Address by the Minister of Higher Education and Training B Nzimande to the Delegates Of

Address by the Minister of Higher Education and Training B Nzimande to the delegates of the South African College Principals' Organisation #SACPO# Financial Workshop, Cape Town

17 August 2009

The Chairperson of South African College Principals' Organisation #SACPO#, Mr JJ Mbana
SACPO office bearers
Principals of Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges
Members of college staff
Departmental officials,
Invited guests,
Ladies and gentlemen

I am delighted to be here today to share some of my thoughts with you on the mandate of the FET college sector in the next five-years. This is the first time that I have the honour and pleasure of meeting with the management of the FET colleges and I look forward to a long and fruitful association with you - working together to do more to meet the skills needs of our people.

Before I proceed with the core of my message today, I must first congratulate you as college managers on the following major achievements in the sector that would not have happened without your able leadership:

1. The successful process of technical college mergers that resulted into the new college landscape with 50 mega institutions and 236 campuses.
2. The successful implementation of the R1,9 billion FET colleges Recapitalisation Conditional Grant, which has transformed the face of the FET College Sector.
3. The gradual achievement of enrolment targets in the priority skills programmes from 25 073 in 2007, 61 000 in 2008 and 123 000 in 2009.
4. The sustained efforts at implementing student support services framework in colleges, including: student recruitment, selection and placement, academic support, job placement, as well student tracking.
5. The implementation, for the first time in this country, of the bursary scheme for the FET college students, which benefited 12 000 students in 2007 and 36 000 students 2008.

At my meeting with the SACPO's National Executive Committee on 13 August 2009, SACPO raised a number of pertinent issues, which I wish to address today, which include:

* the mandate of FET colleges in the next five years
* the current funding framework of FET colleges
* the implementation of the Occupation-Specific Dispensation for college staff, as well as
* the transitional arrangements for transferring the FET colleges from provincial to national jurisdiction under the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).

With respect to the mandate of FET colleges, you will recall that in his State of the Nation address, the President identified FET colleges as primary sites for skills development over the next five years. In addition, FET colleges have been identified as the key institutions to broaden post-school education and training opportunities. In this respect, FET colleges must play a significant role in providing training opportunities for school-leavers including matriculants, who may not be admitted at our higher education institutions for whatever reasons.

To achieve their role government will support FET colleges and Sector Education and Training Authorities to link with communities, business and labour, and other advanced education training programmes to strengthen management capacity to respond to and involve all stakeholders more meaningfully.

Government will put measures in place to ensure FET colleges are able to recruit and retain highly skilled and experienced lecturers, provide and support staff development to, among others, ensure that FET lecturers link classroom experiences with practical, workplace-based learning experiences.

FET colleges must, with the support of government, strengthen their capacity to partner with other governmental agencies and civil society programmes to create and incubate small enterprises. Some colleges are advanced in this respect. Twelve FET colleges have been identified for this purpose to participate in the US-South Africa Partnership for Skills Development. I hope that this will also focus on cooperatives and the private sector as partners for the colleges.

To support FET colleges, Government (particularly my department) will put in place mechanisms to ensure better coordination and integration of the relevant government departments and agencies that are responsible for skills development, including engagement about the role that State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) can play in this regard.

While government is committed to support FET colleges to realize their mission, FET colleges must increase their efforts to ensure that training and skills development initiatives in the sector respond to the requirements of the economy as a whole, rural development challenges in particular and social integration.

They must work hard to increase the number of students in priority skills areas such as design, engineering and artisanship categories that are critical to manufacturing, construction, cultural activities and other priority economic sectors so that they are able to achieve the target of one million students by 2014, as set out in the National Plan for Further Education and Training Colleges.

Skills development programmes implemented at the colleges must also aim at equipping the unemployed and vulnerable with requisite skills to overcome poverty and unemployment. Within the framework of the three year strategic planning cycle, FET colleges will have to develop niche areas of specialisation to reflect local and regional needs. In designing and implementing specialist programmes FET colleges must work closely with Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs). The sector skills plans and analysis of work place skills plans will provide invaluable data about trends in the labour market and the emergence of skills needs.

I believe that SETAs and the colleges must now develop strong and cohesive partnerships to address issues of demand. Strengthening the introduction of apprenticeships, learnerships and skills programmes also offer the FET colleges' significant opportunities to work directly with SETAs and employers to improve South Africa's skills base. The FET colleges must be alive to the developments and opportunities within the economy and so become important contributors to the successful achievement of the skills targets set out in the National Skills Development Strategy III.

In order to move in this direction the National Certificate (Vocational) was introduced to the colleges and the NATED courses (N1 TO N6) are in the process of being phased out. In some of my interactions with College leaders, employers and other stakeholders, I have come across different views on the wisdom of these changes to the college curriculum and I would appreciate hearing more your views on this issue, together with your reasons for holding these views.

I am aware that I have been asking a lot from you and also that not every college will be able to introduce a comprehensive set of curricula and partnerships immediately. However, all should develop long term plans to turn themselves into flexible providers of a variety of long and short courses to prepare the youth for the labour market or to upgrade the skills of employed and unemployed workers.

My department will also develop its own capacity to assist you with these plans and with obtaining the funding required to implementing them. Such funding cannot come entirely from the DHET which does not have the budget to meet all its needs. But both the colleges and the DHET will have to develop our capacity to access funding from other agencies e.g. other government departments, parastatals and private companies.

The current funding framework of FET colleges

In March 2009, my predecessor Mrs Naledi Pandor approved, with the concurrence of the Minister of Finance, the funding framework for FET colleges called the National Norms and Standard for Funding FET Colleges. The aim of this funding framework is to ensure (a) the expansion of the sector (b) relevance of programmes (c) equity and redress (d) transparency, quality and efficiency as well as (e) decentralised management.

To ensure access, equity and redress and relevance, the framework provides for (a) capping of colleges fees at 20% of the programme cost (b) government subsidy of 80% in each priority skills programme listed on the national register of programmes approved by the Minister of Higher Education and Training.

The register of nationally approved programmes is revised on an annual basis to take into account new programmes that may be identified at the request of different stakeholders and developed by the department and approved by the Minister of Higher Education and Training.

This means that any programme whose unique socio-economic purpose is identified and is developed to meet the education and training quality standards of the Department of Higher Education and Training can readily be added to the list in the register and funded in accordance with this funding framework.

The implementation of the occupation-specific dispensation for college staff

Part of the focus of my Department is to ensure that Colleges are able to put measures in place to recruit and retain highly skilled and experienced lecturers. In this regard, it is envisaged that the current lecturing staff will benefit from an interim relief package, which will bring them on par with the OSD in schools. Subject to agreement with the labour unions and the provincial Departments of Education, the intention is to back-date this to 1 January 2008. I must ensure that that every lecturer, who elected to change to the college as an employer is not prejudiced by such a decision.

Further, my department, in collaboration with college councils, is actively developing a career path model for the lecturing staff, which is to be unique to the FET college sector. It is envisaged that this approach will allow lecturers to benefit from their performance. The model has three components. The first is a potential 1,5% increase per year for good performance. The second is the possibility for a four-notch increase every three years if the overall assessment over that period indicates excellent performance. The third is an additional two notches in every fifth and seventh year for continuous outstanding performance.

In the case of the latter, the designation of the lecturer would change to that of lecturing specialist and senior lecturing specialist respectively. These initiatives are subject to securing a government mandate and are currently under discussion in the various labour forums of the ELRC. I have instructed my Officials to expedite the conclusion of all these processes as a matter of urgency so that, subject to government mandate and agreement with labour unions, they can be implemented by April 2010.

Transitional arrangements

In his announcement of the Cabinet ministers and government departments, the President announced the establishment of the new Ministry and Department of Higher Education and Training. This Department was formally established in law in terms of the Presidential Minute No. 690 of 6 July 2009. Under Proclamation No. 44 of 1 July 2009, the concurrent functions under the FET colleges Act, 2006 were transferred from the Minister of Education to the Minister of Higher Education and Training. The President has also recently signed the proclamation transferring all relevant skills legislation to the DHET.

At a special CEM meeting of 28 July 2009, the MECs of Education and I discussed Cabinet's decision to transfer the concurrent functions under the FET colleges Act, 2006 and Schedule IV of the Constitution to the exclusive competency of the Ministry and Department of Higher Education and Training.

In order to assist me with the oversight over the transfer, I have established a Transfer Oversight Committee (TOC) comprising the Programme Heads of Planning, FET, Higher Education and one HOD nominated by HEDCOM.

To advise me on the technical details of the transfer, six technical tasks teams have been established to focus on the following:

a) legislation matters
b) institutional support (governance, management, information and data collection, it support)
c) funding/finance
d) staffing and human resource matters
e) student enrolment and support
f) programmes, qualifications and assessment

While each Technical Task Team must develop a comprehensive set of the Terms of Reference for its work based on its expertise, understanding, experience and knowledge of its focus area, the Task Teams have been given the following broad brief:

Based on the assumption that the transfer must take place on 1 April 2010, each Task Team must:

- Determine the scope of its work, i.e. what areas must it focus its attention on.
- Conduct an investigation to determine all the functions that must be transferred within the area of it focus.
- Taking into account different scenarios, advice on the level of capacity that is required for the colleges and/or the Department of Higher Education and Training to ensure a smooth transfer.
- Advise on the required transitional arrangements.

I have also requested the MECs of Education to start the discussion at provincial level on the implications of the transfer and how best to manage the whole process. To ensure that the process is as inclusive as possible, the HEDCOM Sub-committee has been invited to make written submissions to the Technical Task Teams for my consideration. Similarly, I wish to take this opportunity to invite you make written submission on this process, to ensure that we do not lose sight of any element that may be crucial to the smooth transfer.

In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I look forward to your continued contribution to strengthening the human resource and skill development base to improve the lives of our people. Let us join hands to broaden quality post-school education and training opportunities. In this way, we shall be able to meet our enrolment target of one million students and a 60 to 80% throughput rate by 2014.

I wish you the best for your workshop and that the successful achievement of its objectives of financial planning for "the ideal college" will serve you well in meeting your mandate as also set out in this input today.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Higher Education and Training
17 August 2009