Category: legislation

Adrienne Bird’s Book Published

MERSETA has now published Adrienne Bird’s book, From Sweeper to Engineer. You can access it via the front page of their website or down load it directly from this link.

It is a phenomenal piece of work but it does have an unfinished feel to it.

Darryl Mclean who was largely responsible for Chapter 12 made the point that, “Adrienne would never have published (it) as is.  She got to version 2.0, needed 4.0 before she’d have been happy. She did the baseline research, never fully got through analysis.”

In my last meeting with her, just a few weeks before she died we discussed some of the issues that are currently bedevilling the recognition of learning in and for the workplace. We couldn’t complete the conversation at the time and were going to discuss it at a later date, as I’m sure she would have done with the other people who contributed.

New BEE Codes for employing young people

The Codes of Good Practice for the Youth Employment Service (YES) were published on Tuesday.

You can download them from here

Companies can lift their levels of BEE recognition by meeting targets as laid out in the gazette.

The purpose is to create jobs for young black people.

[4.1 Only individuals who meet the below criteria are eligible for participation under the Y.E.S Initiative:
4.1.1 are between the ages of 18 and 35; and
4.1.2 meet the definition of “Black People” as defined in the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act 53 of 2003 as amended by Act 46 of 2013]

You can find out more about the YES campaign here.

Proposals for revised SETA Landscape

DHET has published a call for comments on a proposals to revise the SETA landscape. Download here.

In brief, a number of SETAs have been left as is, but there are proposals to consolidate a number of other SETAs:

  • Agri- and FoodBev
  • All three financial SETAs, Bank, In and FASSET
  • P, LG and EW SETAs
  • the two manufacturing SETAs, MER and FPM.

Comments are due by 20 September 2018.

Call for Comment on National Skills Development Plan 2030

DHET has a history of releasing important documents late in the year when so many are out of office. They’ve done it again with a call for comments on the proposed National Skills Development Plan 2030. The document was published on 15 December 2017!

It’s a long and intricate document with much to take in and digest. Seems SETAs still have a future.

—More to come, I’m still working through it. —

You can download it from: http://www.gpwonline.co.za/Gazettes/Gazettes/41332_15-12_HighEducation.pdf

Comments are due by 31 January 2018.

 

Draft Amendment of the NQF Act of 2008

DHET has published a bill to amend the NQF Act. Download

There’s whole lot of stuff related to private and foreign providers. But also a series of clauses related to fraudulent or misrepresented qualifications.

But the most alarming clauses are the following:

32A Obligations to report fraudulent qualifications
All education institutions and employers have a legal obligation to report fraudulent qualifications to SAQA.
32B Obligations to refer qualifications of employees to the SAQA
(1) All employers must refer qualifications of employees to SAQA for validation and verifications; and
(2) The employer must include an acknowledgement form signed by the purported holder of the qualification to publish the outcome of SAQA verification in the public domain in the event of invalid qualifications presented to the employer. ”

So with circa 11 million employees in the formal sector is SAQA going to be up to this task?

The bill also seems to make it easier for private providers and foreign-based providers to become part of the system.