An expanded further education and training (FET) college sector has a central role to play in increasing artisan numbers and other mid-level skills, Minister Blade Nzimande said on Thursday.

Unveiling the Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training, the Higher Education and Training Minister stressed the role that colleges should play in delivering the skills that were in “extremely short” supply.

“Colleges, working together with employers, both public and private, will be our spearhead in tackling this [skills] problem.”

The Green Paper proposes that the quality of education at FET colleges receive attention and that management, qualification mix, the capacity of the teaching staff and student support should be strengthened.

The paper also makes proposals about pathways to ensure that students from colleges could move on to universities after completing their vocational qualifications. “Vocational education at the FET colleges must not be a dead-end,” Nzimande said.

The Minister announced the establishment of a South African Institute for Vocational and Continuing Education and Training as part of a long-term strategy to build institutional capacity.

The institute's main focus would be to strengthen the vocational and continuing education sector by playing a supporting role to existing institutions, such as FET colleges and the Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas).

“They [Setas] have a particularly important role to play in promoting the revitalisation of the artisan training system and in building linkages between theoretical education in colleges and universities on the one hand and practical workplace experience on the other,” he said.

To help students gain practical experience and build the country’s skills base, Nzimande said that all government infrastructure progammes would have to take on trainees. Government departments, agencies and municipalities would also be required to increase their intake of various types of trainees.

The Green Paper, which was approved by Cabinet in November and released for comment on Thursday, also outlined a plan to improve research and innovation in the post-school education sector.

The inadequate and insufficient levels of research and innovation in South Africa, as well as a shortage of high-level skills, required more focus and the paper outlined plans to work with the Department of Science and Technology’s (DST’s) ten-year plan, which pointed out that “the level of economic growth envisaged by our country required continual advances in technological innovation and the production of new knowledge”.

While the current ‘investments in knowledge’ were three times higher than they were in the mid-1990s, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) said that the country was still not producing enough graduates in the field of science, engineering and technology (SET).

SET enrolments had increased by 4.4% a year between 2000 and 2009, and graduation rates have grown by 5.5% a year, from 24 136 students in 2000, to 41 156 in 2011.

“Every year since 2002, the number of graduates in SET had exceeded the number of graduates in Education or the Humanities. However, despite these achievements, South Africa was still not producing enough SET graduates to meet its economic development objectives,” the report stated.

The Ten-Year Innovation Plan outlined a need to produce a five-fold increase in PhDs in Science, Engineering and Technology. Increased masters and doctoral graduates were also essential in producing the next generation of academics and researchers and ensuring that the qualifications of academics are upgraded where necessary.

“The DHET will work with the DST to ensure increased support for postgraduate study and for senior researchers, as well as a more stable funding model for all educational institutions that conduct research,” the Minister said.
The Green Paper said that postgraduate enrolments in both masters and doctoral programmes, while still low, had increased over the last fifteen years. In 2010, 1 420 doctoral graduates were produced, compared with 679 in 1995.

Meanwhile, the current education system continued to produce and reproduce gender, class, racial and other inequalities with regard to educational opportunities and success, the Green Paper had found. However, the last few years have seen improvements, Nzimande said.

In 2010, 48% of the doctoral graduates were white, compared with 87% in 1995; 38% were African, compared with 6% in 1995; 7% were Indian, and 6% coloured, compared with 3% and 4% in 1995 respectively.

The total enrolment in the college sector during 2010 reached 326 970 students, while in 2011, this increased to 359 000 students. About 312 077 students were enrolled in public adult education centres.

However, there were about three million people between the ages of 18 and 24 years that are not accommodated in either the education and training system or the labour market, he said.

As part of the expansion of the post-school education and training system, the DHET was also looking into the establishment of Community Education and Training Centres, which will include existing public adult education centres, as an alternative institutional form to deal with the needs of out-of-school youth and adults.

The department aimed to increase university enrolments from the current 899 120 to 1.5-million. It aims for about four-million enrolments in colleges or other post-school institutions, which is a six-fold increase over the numbers in 2011.

The Green Paper seeks to align the post-school education and training system with South Africa’s overall development agenda, including development strategies such as the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2, the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa 2010 to 2030, and DST’s Ten-Year Innovation Plan.