Issued by Department of Education
13 February 2001
Introduction
Ministers, members of the diplomatic corps present at this briefing, members of the media, Ladies and Gentlemen, this briefing is not about education, as you know. Today I speak as a Minister having a joint responsibility with my colleague, the Minister of Labour, for driving the Human Resource Development Strategy of the government.
In his state of the nation address last week, the President referred to how our country is proceeding step by step from its painful past, and briefly described the past to which he was referring. One of the major characteristics of that past is the underdevelopment of the most important resource of our country, our people. The deliberate de-skilling and underdevelopment of the majority of our people was a major strategy to make our country one which was racially divided, a country of masters and servants, of endemic and wide spread poverty and gross imbalances in levels of development and the distribution of wealth, income and opportunity, as described by the President.
Human Resource Development at the centre of developments away from our past
If it is true that the main mechanism adopted by the past regime to keep our people racially divided was education and training, then surely any attempt to reverse that past must lie firmly in the deliberate reversal of its effects in and through education and training. In this regard the President acknowledged in his speech that “welcome progress is being made in the efforts to improve the quality of education, including the provision of infrastructure, consolidating the culture of learning and teaching, and introducing Adult Basic Education”.
While acknowledging this, the President also noted that much more needs to be done to improve our skills base. We begin from a very low skills base, which is skewed not only in racial and gender terms, but in the provision of skills that are critical for a competitive economy. If we do not address this skills base very urgently, we cannot and will not be able to achieve our national goals of economic growth, fighting poverty, and entrenching our democracy.
Therefore the adoption of a Human Resource Development Strategy by the government recently, is perhaps one of the most important steps in our fight against the effects of underdevelopment from our past, to which the President referred. As the President said, this strategy ‘ will enable us to launch an accelerated skills development programme for those areas that are critical to a more competitive economy’.
The Minister of Labour and I are still making plans for the public launch of the strategy. It is at this launch that we will unveil all the elements of the strategy in detail. In this briefing we will only concentrate on a few aspects of the strategy, especially those that were referred to by the President in his speech.
But before I take you through these elements, let me emphasise the importance of a human resource strategy for our country. This strategy comes at a time when important actions are being taken by the Departments of Education and Labour in particular, which need such a strategy as their point of anchor. The Department of Labour recently unveiled a skills development plan as adopted by Cabinet. In education we are almost ready with a national plan for higher education, which I will be taking to Cabinet on the 28 February this year. I do not want to say much about the higher education plan at this stage, except to say that everything about it responds to the Human Resource Strategy we are discussing today.
The Basic Framework underpinning our strategy
Now for the Human Resource Development Strategy. Firstly, our strategy is built on a framework which recognises the importance of ongoing interaction between the supply side, the demand side, as well as the innovation side of human resource development, with a careful balance between all of them. It is therefore a movement away from the now discredited manpower planning model, as we realise that short of magical and mystical powers of Sangomas throwing bones, we cannot predict with any precision what skills will be required by the economy in the future. Ours is therefore an approach that balances all elements of human resource development, supply, demand and innovation, underpinned by basic education. Such a balance, the strategy recognises, is a function of political choices to be made by Cabinet through its appropriate structures, and cannot be left on chance.
In other words, Cabinet needs to be able to take certain decisions to intervene in the development of our human resources, in order to direct the agencies responsible for supply and demand, to meet certain objectives. Therefore our strategy places decision making around human resource development firmly in the hands of Cabinet.
In order to make informed decisions, Cabinet needs reliable information, based on research and analysis. For this purpose Cabinet has approved the appointment of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)as a body to support the Human Resource Development Strategy through research and information gathering.
Five Strategic Objectives
As I said, I will not give much details at this stage. But I do want to mention that our strategy identifies five strategic objectives for the government and the country for the next twenty years in the area of HRD. These are:
Priorities for 2001/2002
1. A Focus on Scarce Skills
Within these objectives the government has identified five priority areas for 2001/2002. In his speech the President again referred to one of these. The President said that ‘immigration laws and procedures will be reviewed urgently to enable us to attract skills into our country”. This is one aspect that will be looked into within the governments prioritisation of the identification and the development of scarce skills in the economy. Our immigration policies still make it difficult to attract skills in areas where these are scarce in our own country.
I must say that the import of skills to address shortages is something done by many countries, even those that are said to be developed. The UK for example is out to recruit our teachers and nurses to meet their needs. Our country cannot be an exception in this regard. We therefore have to look at whether we can make it easier for people who bring skills we need in the country to immigrate.
I can immediately think of a number of academics who are providing critical services in our higher education institutions, who are still experiencing difficulties in immigration processes.
The government is therefore going to review our immigration policies and practices to make it possible for us to attract such skills. I must immediately stress that here we are more interested in skills that we as a country have identified as necessary, and have agreed that their import will empower both the economy and the production of those skills in our own country.
1.1 Identifying Scarce Skills
In order to identify where scarce but urgently needed skills are in the economy, all our Sector Education and Training Authorities together with relevant government Departments will be tasked with an urgent responsibility to identify scarce skills in their sectors. Already some work has been done in this regard, and we can already say that in the area of information technology and related fields, technology in general, and all skills related to the knowledge economy, in particular software engineering.
1.2 Creating Centres of of Excellence
Obviously when these are identified we will have to make certain interventions to ensure their accelerated production. In this regard the government will identify specific institutions in the higher education sector, that will be capacitated to produce such skills in an accelerated manner.
As part of our national plan for higher education for example, we will identify an institution, or institutions that will be developed into centres of excellence when it comes to Information and Communication Technology. I am pleased to say that the private sector has already shown active interest in this concept, and will join us in supporting this venture. Not only will we identify such institutions in higher education, but also within the Further Education and Training Band. We have already started work with the Business Trust to accelerate the identification and the development of certain FET institutions. Within that programme we will soon identify those that have to respond to the urgent production of identified scarce skills.
1.3 A firm and strong Maths and Science Base
Most of these skills require a very firm Mathematics and Science base at schools level. The numbers of students who are matriculating with Mathematics and Science are far too low to provide an adequate base. The government is therefore going to embark on a vigorous intervention strategy to improve participation and success rates in Mathematics and Science. Details of the intervention are provided in a separate sheet of paper given to you. You will see that it also involves targeting certain institutions to make them centres of excellence for Maths, Science, and Technology.
1.4 Learnerships to promote intermediate scarce skills
The National Skills Development Strategy puts a target of 80000 completed learnerships by 2005. The Departments of Labour and Education are therefore going to identify learners and providers for the provision of up to 3000 learnerships in this year. These shall be funded through the skills development levy and other sources of funding. The President referred to learnerships in his speech, especially as regards to tourism. These are meant to kick start the learnership programme, but we will ensure that some learnerships are developed in the identified areas of need and shortage.
2. Other priorities
I have spent some time on the matter of scarce skills, since direct reference is made to it in the President speech. However there are 4 other priorities for 2001/2002. These are:
Details of programmes around these areas will be announced by relevant Departments when they unfold their own programmes.
Conclusion
As I said earlier, the idea today was just to give you some sense of what our Human Resource Development Programme is all about. We will launch the programme very soon, and you will be provided with copies of the programme. My two colleagues will now elaborate on specific matters as referred to in the President’s speech, including the matter of research and innovation, and some elements of the labour market.
Thank you.