It’s been revealed that only one in 10 learners who register for sector education and training authority (Seta) learnerships finish their courses.
National Skills Authority data up to June this year show that only 9 502 of a total of 70 000 of registered learners have completed their learnerships since the system was implemented in March 2001. These figures equate to a completion rate of 14%
”I am absolutely convinced that there is a breakdown developing between the levels of learnership registrations and the level of completions,” said Paul Lundall, a senior researcher in skills development at the University of Cape Town’s Development Policy Research Unit. ”While the learnership registrations are close to the 80 000 target [for March 2005], it does not change the fact that the completion rates are hovering, and will probably continue to hover, at the 10% mark,” said Lundall.
Figures released last year are also gloomy. The National Skills Development Strategy Implementation Report for April 2002 to March 2003 shows that only 4 008 of the 25 341 learners who registered completed their learnership — only 15,8%.
Stakeholders across the board concur that one of the primary reasons is that small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) cannot afford to cut through the layers of red tape to implement learnerships as effortlessly as large corporations do.
”We are finding it incredibly difficult to get learnerships implemented among SMMEs because the requirements for accreditation as a training provider are particularly onerous,” said Dr Hoosain Rasool, CEO of the textiles seta. ”The infrastructural and human resource requirements and the cost that is incurred on an SMME to accredit simply militate against them becoming workplace training providers. It is a matter that urgently needs to be addressed.”
Eighty percent of companies in the clothing, textile and leather sector are SMMEs. Many of them have been struggling since the South African economy began shifting towards the services and top-end manufacturing sectors, catching South Africa in a skills shortage trap that, ironically, the SMMEs cannot afford to tackle.
Only 10% have implemented learnership systems and a meagre 3,2%, with fewer than 50 employees, have workplace learnerships.
The National Small Business Amendment Bill classifies businesses that employ up to 200 employees as medium, those that employ up to 50 employees as small and those that employ up to 20 people as micro.
”The Department of Labour thought out a great [skills development] system but they think that a small business is a mini version of a large business,” said Barrie Terblanche, the editor of Big News for the Business Owner.
”It is a tax for small businesses and an incentive for large businesses and it is a fact that small businesses are not taking up the incentives offered by the skills development system”.
Every employer whose annual payroll exceeds R250 000 has to register with a Seta and pay a monthly payroll tax of 1% to the skills levy — a R2-billion pot that finances the scheme.
Each company can then reclaim up to 50% of its levies, and ”if the candidates flounder [they] treat it as a tough loss”, said Lundall.
Carol O’Brien, manager of small business at the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob), said, ”The administrative burden for SMMEs to implement learnerships is immense. We [Sacob] do a lot of the paperwork for our members and let me tell you that I can’t see any SMME getting to grips with it, particularly because education and training are not part of their core business.”
O’Brien also puts the onus for the low completion rate on the learners who, she says, have ”an immense sense of entitlement … they see the learnerships as a stop-gap while they look for something else. At Sacob we find that about 25% of our learners have absconded or found other work … There is just no commitment from the learners themselves in terms of their contracts.”
Adrienne Bird, director general for employment and skills development at the Department of Labour, said that she couldn’t verify the 14% figure but said it sounded ”ridiculous”.
Bird said that the department was currently preparing the 2004 Implementation Report for labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana and that figures, including the learnership completion rate, would be made public early next year.
”We have done various things to improve the take-up of small businesses and the figures we are preparing suggest that we have been pretty successful in terms of increasing the proportion of small businesses that are participating,” she said.