programmes. These include, among others, the Tirisano International Exchange Programme (IEP) programme and the joint KPMG/National Business Initiative programme. These are programmes that are aimed at developing the capacities of senior and middle management in the newly merged public FET colleges. To date the public FET College sector has benefited from an investment of over R270 million through nationally directed support programmes investing in the development of skills for our college personnel.
Also at the last FET Annual Convention, the Department launched the Ministerial College Award programme. This programme serves as an incentive to strive for positive change and pro-activeness by FET colleges. This encourages colleges to put appropriate management, administration, learner support, financial and marketing systems in place. I intend to run this award annually in order to acknowledge and motivate colleges in the daunting task of transforming education and training in this sector.
Late last year, I declared 2003 the Year of FET, and envisaged a set of activities which would profile and establish a base upon which the next six years of change would be built. I hope today's formal launch of our public FET colleges will contribute to the profiling of the sector.
Early last year, 2002, we began turning the levers of change for this next phase in the transformation process. We now have a draft National Curriculum Framework that sets the parameters for development of responsive programmes as well as a FET Funding Framework, both of which will be released for the public comment as part of the Year of FET.
We are working on systems and capacity-building programmes for colleges financed through state and donor support. We envisage a support model that will provide assistance on-site in a differentiated approach to each college.
It is with great pleasure that I announce that a sum of R11 million is available immediately for our colleges to utilise in the consolidation of the merger process. I shall also approach the Minister of Finance and the Treasury to seek conditional grants for innovation in the colleges.
A recent audit by one of our partners from the business sector indicates that colleges are currently funded by the Government to the tune of R840 million. College income stands at R440 million.
Let me also acknowledge that, while the Department of Education has been ploughing much of its energies into the restructuring of the institutional landscape and the conclusion of institutional mergers, the colleges have been going quietly about their day-to-day business of educating our people and serving communities. The updated situational analysis of colleges conducted under the auspices of the Colleges Collaboration Fund, whose major contribution is acknowledged here today, indicates a number of achievements.
Student enrolments are up by 17% since 1998. The number of learners in non-formal skills programs has expanded quite significantly, showing that colleges are seeking new ways to provide relevant training and skills to their communities. The overall student population of the colleges is now fully representative of the demographics of our country. Steady progress has also been made with respect to the race and gender profile of college staff. A number of colleges have begun initiatives that link them to partnerships with business.
In short, there is much for colleges to be proud of and much for us to celebrate here this evening.
While there is an upward trend in student numbers, it is far from what we should be aiming for to ensure that the tide turns in favour of the college sector. In this regard I challenge the college communities to achieve a minimum of 5% year-on-year increase in enrolments, and a 5% improvement in pass rates.
I welcome, this evening, the new principals and chairpersons of college councils with a challenge to consolidate the gains, meet the challenges, and to accelerate the pace of transformation of our FET colleges. You have been identified as people with the necessary attributes of vision, courage, leadership and knowledge to lead our new institutions into the next era. We are confident that you will not fail us, as the continuing and increasing success of our democracy and the livelihood and well being of our people depends in no small measure on your achievements. As I have already indicated, you are not alone. We will be walking with you. But let me also say that we will be less tolerant to poor or lack of performance.
There are other challenges. While there are immediate gains, on paper at least, from the mergers - for example the larger scale of operations, enhanced management capacity, greater financial viability and so on - translating these paper gains into reality will require hard work, guts and commitment. We know from the business world that many mergers often fail because of conflicting organisational cultures, as well as from failures really to integrate the operations and achieve the benefits that the architects of the merger anticipated.
I am aware of the unevenness in management capacity, financial management expertise, governance capacity, and institutional capacity to deliver relevant curricula across colleges and campus sites. The audit of colleges I mentioned earlier identified three categories of colleges. Ten (10) colleges are regarded to be high-risk, 30 are regarded as medium-risk, and 10 are regarded as low-risk institutions depending on how they fare in relation to indicators I have just mentioned.
The college councils, the new principals and the management of these colleges will be required to provide a unifying vision and focus for the work of the institution. They will have to manage firmly but sensitively the integration of institutional cultures and the building of trust and a shared sense of purpose amongst diverse and often geographically separated staff. They will also have to show generosity and a wider institutional loyalty in ensuring that the resources of the new college are equitably shared and that all students, wherever they are located, are given equal opportunities to learn and to succeed.
I have already alluded to the many challenges and tasks still facing the colleges as they strive to make the mergers work and to deliver better quality services to our community. As a Ministry and a Department, our vision for the future embraces the President's vision of an African Renaissance and in the vision of a South Africa and an African Continent working together through the New Partnership for Africa's Development to build democracy and to bring about economic growth and prosperity for all of our peoples.
One of our big challenges remains 'the gap of incongruence' between the sector and business. I therefore urge the business sector to open up for the formation of partnerships with the Department and with the colleges themselves so as to inform the processes of developing responsive programmes and make it feasible to implement learnerships and skills programs. As I have indicated earlier, I have set the challenge to both colleges and business through the Ministerial College Award programme.
Unlike the old Cinderella, for the FET colleges there will be no magical change in preparation for dancing the night away with a prince. The onus to change the colleges, for the better, is on us. We are the agents of change. Let us also ensure that the change we bring to the colleges is not a temporary Cinderellian change brought about by the clock striking midnight. It must be sustainable change, change that will last long for the benefit of generations to come.
I have the pleasure to announce that the Right Rev. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has agreed to be the Patron-in-Chief of the FET colleges. On your behalf I would like to extend a warm word of welcome to a man who has distinguished himself through tirelessly working towards establishing democracy, freedom and equity for our people. Unfortunately he is out of the country today, but he has extended his warm wishes and support to you in a message written in your brochure.
In conclusion, it is with pleasure that I now officially launch the 50 new Public Further Education and Training Colleges.
I thank you.
Ngiyabonga
Ke ea leboga
Dankie
Issued by Ministry of Education
15 May 2003
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: Asmal: Launch of FET colleges
SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, AT THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF FET COLLEGES, Sandton Convention Centre, 15 May 2003
Sanibonani, Dumelang, Salaam Alikum, Shalom, Namaste
MECs
Director-General
Heads of Provincial Education Departments
Sponsors
Officials
FET Colleges Council Chairpersons
FET College Principals
Invited guests
The Further Education and Training college sector has, for a long time, been the Cinderella of our education system. In the post-Apartheid democratic South Africa of the twenty-first century, this cannot continue to be the case.
By far the most devastating effect of the apartheid legacy has been its assault upon our young people. The system deliberately excluded the majority of our youth and young adults from education and training opportunities and provided education of a poor quality to a select few. The effects of this racially based and socially engineered dehumanisation process continues to haunt us to this day. The shortage in key skills, the high rate of unemployment and the abject poverty afflicting our people are to a great extent a result of the education and training policies of the past. These are real results of a past that deliberately set out to exclude and deprive the majority of one of the most human basic rights, education.
The politically motivated choices, actions and inactions as well as outright neglect had adverse effects to the prospects of one of the critical pillars of our education system the Further Education and Training band. The sector still bears the scars of marginalisation.
Although the emergence of the technical colleges network of institutions coincided with and followed global trends, the racial segregationist policies of the time skewed the developments and gave a political flavour that was to determine the destiny and fate of many of these institutions. Following on the economic boom, a Vocational Education and Training system evolved between the 1940s and 1960s. The Job Reservation Act of the 1950s reserved skilled work for white workers and relegated blacks to low or semi-skilled jobs. The economic boom of the 1960s and early 1970s raised the demand for skills and put a severe strain on job reservation.
This coupled with the policy of industrial decentralisation, which encouraged employers, through incentives, to move to homelands led to an increase in the demand for skilled labour. Black workers were soon to be absorbed into the jobs formerly reserved for whites but at lower job designations and lower rates of pay.
Technical colleges provided for the skills needs. However, their emergence was not part of a carefully thought-out systemic approach, linked to an economic development strategy. Most were born out of political expediency rather than sound educational or economic considerations. Education institutions, including technical colleges, were used as tools to reward political loyalty and support. The result was a technical colleges landscape that was ad hoc in nature and unrelated to the economic and social needs of the country. Before long technical colleges were lying almost on top of each other, working in competition to each other and characterised by endemic tension, overlap and duplication.
This situation was made worse by the lack of political will and capacity to develop the majority of the institutions located outside designated white areas. It is with this context in mind that we should understand the nature of the sector we inherited. We need to know the past in order to understand the present and to determine the future. It is also in the light of this backdrop, and in keeping with the values enshrined in our Constitution that we can state that this dark chapter in the history of our education system and our development as a nation will be closed forever.
When we began our transformation processes in 1994, we conveyed our vision and commitment to a quality FET system for all our people. Never again shall any group be denied access to learning opportunities and be subjected to ridicule and indignity.
As we ventured into the new democratic era and took upon ourselves the responsibilities to reconstruct and develop our country we were keenly aware of a new set of challenges. Key amongst these has been the need for increased redress and equity without compromising on quality and global competitiveness.
When the idea to merge the 152 technical colleges was first mooted it invoked strong reactions from many. Most who objected did so on the basis that merging historically white state aided colleges with their historically black state colleges was tantamount to a lowering of standards and that it would force all the colleges to march at the pace of the slowest. This, it was argued, would take us many years back and work against the country's growing prospects as a major player and competitor in the global arena.
We listened carefully to these arguments but remained resolute in our mission to lay a solid foundation for a modern and high quality sector that could respond effectively to the imperatives of the Government's Human Resource Development Strategy. For the first time in the history of education in the country, we set out to advance the principles enshrined in our constitution and the Bill of Rights and linked this tightly to the imperative for economic development and growth through the Human Resource Development Strategy.
In our pursuit of this important goal we have identified the need for connecting three critical components, namely, education, skills development and enterprise education.
Whilst recognising that education is not a cure for all social ills, we continue to assert the important role education plays in improving the quality of life of people. Education may not be a miracle cure, but no one can deny that it has a very important role to play in building the new national identity which embraces diversity and creating a learning nation that accommodates and meets the demands for personal, social and economic development.
On the other hand skills development has been highlighted as a key determinant of social exclusion and poverty. Unless the workforce has the appropriate skills and competences economic growth, development and global competitiveness remain pipedreams. As recognised by the Government's Human Resource Development Strategy, the FET colleges are best positioned to provide intermediate skills needed for economic growth. Given that the provision of education in the FET band is relatively less costly but has more returns for investment, there is no doubt that our interventions will yield the required results.
It is very important that there should be a focus on enterprise development. Education providers are faced with a huge challenge to prepare students for unknown jobs. Studies indicate that new entrants in the labour market will retrain about 13 times before their retirement. This leads to an increasing difficulty in training people for specific non-dynamic jobs. The nature of the jobs as we have known them is changing rapidly. In that case therefore our public institutions have to move with the times and produce entrepreneurs who are able to reinvent themselves, to be creative and original, and to problem solve.
We have to be innovative. We cannot continue to offer more of the same old programmes that were designed during the Apartheid era. Hanging on to the old will further condemn the colleges, and by extension our students, to their previous Cinderella status. Our students must be given access to jobs and careers that, under Apartheid, were reserved for certain sections of our population.
The apartheid education and training systems were premised on an artificial divide between head and hand, between theory and practice. Georgi Dimitrov once said: "Theory without practice is barren. Practice without theory is blind." The almost exclusive emphasis on practical ability in many of the technical college programmes inherited from Apartheid cannot continue to hold. We have to create a healthy balance between head and hand, and also move further to introduce the heart into the equation. That is, we should incorporate values into our programmes.
The economic realities that indicate an exponential growth in the significance of rural and informal economies, the rise of the services sector, the rise in higher skills jobs, and the decline of low skills labour and the dominance of information technology place major challenges to institutions in this sector.
The vision that we crafted more that five years ago still holds. Two years ago, I shared with you the decisive measures the Government would be taking to ensure the kind of transformation we are looking for. These included critical measures to restructure the technical college institutional landscape, to build a new sector of larger, stronger multi-campus institutions, and that we would be putting in place some of the other essential building blocks for a modern, responsive high-quality Further Education and Training College system offering economic and social skills for the 21st Century.
In setting out these goals, I made it clear that the transformation we were calling for required courage and commitment on the part of all of us who are involved with our colleges. In particular, I called for courage and commitment from our college leaders and managers, who would have to manage a challenging and sometimes daunting process of change and development on the ground.
Given the strides we have made I find it necessary to place on record both mine and my Department's recognition for and appreciation of the courage and commitment that has been shown by the vast majority of our college leaders, managers, staff and students. Provincial departments have also had a critical role to play. The past two years have been a period of considerable uncertainty and anxiety for many of you, and you have been required to make decisions and take actions in the best interests of your institutions, and indeed in the best interests of the new institutions that have been created, even where this may appear to have placed your own position in jeopardy. I want to thank one and all for rising to this challenge, and for setting aside personal interests and concerns in order to help us build our new institutions. Thank you for you loyalty and your professionalism.
Today, at this very moment, I am pleased to launch the new 50 stronger, multi-campus FET colleges with a total of 6 756 teaching and 3 636 non-teaching staff. This moment marks the beginning of a new era. This launch marks the completion of the initial phase, achievement of the New Public FET Institutional Landscape for our colleges as planned in September 2001. Our vision is that these new colleges will become significant players in their local and regional environments and that some of them will become nationally and internationally recognised centres of excellence, with niche specialisations that serve the entire country. We have attempted to place the colleges in strategic positions so that they can continue to modernise and upgrade their delivery in response to the growing and changing demands for economic growth and social development. We want you to become the single biggest contributor of intermediate and higher skills to support employment as set out in our Human Resource Development Strategy.
Public FET colleges already show that they will play a significant role in the Government's campaign to significantly increase the number and quality of learnerships. The Department of Education and the Department of Labour have launched a campaign to establish, as a start, at least one learnership programme per SETA in each college. To date 29 colleges have been supported to recruit 2000 learners into 208 programmes across 8 SETAs. This does not include learnerships and skills programmes, which colleges have initiated in partnership with industry, commerce and local communities.
We have not been able to get this far by ourselves. The Department of Education supported by the business community and our international donor friends have put in place a number of capacity building programmes. These include, among others, the Tirisano International Exchange Programme (IEP) programme and the joint KPMG/National Business Initiative programme. These are programmes that are aimed at developing the capacities of senior and middle management in the newly merged public FET colleges. To date the public FET College sector has benefited from an investment of over R270 million through nationally directed support programmes investing in the development of skills for our college personnel.
Also at the last FET Annual Convention, the Department launched the Ministerial College Award programme. This programme serves as an incentive to strive for positive change and pro-activeness by FET colleges. This encourages colleges to put appropriate management, administration, learner support, financial and marketing systems in place. I intend to run this award annually in order to acknowledge and motivate colleges in the daunting task of transforming education and training in this sector.
Late last year, I declared 2003 the Year of FET, and envisaged a set of activities which would profile and establish a base upon which the next six years of change would be built. I hope today's formal launch of our public FET colleges will contribute to the profiling of the sector.
Early last year, 2002, we began turning the levers of change for this next phase in the transformation process. We now have a draft National Curriculum Framework that sets the parameters for development of responsive programmes as well as a FET Funding Framework, both of which will be released for the public comment as part of the Year of FET.
We are working on systems and capacity-building programmes for colleges financed through state and donor support. We envisage a support model that will provide assistance on-site in a differentiated approach to each college.
It is with great pleasure that I announce that a sum of R11 million is available immediately for our colleges to utilise in the consolidation of the merger process. I shall also approach the Minister of Finance and the Treasury to seek conditional grants for innovation in the colleges.
A recent audit by one of our partners from the business sector indicates that colleges are currently funded by the Government to the tune of R840 million. College income stands at R440 million.
Let me also acknowledge that, while the Department of Education has been ploughing much of its energies into the restructuring of the institutional landscape and the conclusion of institutional mergers, the colleges have been going quietly about their day-to-day business of educating our people and serving communities. The updated situational analysis of colleges conducted under the auspices of the Colleges Collaboration Fund, whose major contribution is acknowledged here today, indicates a number of achievements.
Student enrolments are up by 17% since 1998. The number of learners in non-formal skills programs has expanded quite significantly, showing that colleges are seeking new ways to provide relevant training and skills to their communities. The overall student population of the colleges is now fully representative of the demographics of our country. Steady progress has also been made with respect to the race and gender profile of college staff. A number of colleges have begun initiatives that link them to partnerships with business.
In short, there is much for colleges to be proud of and much for us to celebrate here this evening.
While there is an upward trend in student numbers, it is far from what we should be aiming for to ensure that the tide turns in favour of the college sector. In this regard I challenge the college communities to achieve a minimum of 5% year-on-year increase in enrolments, and a 5% improvement in pass rates.
I welcome, this evening, the new principals and chairpersons of college councils with a challenge to consolidate the gains, meet the challenges, and to accelerate the pace of transformation of our FET colleges. You have been identified as people with the necessary attributes of vision, courage, leadership and knowledge to lead our new institutions into the next era. We are confident that you will not fail us, as the continuing and increasing success of our democracy and the livelihood and well being of our people depends in no small measure on your achievements. As I have already indicated, you are not alone. We will be walking with you. But let me also say that we will be less tolerant to poor or lack of performance.
There are other challenges. While there are immediate gains, on paper at least, from the mergers - for example the larger scale of operations, enhanced management capacity, greater financial viability and so on - translating these paper gains into reality will require hard work, guts and commitment. We know from the business world that many mergers often fail because of conflicting organisational cultures, as well as from failures really to integrate the operations and achieve the benefits that the architects of the merger anticipated.
I am aware of the unevenness in management capacity, financial management expertise, governance capacity, and institutional capacity to deliver relevant curricula across colleges and campus sites. The audit of colleges I mentioned earlier identified three categories of colleges. Ten (10) colleges are regarded to be high-risk, 30 are regarded as medium-risk, and 10 are regarded as low-risk institutions depending on how they fare in relation to indicators I have just mentioned.
The college councils, the new principals and the management of these colleges will be required to provide a unifying vision and focus for the work of the institution. They will have to manage firmly but sensitively the integration of institutional cultures and the building of trust and a shared sense of purpose amongst diverse and often geographically separated staff. They will also have to show generosity and a wider institutional loyalty in ensuring that the resources of the new college are equitably shared and that all students, wherever they are located, are given equal opportunities to learn and to succeed.
I have already alluded to the many challenges and tasks still facing the colleges as they strive to make the mergers work and to deliver better quality services to our community. As a Ministry and a Department, our vision for the future embraces the President's vision of an African Renaissance and in the vision of a South Africa and an African Continent working together through the New Partnership for Africa's Development to build democracy and to bring about economic growth and prosperity for all of our peoples.
One of our big challenges remains 'the gap of incongruence' between the sector and business. I therefore urge the business sector to open up for the formation of partnerships with the Department and with the colleges themselves so as to inform the processes of developing responsive programmes and make it feasible to implement learnerships and skills programs. As I have indicated earlier, I have set the challenge to both colleges and business through the Ministerial College Award programme.
Unlike the old Cinderella, for the FET colleges there will be no magical change in preparation for dancing the night away with a prince. The onus to change the colleges, for the better, is on us. We are the agents of change. Let us also ensure that the change we bring to the colleges is not a temporary Cinderellian change brought about by the clock striking midnight. It must be sustainable change, change that will last long for the benefit of generations to come.
I have the pleasure to announce that the Right Rev. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has agreed to be the Patron-in-Chief of the FET colleges. On your behalf I would like to extend a warm word of welcome to a man who has distinguished himself through tirelessly working towards establishing democracy, freedom and equity for our people. Unfortunately he is out of the country today, but he has extended his warm wishes and support to you in a message written in your brochure.
In conclusion, it is with pleasure that I now officially launch the 50 new Public Further Education and Training Colleges.
I thank you.
Ngiyabonga
Ke ea leboga
Dankie
Issued by Ministry of Education
15 May 2003
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