'Guidance is neglected'

A LACK of career guidance for youths has been blamed as a contributing factor to the skills shortage in the country

John Botha, executive director for strategy at private higher learning institution Production Management Institute (PMI), said the country had overlooked this aspect of education.

"South Africa has the institutional arrangements in place to fund, implement and coordinate skills development but the delivery of certified skills into the economy is not taking place," he said.

"The reason for this is that career guidance, assessment and induction are not quality-driven processes with national priority status. These very basic steps have been neglected at the systemic level and are certainly not being adequately dealt with at institutional level.

"Yet they are fundamental building blocks for successful career path development, for the production of formal qualifications and for advancing our national skills base."

He said learnerships were a good example to illustrate his view and were "the most meaningful job creation intervention yet. The national learnership certification rate is around 34percent, yet the cost per learnership is well over R40000 a learner.

"If the process of learner career guidance, counselling, assessment, induction and quality-driven practices are not standard elements of implementing national priorities around skills, the skills deficit in South Africa - together with unemployment - will simply continue to grow."

Botha said he believed the government had sufficient funds to drive skills development between Sector Education and Training Authorities, employers, the National Skills Fund and Industrial Development Corporation.

"We have several 'national interest' programmes that have identified employment, poverty, skills development and economic growth as critical, and we have enough - possibly even too many - institutions dedicated to addressing these matters," he said.

"These institutions include Nedlac, the Setas and Artisan Forums. Yet, it is often the case that learners are contracted on learnerships and apprenticeships without any prior professional assessment."

Botha said pupils needed to be assessed in areas such as cognitive ability, personality, emotional maturity and competence, before being placed into a programme.

"It is only once this full set of appropriate assessments have been administered that accurate and effective learner selection can take place."

He said it was pointless to place a learner into a field of study without having established her overall 'DNA' which portrayed his or her natural talents.