Skills development on the move to Higher Education & Training.

The national elections have come and gone with all the campaigns and promises to match. The split of the Education Department came as no suprise, as many educators and trainers have felt strongly that it was too cumbersome a portfolio for one department to handle. From early childhood development (ECD) through to workplace education and training it was a great challenge for Naledi Pandor to drive. Particularly because of the separation of powers with regards to the provincial departments which act fairly autonomously from the National Department and have proven to be rather badly managed. Ongoing logistical support problems for schools and colleges have been the order of the day for quite some time.

Our keen interest lies with Dr. Nzimande who as an ex-academic himself from the University of Natal heads into the hot seat driving both higher education as well as workplace training. A recent insider tip has skills development and its related organs all falling under his new department. Thus severing the ties with the Department of Labour and its key role in actively managing the skills development process in South Africa.

With the rather intricate legal mechanisms in place there will no doubts be a overhaul or series of major amendments to all the skills development, further education and high education acts to reflect this change. What does this all mean for us out there? Well it looks like the Sector Education & Training Authoritie's will fall under the new Higher Education and Training Ministry and that the skills levies and supporting funds like the National Skills Fund will be realigned to implement the new reality.

We can only congratulate the new Minister and wish him and his team the best of luck. We look forward to a more focused and integrated era under his watch. Hopefully some of the issues that plagued the Department of Labour (DoL)and the Department of Education (DoE) historically will not be a feature of the new structure moving forward. In my view policy development and project planning expertise has been lacking in both departments for quite sometime and a focus on integrated and joined-up policy is needed. Knowing that the new National Planning Commission is housed within the Office of the Presidency driven by Trevor Manuel provides some relief in sight for me. But rather than focusing on planning the concept of an integrated monitoring and evaluation system also housed within the Office of the Presidency provides even more hope. It is within that realm that skills development and training has suffered due to teh late detection of implementation issues of various public-led training projects. Particularly learnerships and related activities. It will be very interesting to see how the existing education and training quality assurance (ETQA) framework will contribute to the state led monitoring and evaluation (M & E) mechanisms.

Until then we are moving into our last month before submitting Workplace Skills Plans (WSP) and Annual Training Reports (ATR) to our respective SETA's. If you have not done so yet, I would sincerly suggest that you start your workplace training needs planning for the year ahead. Bear in mind that the skills levy and grant cycle runs from 30 June to 30 June over a twelve month period. So your plans for 2009-2010 and your report for the year 2008-2009 are almost due.

Make sure you have your registered skills development facilitator (SDF) working on it for you. A first step is designing a training needs analysis tool and reviewing the SETA template for the WSP submission which have all been loaded up on to the various SETA websites. If you are a large organisation you should be scheduling a training committee meeting to examine the companies training needs. I will be posting some more tips on skills and training planning for you all shortly.