David Macfarlane
An empty Department of Education stall at the Department of Labour’s national skills development conference last week spotlight- ed the degree of cooperation between the two departments.
Speaker after speaker at the conference highlighted the criti- cal need for close collaboration between the departments of labour and education, if the national skills development strategy is to have any chance of bearing fruit.
But while the labour department was holding its most significant conference yet, the education department was hosting its own major conference, Saamtrek: Values, Education and Democracy.
“Collaboration between labour and education has never been more important than now,” Adrienne Bird, chief director of employment and skills development services in the Department of Labour, told the Mail & Guardian at the skills conference. “Under apartheid, training became confined to ‘apprenticeship’ and education wanted nothing to do with that.
“So the relationship between labour and education broke down, which meant that the relation between education and the market also broke down. We must now heal this split the division between education and training is artificial.”
“There is a problem,” said Professor Roy du Pr, the executive director of the Committee of Technikon Principals.
“Labour and education are not collaborating effectively, with one hand of government not knowing what the other is doing.”
Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said in January that the “skills revolution” requires that the departments of labour and education work closely together, and that there has been “improved communication” between the two.
“It is probably fair to say the relationship between the two departments has never been better,” says Minister of Education Kader Asmal. “My officials and those from labour have worked closely together on … various aspects of the national skills strategy.”
Private education providers are among the most vociferous in expressing frustration and anger at the education department. “Why,” asks one private representative, “are there no private representatives on the National Board for Further Education and Training?”
“We provide the bulk of vocational training, which is central to the skills strategy,” he says, “but the department’s registra-tion procedures discriminate against private providers. Some registration criteria are irrelevant to private institutions. And the process is very slow.”