Youth unemployment is a collective challenge requiring collective action instead of political posturing and neo-liberal gibberish
On Tuesday, after we received the statistics from STATS SA (Employment, Unemployment, Skills and Economic Growth) our country was met with the bold words shouting "skills level of young black adults has regressed post 1994."
These are the headlines Michael Cardo of the Democratic Alliance uses in order to draw attention to the DA Youth Employment Plan, or rather, a rehash of existing government plan coated in neo-liberal gibberish.
Such as is the case with in oppositional, non-transformative and non-visionary politics, the person designated to man-mark me in the DA completely missed the point and tied his tongue to repeat the same hogwash the DA has become known for: "The ANC has failed", "nothing has changed", "please vote for us".
I say this because this headline is a complete misrepresentation of the facts contained in the report. Even as we question the wisdom of comparing the 1994 Household Survey to the 2014 Quarterly Labour Force Survey, it cannot be that skills levels amongst Africans have regressed since 1994.
According to the three censuses held during the democratic dispensation, the black African population group proportion of persons with higher education has more than doubled between 1996 and 2011 (from 3.6% in 1996 to 8.3% in 2011). Black Africans who have completed Grade 12 increased from 12.0% in 1996 to 26.9% in 2011. Black Africans made up 50.2% of students in tertiary institutions in 1995 which increased to 67.2% in 2012. The entire population with no schooling more than halved during the same period for the black Africans, Coloureds and Indians.
So to suggest that skills acquisition is on the decline for Africans cannot be true, unless we are saying it is only Africans beyond the ages of 35 who enroll at institutions of further and higher education.
It cannot also be true that the skills levels of young black adults has regressed under the ANC, and indeed the STATS SA report does not say that, rather it says "the gains made in the proportion of skills were highly uneven...the gains made in the African population were marginal."
If Cardo has reached page 5 of the report he would have noted that "between 1994 and 2014 there was an increase in the proportion of skilled employment in all population groups."
The extent of the increase, however, was vastly different. The lowest increase took place within the black African population, from 15.1% to 17.1% an increase of 2.9%....compared to 19.3 percentage points within the white population.
We cannot assume, as Cardo flippantly does, that the reason for the low increase in skills employment was because there are no skilled Africans to employ. That may not be the case. Could it alternatively be true that the lack of social capital means that it takes longer for Africans to be employed even when skilled?
How much of this phenomenon contributes to the fact that the employment composition of skilled Africans is less than 50% whilst the employment composition of skilled Indians and whites is over 60%? Is it possible that as Africans now have become skilled the game plan for getting employed has changed and "a new form of racial inequality has emerged, operating not directly on income as in the heyday of job reservation, influx control and school segregation, but indirectly, through inequality in the rewards to effort, as witnessed by sharply divergent patterns in the returns to education between the race.
At the end of Apartheid the rate of return to education stood at approximately 11% for both races. A decade later however, the return to education for whites stood at a dramatic 43%, whilst that of Africans declined to about 7%, and unless proven otherwise, race clearly plays a strong role in determining how educational attainment comes to be valued in the labour market"(Keswell 2004: 2).
Initial investigations done by the Development Policy Research Unit at the University of Cape Town and the University of Johannesburg seem to confirm that Africans are finding it harder to be absorbed in the labour market than their white colleagues with similar qualifications and from same universities. (DPRU 2012) To what extent does this factor contribute to the low skilled employment composition for Africans?
It is true though that for the massive resources that government puts into basic education and post school education and training, the results are not encouraging. It is for this reason that the state has various initiatives to improve the quality of basic education for all learners, and not for a chosen few.
Besides building schools and eradicating Apartheid induced school infrastructure backlogs, the quality teaching is being strengthened because we agree that teaching is one of the most important determinants of learner performance. In pursuance of the ANC Election's Manifesto commitment to ensure the right teacher in front of learners in each subject, through better teacher deployment, utilization and development, the following interventions have been instituted:
1. There is a proactive recruitment of young people into teaching through Funza Lushaka bursary scheme and their placement in provinces and districts;
2. The teacher resource centres are revitalised with technology resourcing and digital material to provide district level support to teachers. In addition, subject committees have been established to improve peer to specialist teacher development, and Communities of Practice among teaching professionals nationally. The National Education Collaboration Trust also assists with teacher training.
3. Grade 12 mathematics teachers are being trained on new Mathematics topics including Euclidian Geometry and Probability to enable them to improve performance in the National Senior Certificate and expand post-school opportunities for study. Primary school teachers are being trained to teach English First Additional Language in collaboration with the British Council.
Building on our experience of the role of technology as a tool of trade in the education sector, the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in administration and in the classroom is pivotal to leapfrog learners and teachers into a brave new world of expanded possibilities for schooling and materials.
In line with the manifesto priority of improving participation, performance and the pipeline in Mathematics, Science and Technology (MST) an audit of provincial MST Institutes has been conducted and it indicates that certain provinces are in good position to establish their own institutes with support from the Department of Basic Education. Interventions for improving Grade 9 Mathematics are being implemented.
In the next five years, the focus will be on improving participation and the pass rate in MST increasing the number of learners registering for Mathematics. This includes supporting learners to make better subject choices for Grade 10-12 learners (especially girls and African learners).
The skills development regime is also being transformed. The artisan training programmes of the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have been revived, and the SOEs are now once again major contributors to the supply of artisans. In only two years between 2011 and 2013 SOEs trained 4 740 artisans. Both SOEs and the private sector have been constrained by the lack of adequate, sustainable, guaranteed funding from the SETAs and the National Skills Fund (NSF), as well as the lack of a single artisan learner administration and grant disbursement system across the SETAs. Government has recently addressed these blockages by directing SETAs, in new grant regulations, to use 80 percent of their discretionary grants for pivotal programmes, of which artisan training is a major part.
Similarly, government departments have also been identified as important spaces for skills development (every work space a learning space). To this end Outcome 12 of the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) indicates that the Public service has a responsibility to build the skills base for its capacity needs both now and in the future and to contribute towards employment creation and ensure that public sector workplaces become training spaces where entrants are adequately supported in order to develop their skills for employment within the public service or the private sector. It is therefore targeted that by 2019, 20 000 youth would be appointed to learnership and internship per year.
However, the building of skills is not the sole responsibility of government but requires an active role by the private sector, hence government has entered into accords like the Skills Accord which seeks to open the private sector for internship and learning experiences. The MTSF targets that 140 000 youth will be appointed to learnership and internship by 2019.
The Levy Grant Regulation has been revised in order to provide a conducive scope for employers to take in unemployed graduates. It is important to note that there are varying levels of capacity within the 21 SETAs in terms of governance, management, responsiveness and financial status.
Therefore blanket generalisations about SETA capacity as so often seems to happen in public debates and in the media does not reflect the current situation of the SETA system. The Grant Regulation sets to reduce the Mandatory Grant to 20%, and increases the Discretionary Grant to 49.5%. 80% of the Discretionary Grant should be ring -fenced for the PIVOTAL grant (professional placements, work‐integrated learning, apprenticeships, learner ships, internships, skills programmes, and work experience placements).
This changes the way in which the SETAs allocate skills development grants, for example, discretionary funding must be directed towards programmes that support artisan training and other scarce occupational qualifications. It further prescribes the way in which the administrative monies may be spent, and requires that the SETAs transfer a maximum of 0.5% of the total levy received by a SETA to the Quality Council for Trade and Occupations (QCTO) for quality assurance functions as contemplated in section 26H of the Act.
The financial aid for University and Technical Vocation Education and Training (TVET) college students in the past 5 years has increased from R3,1 billion for 191 040 students in 2009 and R8 billion for over 400 000 students in 2013. However National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), is faced with numerous challenges such as an increasing demand associated with increase in students enrolments, the impact of annual (above CPI) student fee increases puts pressure on student financial aid.
NSFAS has implemented a new student centred model which became effective in October 2013. It focuses on the management and administration of bursaries and loans in public education institutions. This new model is currently being piloted in 6 universities and 5 TVET colleges for the 2014 academic year and will be phased in for the rest of the public education institutions over a period of 5 years. The model seeks to ensure that there is adequate funding available for student assistance and secondly there are fair, effective and transparent policies to govern and administer the NSFAS.
To conclude, it is important to understand where we come from as a nation, appreciate the progress we have made, inform ourselves on the very public documents of how government is trying to improve the lot of all the people of South Africa and contribute positively by giving extremely innovative solutions instead of rehashing existing initiatives and declaring them as new. And as we said when accepting the STATS SA report, the report is very welcome and it together with other reports will inform the youth policy review process within the ambit of the National Development Plan (NDP) for the creation of 11 million net jobs.
>> Buti Manamela is a member of the ANC PEC in Limpopo and Deputy Minister in the Presidency: Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.
This article first appeared in ANC Today, the online newsletter of the African National Congress.
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