Education and Employment News from South Africa
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Neo-liberal gibberish no answer to the challenge of youth unemployment
- Buti Manamela
Buti Manamela
23 September 2014
Deputy minister responds to DA MP Michael Cardo's comments on the recent
StatsSA report
"........Grade 12 mathematics teachers are being trained on new Mathematics
topics including Euclidian Geometry and Probability......"
*Youth unemployment is a collective challenge requiring collective action
instead of political posturing and neo-liberal gibberish*
On Tuesday, after we received the statistics from STATS SA (Employment,
Unemployment, Skills and Economic Growth) our country was met with the bold
words shouting *"skills level of young black adults has regressed post
1994."*
These are the headlines Michael Cardo of the Democratic Alliance uses in
order to draw attention to the DA Youth Employment Plan, or rather, a
rehash of existing government plan coated in neo-liberal gibberish.
Such as is the case with in oppositional, non-transformative and
non-visionary politics, the person designated to man-mark me in the DA
completely missed the point and tied his tongue to repeat the same hogwash
the DA has become known for: "The ANC has failed", "nothing has changed",
"please vote for us".
I say this because this headline is a complete misrepresentation of the
facts contained in the report. Even as we question the *wisdom *of
comparing the 1994 Household Survey to the 2014 Quarterly Labour Force
Survey, it cannot be that skills levels amongst Africans have regressed
since 1994.
According to the three censuses held during the democratic dispensation,
the black African population group proportion of persons with higher
education has more than doubled between 1996 and 2011 (from 3.6% in 1996 to
8.3% in 2011). Black Africans who have completed Grade 12 increased from
12.0% in 1996 to 26.9% in 2011. Black Africans made up 50.2% of students in
tertiary institutions in 1995 which increased to 67.2% in 2012. The entire
population with no schooling more than halved during the same period for
the black Africans, Coloureds and Indians.
So to suggest that skills acquisition is on the decline for Africans cannot
be true, unless we are saying it is only Africans beyond the ages of 35 who
enroll at institutions of further and higher education.
It cannot also be true that the skills levels of young black adults has
regressed under the ANC, and indeed the STATS SA report does not say that,
rather it says "the gains made in the proportion of skills were highly
uneven...the gains made in the African population were marginal."
If Cardo has reached page 5 of the report he would have noted that "between
1994 and 2014 there was an increase in the proportion of skilled employment
in all population groups."
The extent of the increase, however, was vastly different. The lowest
increase took place within the black African population, from 15.1% to
17.1% an increase of 2.9%....compared to 19.3 percentage points within the
white population.
We cannot assume, as Cardo flippantly does, that the reason for the low
increase in skills employment was because there are no skilled Africans to
employ. That may not be the case. Could it alternatively be true that the
lack of social capital means that it takes longer for Africans to be
employed even when skilled?
How much of this phenomenon contributes to the fact that the employment
composition of skilled Africans is less than 50% whilst the employment
composition of skilled Indians and whites is over 60%? Is it possible that
as Africans now have become skilled the game plan for getting employed has
changed and "a new form of racial inequality has emerged, operating not
directly on income as in the heyday of job reservation, influx control and
school segregation, but indirectly, through inequality in the rewards to
effort, as witnessed by sharply divergent patterns in the returns to
education between the race.
At the end of Apartheid the rate of return to education stood at
approximately 11% for both races. A decade later however, the return to
education for whites stood at a dramatic 43%, whilst that of Africans
declined to about 7%, and unless proven otherwise, race clearly plays a
strong role in determining how educational attainment comes to be valued in
the labour market"(Keswell 2004: 2).
Initial investigations done by the Development Policy Research Unit at the
University of Cape Town and the University of Johannesburg seem to confirm
that Africans are finding it harder to be absorbed in the labour market
than their white colleagues with similar qualifications and from same
universities. (DPRU 2012) To what extent does this factor contribute to the
low skilled employment composition for Africans?
It is true though that for the massive resources that government puts into
basic education and post school education and training, the results are not
encouraging. It is for this reason that the state has various initiatives
to improve the quality of basic education for all learners, and not for a
chosen few.
Besides building schools and eradicating Apartheid induced school
infrastructure backlogs, the quality teaching is being strengthened because
we agree that teaching is one of the most important determinants of learner
performance. In pursuance of the ANC Election's Manifesto commitment to
ensure the right teacher in front of learners in each subject, through
better teacher deployment, utilization and development, the following
interventions have been instituted:
1. There is a proactive recruitment of young people into teaching through
Funza Lushaka bursary scheme and their placement in provinces and districts;
2. The teacher resource centres are revitalised with technology resourcing
and digital material to provide district level support to teachers. In
addition, subject committees have been established to improve peer to
specialist teacher development, and Communities of Practice among teaching
professionals nationally. The National Education Collaboration Trust also
assists with teacher training.
3. Grade 12 mathematics teachers are being trained on new Mathematics
topics including Euclidian Geometry and Probability to enable them to
improve performance in the National Senior Certificate and expand
post-school opportunities for study. Primary school teachers are being
trained to teach English First Additional Language in collaboration with
the British Council.
Building on our experience of the role of technology as a tool of trade in
the education sector, the use of Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) in administration and in the classroom is pivotal to leapfrog
learners and teachers into a brave new world of expanded possibilities for
schooling and materials.
In line with the manifesto priority of improving participation, performance
and the pipeline in Mathematics, Science and Technology (MST) an audit of
provincial MST Institutes has been conducted and it indicates that certain
provinces are in good position to establish their own institutes with
support from the Department of Basic Education. Interventions for improving
Grade 9 Mathematics are being implemented.
In the next five years, the focus will be on improving participation and
the pass rate in MST increasing the number of learners registering for
Mathematics. This includes supporting learners to make better subject
choices for Grade 10-12 learners (especially girls and African learners).
The skills development regime is also being transformed. The artisan
training programmes of the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have been
revived, and the SOEs are now once again major contributors to the supply
of artisans. In only two years between 2011 and 2013 SOEs trained 4 740
artisans. Both SOEs and the private sector have been constrained by the
lack of adequate, sustainable, guaranteed funding from the SETAs and the
National Skills Fund (NSF), as well as the lack of a single artisan learner
administration and grant disbursement system across the SETAs. Government
has recently addressed these blockages by directing SETAs, in new grant
regulations, to use 80 percent of their discretionary grants for pivotal
programmes, of which artisan training is a major part.
Similarly, government departments have also been identified as important
spaces for skills development (every work space a learning space). To this
end Outcome 12 of the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) indicates that
the Public service has a responsibility to build the skills base for its
capacity needs both now and in the future and to contribute towards
employment creation and ensure that public sector workplaces become
training spaces where entrants are adequately supported in order to develop
their skills for employment within the public service or the private
sector. It is therefore targeted that by 2019, 20 000 youth would be
appointed to learnership and internship per year.
However, the building of skills is not the sole responsibility of
government but requires an active role by the private sector, hence
government has entered into accords like the Skills Accord which seeks to
open the private sector for internship and learning experiences. The MTSF
targets that 140 000 youth will be appointed to learnership and internship
by 2019.
The Levy Grant Regulation has been revised in order to provide a conducive
scope for employers to take in unemployed graduates. It is important to
note that there are varying levels of capacity within the 21 SETAs in terms
of governance, management, responsiveness and financial status.
Therefore blanket generalisations about SETA capacity as so often seems to
happen in public debates and in the media does not reflect the current
situation of the SETA system. The Grant Regulation sets to reduce the
Mandatory Grant to 20%, and increases the Discretionary Grant to 49.5%. 80%
of the Discretionary Grant should be ring -fenced for the PIVOTAL grant
(professional placements, workâintegrated learning, apprenticeships,
learner ships, internships, skills programmes, and work experience
placements).
This changes the way in which the SETAs allocate skills development grants,
for example, discretionary funding must be directed towards programmes that
support artisan training and other scarce occupational qualifications. It
further prescribes the way in which the administrative monies may be spent,
and requires that the SETAs transfer a maximum of 0.5% of the total levy
received by a SETA to the Quality Council for Trade and Occupations (QCTO)
for quality assurance functions as contemplated in section 26H of the Act.
The financial aid for University and Technical Vocation Education and
Training (TVET) college students in the past 5 years has increased from
R3,1 billion for 191 040 students in 2009 and R8 billion for over 400 000
students in 2013. However National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), is
faced with numerous challenges such as an increasing demand associated with
increase in students enrolments, the impact of annual (above CPI) student
fee increases puts pressure on student financial aid.
NSFAS has implemented a new student centred model which became effective in
October 2013. It focuses on the management and administration of bursaries
and loans in public education institutions. This new model is currently
being piloted in 6 universities and 5 TVET colleges for the 2014 academic
year and will be phased in for the rest of the public education
institutions over a period of 5 years. The model seeks to ensure that there
is adequate funding available for student assistance and secondly there are
fair, effective and transparent policies to govern and administer the NSFAS.
To conclude, it is important to understand where we come from as a nation,
appreciate the progress we have made, inform ourselves on the very public
documents of how government is trying to improve the lot of all the people
of South Africa and contribute positively by giving extremely innovative
solutions instead of rehashing existing initiatives and declaring them as
new. And as we said when accepting the STATS SA report, the report is very
welcome and it together with other reports will inform the youth policy
review process within the ambit of the National Development Plan (NDP) for
the creation of 11 million net jobs.
*>> Buti Manamela is a member of the ANC PEC in Limpopo and Deputy Minister
in the Presidency: Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. *
*This article first appeared in ANC Today, the online newsletter of the
African National Congress.*
*Click **here*
<http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71674>* to
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