Address by the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, MP, at the launch of "Trends in Public Higher Education, 1995 to 2004," an analysis of the South African Qualification Authority's (Saqa's) National Learners' Record Database, Pretoria

Professor Shirley Walters, Chairperson of SAQA,
Ladies and gentlemen

It gives me great pleasure to launch the second "Trends in Public Higher Education" report. Three years ago, in 2004, I launched the first report of this series. It bears repeating to begin with, for those unfamiliar the National Learners' Records Database, what the purpose of collecting the educational information on the database is. This rich information serves three main purposes. First, it informs governmental research and decision-making in terms of the labour market and education and training. The Database can tell us, for example, how many doctors or engineers are available in South Africa, what one can call the pool of doctors or engineers.

Second, the collection of all this information into a database enables individual learners to verify their own achievements or to request their verification by potential/current employers and/or employment agencies. And third, it provides unemployed graduates with a portal through which they can access and disseminate their own achievements in a regulated manner. The National Learners Records Database is maintained and developed by the South African Qualifications Authority (Saqa) in support of the transformation of our education and training system. The Database will eventually contain a complete record of the formal learning achievements of all South Africans.

Currently the Database contains information on 20 million learning achievements of 7,5 million students and a register of approximately 8 000 qualifications and 10 000 unit standards. The current publication highlights qualifications by types, National Qualifications Framework (NQF) levels, population groups, gender, and fields of study for the period 1995-2004. The focus of the report is on qualifications awarded, which effectively means reporting on the number of graduates. In 1995 there were 542 398 graduates in the available pool. Ten years later, in 2004 that pool of graduates had grown to 1,18 million.

In 1995 only one in four in the pool was a black graduate. In 2004 two in four were black graduates. So that statistic is a clear measure of the success of our policies in widening access to higher education. Yet the depth of the historical legacy of apartheid damage and distortion is evident in the simple fact that the majority of black graduates are in the social sciences and not in the engineering sciences and technology. Another statistic of the success of our policies is in the growing number of women graduates. While their increase is not as striking as the increase in the number of black graduates, currently two in four graduates in the pool are women. In the fields of study, the largest growth was in Business and Management Sciences, while the lowest growth was in Health Sciences and in Engineering Sciences and Technology. Together with universities we have targets in our recently completed student enrolment planning process, these occupation specific categories will change over time. What we are free to do here today is simply to celebrate the growth in the number of graduates.

Completion of tertiary education greatly improves ones chances of successful employment. South Africa's high unemployment rate creates an environment that increases the demand for tertiary education. The interconnections between education and labour demand and supply or the labour market are complex. More generally, though, the appetite of the South African labour market for better skilled workers is well known and well documented. The observed trend of employment losses or stagnation in lower skilled occupations and employment expansion amongst more highly skilled occupations is not a new phenomenon, having been occurring since at least the 1970s.

However, information from household surveys confirms what the information collected on the database tells us. Between 1995 and 2003, there were distinct improvements in the level of education obtained by labour force participants, particularly those in the 25 to 34 year age group.

The most significant change for this age-group over the period was the rapid increase in the proportion of labour force participants in possession of at least a matric certificate from 36,7 percent in 1995 to 45,0 percent in 2003. These figures indicate that in the post-apartheid era, the education system has significantly altered the educational profile of those individuals who are entering the labour force. The obvious point is that we need more matriculants if we are to increase the number of graduates in the available pool. In closing, I would like to thank members of Saqa for their hard work in the production of this new edition of trends in higher education and to Professor Shirley Walters for her leadership.

I thank you.

Available means the number of individuals with qualifications in a particular field. A person may have an Honours Degree, a Masters Degree and a Doctorate, but she is counted only once in the available field. However, if she has degrees in different fields, she is counted in each field. In this report, trends refer to the number of qualifications conferred in a particular year. Department of Education (DoE), The Monitoring and Evaluation Report on the impact and outcomes of the Education System on South Africa's Population: Evidence from household surveys (September 2006).

Issued by: Department of Education
15 June 2007