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Lessons to be learnt from the failure of the previous National Skills Development Strategies

The Management College of Southern Africa (MANCOSA) is actively working with several sector education and training authorities (Setas) on applied skills development research projects.

The spread of research consultation includes updating sector skills plans (SSPs), doing Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PESTEL) and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analyses, future skills studies, tracer studies, occupation-specific studies, occupational maps, skills audits, employer studies, validating scarce and critical skills, analysing workplace skills plans and training reports, impact studies on skills development interventions as well as developing impact study models.

Measuring skills shortages is not a perfect science. There is no universally applied or accepted definition of skills shortages. At best, we can only conceptualise problems, predict trends, identify patterns, make adjustments and formulate judgments on the basis of the weight of labour market and economic evidence rather than making point estimates that are invariably off the mark.

Research on these matters is highlighted with direct implications for the NSDS.

National Skills Development Strategy

The strategy is an important initiative because it supports – from a skills development perspective – the most important social and economic goals of the government in the areas of job creation, poverty alleviation, local economic development, industry competitiveness, rural economic development, development of small, medium and micro enterprises, and infrastructural expansion.

Therefore, the importance of the strategy for human capital development cannot be underestimated.

NSDS I came into effect between 2000 and 2005, and NSDS II between 2005 and 2010. The custodian of NSDS I and NSDS II was the Department of Labour (DoL), with Setas incentivising skills development in terms of clearly defined indicators and targets set out in these strategies.

However, the effectiveness and efficiency of these earlier strategies for upgrading the national workforce and improving the competitiveness of the economy have been questioned consistently.

Clearly, there are lessons one could learn from the mistakes of the previous strategies.

NSDS III is expected to be implemented from April 2011 to March 2016 under the auspices of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). This presents an excellent opportunity for stakeholders to create an NSDS that works for the citizens of the country in a way and manner that previous strategies did not.

The single most important challenge facing policy-makers, planners, organised labour and business is to ensure that NSDS III is informed by an empirical analysis of, and grounded in, the structural and contextual conditions of our economy and society – dynamism of the labour market and economy, industrial and economic policies, investment climate, industry growth trajectories, social and human development priorities, and so on.

This is necessary not merely to plug prevailing skills shortages, but to support the broader goals of the government such as halving unemployment and poverty and reducing inequality by 2014.

Lessons to be learnt from the mistakes of previous strategies

Understanding strategy constraints

There appeared to be a simplistic belief over the last decade that achieving numerical targets contained in the previous strategies would somehow translate into the elimination of skills shortages across the economy.

Indeed, targets were largely met, but the country continues to suffer from chronic skills shortages.

A major misconception is to take the view that the only way to remove skills shortages is to increase public investments in education and training. Training is a necessary but insufficient response, by itself, to alleviating skills shortages.

In instances where education and training are necessary to alleviate skills shortages, the range of provision in primary and secondary schooling, further education and training (FET) and tertiary education should be considered as part of a complete strategy. Setas on their own cannot be expected to resolve the national skills crisis, as so often demanded by its detractors.

The total education and training budget for 2011 is R165.1 billion (excluding skills levies, which would range between R7bn and R8bn per annum).

The major responsibility for skills development really lies with tertiary education (R23.3bn) and FET and Adult Basic Education and Training (R5.7bn), with schooling (R127bn) providing vital formative education to support vocational and occupational learning in later years.

Viewed from this perspective, the goals and objectives of NSDS III should take into consideration budgetary constraints as well as proportionality in total education and training spending.

In other words, NSDS III should demonstrate a sense of realism of what can and cannot be achieved. If we cannot solve the country skills crisis with a budget of R165.1bn, how it is possible to do so with R7bn to R8bn (skills levies)?

It is therefore important for the developers of NSDS III to determine the following at the outset in the construction of the strategy:

• Who develops the strategy? Who approves the strategy?

• What are the guiding principles (assumptions) underpinning the strategy?

• What are the purposes, goals and objectives of the strategy?

• What are the parameters of the strategy?

Prioritising research

The strategies – fashioned and approved by organised business, labour and government representatives – were not informed by iterative research.

Relevance, thoroughness, accuracy and statistics, so vital in framing a national skills response, appeared to have been overshadowed by a politically legitimating process with adverse consequences for investments in skills development.

Crafting any strategy, whether industrial or skills development, is essentially an analysis-driven exercise informed by research.

Decisions about what should be contained in a skills development strategy should, of necessity, be informed by data gathering and analyses of the macro- and micro-economic environments, labour market dynamics, major policy pronouncements and sectoral studies.

Systematic and rigorous research results in evidence-based policy-making downstream to achieve issue recognition, inform strategic choices, forecast future skills needs, monitor and measure strategy implementation and evaluate strategy impact. It also provides a measure of protection against the risks associated with the growing convergence of policy priorities among various government departments.

Without rigorous research, the strategy is reduced to a collection of speculative, untested assumptions and is exposed to the inevitable risk of irrelevance.

So the lesson is that stakeholders and the DHET should pay serious attention to ensuring the strategy is underpinned by rigorous research.

Policy and programme integration

NSDS I and NSDS II had not factored other important strategies of the government into its framework.

These include, but are not limited to, the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa, National Industrial Policy Framework, Customised Sector Programmes (CSPs), Science and Technology Strategy, National Strategy for the Promotion of Small Business and Black Economic Empowerment Strategy, and so forth. There is thus a vital need for integration between skills planning, economic planning and industrial planning.

This means that various government departments and industry partners should calibrate their efforts toward creating a skilled workforce.

The skills development agenda simply cannot be driven solely by the DHET when industry strategy is residing in other departments such as Trade and Industry, Sports and Recreation, Science and Technology, Health, Agriculture or Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

Ideally, skills development should fall within the realm of industry strategy.

Flexible strategy

NSDS I and NSDS II appeared not to recognise that industries are organised differently in terms of economic structure, employment and wages, markets, technology, skills profiles and work organisation. Likewise, the manners in which they respond to external shocks are different, as are, indeed, their linkages with each other.

This, in effect, creates a reasonable case for Setas to be given greater autonomy by the DHET to create seamless interfaces between skills development and industry strategy in collaboration with other allied government departments.

There is a need for regulated flexibility within an integrated planning framework to drive the skills agenda. A ‘one size fits all approach’, with a common set of performance indicators for different economic sectors, simply does not work.

For instance, a rigid five-year NSDS should give way to incremental planning based on changing industry priorities.

Setas, and the industries they represent, should be enabled to respond rapidly to new skills demands brought about by fast-changing market conditions, competition, economic restructuring, advancing technologies and process and product improvements and new legislation.

The quality of labour force statistics in South Africa is generally poor, and occupational statistics are of even poorer quality. A more comprehensive diagnostic framework should be developed in NSDS III to improve the quality of labour market information of state institutions and agencies to analyse skills supply and demand. Labour market information requirements are likely to increase and become more complex as the economy grows and integrates into global markets.

Throughout the world, a general criticism is that education and training institutions are not delivering the skills required by business both in terms of quality and quantity. This criticism applies equally to South Africa – unless, and until, concerted efforts are made to improve the research and analytical skills of users of labour market information, particularly planners and education.

Clarity of purpose

The structural framework of NSDS I and NSDS II comes across as excessive, inflexible, repetitive, overly complex, cumbersome, time consuming and thus unsustainable.

Simplicity, clarity, flexibility and trust should be the hallmarks of NSDS lll. Simplicity of language and structure will enhance ownership and participation.

Recognition of customised sector programmes

NSDS I and NSDS II appear to reinforce the disjuncture between various state departments and support agencies around human resource development (HRD) issues.

As an example, the Department of Trade and Industry has developed customised sector programmes for clothing and textiles and footwear and leather.

NSDS III should give sufficient flexibility for the respective Seta to frame its activities around the skills development imperatives outlined in the CSPs.

In other words, the skills strategy that underpins the work is informed by and resonates with the legitimate HRD needs of specific sectors. This is, in essence, a demand-driven approach to skills formation.

In summary, at an institutional level, it is necessary for the DoL to build an effective, efficient, relevant and reliable labour market information system for use by the public.

Such a system should make provision for provincial and local labour markets through the establishment of labour market information analysis at provincial levels. The capacity of stakeholders and general users of labour market information – such as education managers, planners, policy-makers, trade unionists, employers, community leaders and students – to use labour market information should be improved.

The DHET and its stakeholders have a real opportunity to develop a strategy that focuses on an analysis and evaluation of the problem as a first step toward devising meaningful and decisive ways to respond to the skills development challenges over the next five years.

In short, we require a strategy that works.

Professor Hoosen Rasool

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