A pioneering study raises sharp questions about the ability of further education and training (FET) colleges to play the skills development role that government policy expects of them.
However, the national Department of Education said recently it had devised new programmes for implementation next year that will revolutionise skills training in colleges.
Conducted by Umalusi, the state’s quality assurance body, the study poses a challenge to Minister of Education Naledi Pandor, who has heavily promoted FET colleges as a work-orientated alternative to high schools and universities.
It compared grade 12 English, maths, physical science and hospitality in schools and their equivalents in colleges. It found that these subjects are easier and less substantial in colleges than in schools, and that the college subjects do not prepare learners for higher education.
Released this week, the study’s central diagnosis is that the government’s multiple skills development initiatives over the past decade have not dealt with the core of FET colleges’ educational delivery — the vocational curriculum.
Colleges were working with an outdated curriculum that did not deliver the higher-level artisanal skills industry needs, said Stephanie Allais, Umalusi’s research director.
The gap between policy and practice is especially evident because the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) places the subjects reviewed in the Umalusi study on the same level. In theory, the subjects are “different but equal”, the study says. The intention was that “the status of vocational education would be raised” by ranking some of its courses in the NQF with matric subjects.
“The policy assumption has been that if learners go the FET college route, they should get access to either higher education or the workplace,” said Jeanne Gamble of the University of Cape Town’s school of education. “The Umalusi report shows conclusively that it does not.”
Citing the findings on science assessment, Gamble said the study showed that colleges’ methods of examining relied on “factual recall and rehearsed responses to problems” and that there is a “gap in conceptual understanding”. Skills alone are not enough, she said, “there must be knowledge too”.
However, Penny Vinjevold, Deputy Director General for FET in the education department, said the department has completed a revision of the colleges’ curricula that “seek[s] to address concerns of equivalence between school subjects and FET college subjects”.
Since March last year, she said, the department has “coordinated the development of 13 new, modern, cognitively challenging programmes” for colleges. All spending of the R1,9-billion recapitalisation of colleges would go towards the delivery of “new, modernised and more demanding curriculum and programmes”.
“In other words, all infrastructure development, equipment acquisition, human resource development and admini-strative systems should be towards offering the 13 new vocational programmes at FET colleges in 2007.”
On whether colleges prepare students for higher education study, Vinjevold said the new programmes sought to address this concern.