FINANCING OF TRAINING PUBLICATION RELEASED BY NEDLAC

Issued by: National Economic Development and Labour Council

As a prelude to negotiations beginning in the Trade and Industry Chamber on the financing of training in South Africa, the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) has just released a report called Financing of Training - The International Experience.

"It is a condensed and popularly-written version of comprehensive research commissioned earlier by Nedlac. We are hoping this format will encourage and assist constituencies to debate the options," says Nedlac Executive Director Jayendra Naidoo.

"The publication is directed at workers and managers and could easily be used by policy makers at grass-roots levels to popularise the issues around training policy," he says.

The 24-page publication examines the experiences around training in eight countries - United Kingdom, New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, Australia, Mauritius, Malaysia and South Korea - and identifies eight common factors which impact on the financing of training internationally.

These include:

• establishing a well-defined theoretical framework within which to locate the training debate;
• considering the context in which training is to be carried out (including prevailing attitudes, stage of economic development and the quality of basic education);
• defining the beneficiaries of training (ie, employees of small, medium and large companies, unemployed, pre-employed, youth and disadvantaged groups);
• raising the level of company-based productivity-enhancing training to cope with technological changes and increasing international competitiveness;
• creating different funding mechanisms according to their effectiveness in responding to the needs of different segments of the labour market;
• establishing training governance mechanisms to ensure responsiveness to the skill requirements of various sectors of the economy and society;
• developing performance indicators to measure the effectiveness of all training undertaken; and
• encouraging competitiveness in the provision of training without losing control over the quality of provision.

"The experience of other countries shows that a critical component of successful development and competitiveness is human resource development. Without a well-trained workforce and high productivity, South Africa's economic goals have little chance of being met," Naidoo says.

"By putting the subject of training and the financing of training of Nedlac's agenda, it is clear there is a high degree of acceptance of the vital role training has to play in the development of our economy. What we need to do now is to find a way to make it sustainable, viable and effective," he says.

Financing of Training - The International Experience is available on request from Tsholo Lelaka at Nedlac, phone (011) 482-2511 or fax (011) 482-4650.