Therefore no negotiations could proceed without the ANC. Today the youth should continue to be inspired by true revolutionaries like those of Mama Sisulu's generation. Most of the people referred to are from the ranks of the ANC.
Youth skills development in South Africa has been placed at the centre of development. This was evident in the state of the nation address on 11 February 2011. The President reiterated that government must invest in youth to ensure a skilled and capable workforce to support growth and job creation.
South Africa is grappling with the issue of skills shortages, especially in the priority skills. Some claim that our training institutions are not doing enough to produce the required skills, whilst others say that there is a mismatch between the skills required for the development of a successful economy that promotes job growth and the skills currently available.
Research findings have revealed that our country's skills crisis is particularly acute at the lower-, middle- and higher-middle levels.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must not forget where we have come from as a nation, with apartheid education policies which prohibited African learners to enrol in subjects such as maths and science; and the job reservations policies, which did not allow nonwhites to occupy certain positions. That legacy is having a long-term effect on the labour market.
Though our government managed through its progressive policies to open access to all educational institutions for all citizens, there are still areas of concern. We are still observing high enrolments in the Humanities as compared to Engineering and Life Sciences programmes.
Again, the decision that the Department of Higher Education and Training took of phasing out Nated courses or what is known as N-courses in our Further Education and Training colleges has had dire consequences for the production of artisan skills.
These courses provided the key theoretical knowledge required for the apprenticeship and learnership artisan route. However, we are happy that they are being reintroduced.
Access to education for many qualifying youth is still a serious challenge due to inadequate infrastructure, lack of funding and rigid admission requirements for some scarce and critical skills programmes at some of the universities.
Given the urban bias of our economic development, the country has not paid adequate attention to rural economic development and provision of skills for rural development. Most of the skills training opportunities are often in the urban areas, hence youth in the remote rural areas of the country don't have access to these opportunities.
This perpetuates a situation where the youth migrate from rural areas to urban areas in search of opportunities. The urban areas cannot absorb everyone. Those who are left in the rural areas seldom have access to those opportunities.
Further Education and Training, FET, colleges are geographically better distributed across our nine provinces than our higher education institutions. They thus make any further study for young people more accessible and at a lower cost, as accommodation costs would be reduced significantly.
In terms of improving access to higher education for children from poor families and ensuring sustainable funding, the department made some strides in ensuring that academically deserving students get access to higher education through the increased allocation to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. In 2009 the scheme introduced upfront payment to ensure that no students are excluded from accessing education.
As set out in the White Paper, the central policy objectives of providing poor and historically disadvantaged students with access to higher education and to contribute to the skills pool necessary to drive economic growth and development are realised.
However, we need to acknowledge that there are still challenges, mainly based on how institutions of higher learning administer and manage the funds. For example, there are institutions that give students blank forms or contracts to fill in without them even knowing how much they actually deserve.
This will encourage students who come from poor family backgrounds to access education and also ensure retention and will increase the through- put rate, as those students would not have to drop out due to financial problems.
In his Budget Vote speech, the Minister of Higher Education and Training said:
Education and training is a common public good which must not be sold and traded as a commodity, where only those with money and other resources will be able to afford it. Only by providing equal opportunities for all, irrespective of social background, can we contribute towards building a nation in which everyone has a stake and a common loyalty.
Currently, South Africa does not have a credible skills planning programme that will assist in projecting the skills supply and demand. A credible skills plan will enable the Department of Higher Education and Training to project the future skills-demand areas for the next 10 years, to establish the current supply and to plan for future training.
However, we are still concerned about a large number of students who completed the theoretical component of their qualification, but could not find placement for the experiential learning part.
Employers are not willing to open up their workplaces to those students and as a result we are losing what could have been engineers and engineering technicians to packers at Shoprite and Checkers, Pick n Pay and other retail stores. This is a sad story.
There is a need for a policy that will in a way oblige employers to open up their workplaces for learning, because we cannot have learnerships without experiential learning.